"Christians were regarded as separated from society and therefore destructive of the Greco-Roman way of life"
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Latourette’s line distills an old imperial anxiety: the fear that a community can be politically dangerous simply by not needing the same things everyone else needs. In the Greco-Roman world, religion wasn’t a private identity marker; it was civic glue. Sacrifice, festivals, emperor worship, and public ritual doubled as loyalty tests. So when Christians refused to burn incense to the gods or participate in shared rites, they didn’t read as “a different spirituality.” They read as social refusal.
The phrasing “regarded as” matters. Latourette isn’t claiming Christians were inherently antisocial; he’s diagnosing perception. The charge of being “separated from society” is less about physical withdrawal than about boundary-making: exclusive worship, internal mutual aid, distinct moral codes, and gatherings that outsiders couldn’t easily monitor. That combination looked like a rival network - one with its own authority structure and its own story about who ultimately rules.
“Therefore destructive” captures the slippery logic of scapegoating. If the gods protect the city, and some group won’t honor the gods, then any famine, plague, or military defeat can be pinned on them. Their refusal becomes causal, not just symbolic. Latourette’s historian’s precision is in showing how an empire interprets dissent: not as difference to be accommodated, but as contamination to be contained.
Contextually, this is the world before Christianity’s later marriage to state power. The irony is sharp: a movement accused of endangering social order would eventually become the order’s chief supplier of legitimacy.
The phrasing “regarded as” matters. Latourette isn’t claiming Christians were inherently antisocial; he’s diagnosing perception. The charge of being “separated from society” is less about physical withdrawal than about boundary-making: exclusive worship, internal mutual aid, distinct moral codes, and gatherings that outsiders couldn’t easily monitor. That combination looked like a rival network - one with its own authority structure and its own story about who ultimately rules.
“Therefore destructive” captures the slippery logic of scapegoating. If the gods protect the city, and some group won’t honor the gods, then any famine, plague, or military defeat can be pinned on them. Their refusal becomes causal, not just symbolic. Latourette’s historian’s precision is in showing how an empire interprets dissent: not as difference to be accommodated, but as contamination to be contained.
Contextually, this is the world before Christianity’s later marriage to state power. The irony is sharp: a movement accused of endangering social order would eventually become the order’s chief supplier of legitimacy.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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