three kinds of societies that christianity has successfully evangelized:

1. extremely stratified, oppressive, hopeless patriarchies where the gospel is received as a source of relief that doesn't radically change the status quo on the ground and is framed in a similar enough manner that it feels believable to the oppressed

2. communities of perpetually enslaved people, usually by a slaveholding society that fits into kind 1, for the same reasons as kind 1

3. societies being colonized by already-christian societies, whether rapidly or slowly, in which joining a church was understood to imply various gains in social status and access to resources

the fact that sparta did not last long enough to be evangelized is evidence that we do not live in the absolute worst of all possible worlds

(but the fact that white people were puts us very, very close)

and on that note, restoring a point i had deleted before posting OP:

the process for kind 3 greatly increases the chances of kind 3 becoming more like kind 1, and is often inflicted by kind 1 with non-negligible overlap with kind 2

then again, perhaps in this alternate history the romans would have been inoculated against the worst of it, and society going forward from that point may have evolved in some wildly different ways that may well preclude some of the worst of what's going on with us now...

would it be a useful religion to adopt systematically? in this alternate version

@eris how so?

would this nicer interpretation by romans be useful in controlling the society more than the paganism? if no then the most we'd see is just decriminalisation by some emperors (not adoption as state religion), if yes then it'll go down about the same route, IMO.


Unless you meant that the Romans observing the Spartans end up building their empire in a completely different way?

@eris i mean they would not have been christianized later

which could mean some things become better but some things become worse, we really don't know

ahhh i see your point now, had misread it as "would christianity end up different".