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Christian Population in the Roman Empire

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David Atherton:
Browsing a Roman history forum I belong to, I came across these figures concering the growth of Christianity in the Roman Empire:

Christian Growth Projected at 40 Percent per Decade (Based on an estimated population of 60 million)

40AD.....1,000 Christians.....0.0017% of population
50 ......1,400.....................0.0023%
100 .....7,530....................0.0126%
150 .....40,496...................0.07%
200 .....217,796..................0.36%
250 .....1,171,356................1.9%
300 .....6,299,832...............10.5%
350 .....33,882,008..............56.5%

(From Stark's 'The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries')

This has always been of keen interest to me and I was wondering if anyone had any other figures or resources concerning this subject to share?

Glancing through my copies of Macmullen's 'Christianizing The Roman Empire' and Wilken's 'The Christians As The Romans Saw Them' I could not find any comparable Christian population numbers.

Robert_Brenchley:
I'd be interested to know how Stark worked it out! There simply are no ancient figures, but he may not be far out. I don't think there's any doubt that major growth began in the 3rd Century, during the near collapse of the empire. Gallienus legalised the church, and people must have been looking for new faiths given that the old observances weren't saving the empire from near-disaster. The Great persecution came too late to stop its growth, and by the time of Constantine, it was big enough to be politically useful. Once it was not only legal, but officially favoured, the result was a massive boom in the Christian population.

Jeff Clark:
These numbers from Stark do not appear to have any significance, other than mathematical, at all.  He started with the premise that shortly after the crucifixion there were only 1000 Christians.  If he started with less or more, the final number would be considerably different.  The final number is reached by multipying the previous value by 1.4 for every 10 year period.  It might by chance be correct, but the mathematics certainly don't make it so!
For every single person away from 1000, it makes 33,882 difference to the final total.  Apparently, it is all just a guess.

Robert_Brenchley:
I wonder whether it's pure coincidence that he gets the curve in something like the right place, or whether he fiddled his figures. 1000 followers straight after the crucifixion sems a bit high to me. He didn't have enough people at the time for anyone to consider it worth recording whatever exactly it was that happened, and it's a pretty safe bet that most of the people he did have gave up and went home once he was arrested.

The only thing I can think of that this could be based on is Paul's claim that the risen Jesus was seen by over 500 people all at once (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). I do think the claim is rhetorical though. It seems that in order to be accepted as a leader in the early days, you needed to claim a personal appearance.  Paul lists the important people who saw him; Cefas (Peter), the Twelve, James and the apostles. Paul has, of course, quarrelled with Peter and James, though he still has to recognise them as the leaders of the movement. So he adds the 500 to say that these visions aren't really that special after all. Then, of course, he gets to the nitty-gritty; he's seen Jesus himself, so he's as good as they are anyway!

Heliodromus:
I'd highly recommend Stark's book to anyone interested in topic. I've also read MacMullen's books on the subject, but Stark was still a major eye opener!

As far as the numbers, it depends on what you are looking for. Obviously exact numbers in any year are only an estimate however they are derived, but the pattern of growth has to be roughly as depicted by that chart. Social phenomena grow by contact with outsiders and therefore exhibit exponential growth (i.e. growth isn't fixed in absolute terms but instead depends on the existing membership size - it can be expressed as a percentage of the existing membership).

The size of the Christian population therefore naturally follows an exponential curve (notwithstanding any variation in the exact percentage growth in any given year or period), and the average growth rate is very heavily bounded by the known facts. In 40AD we know that the number of Christians was very small, whether it was 100, 1000 or 10,000 - I'm sure nobody would claim it was 100,000 or larger. Similarly by 350AD we know that Christian's comprised a sizable percentage of the population; it's hard to imagine Theodosius having been able to make Christianity the official state religion if Christians weren't of the order of 50% of the population (i.e. 30,000,000). You could argue the exact number, but again noone is going to suggest that the Christian population in 350AD was less than say 25% or more than say 75%.

The formula for exponential growth is Nt = N0 x (1 + r) ^ t where N0 is the starting size (population), Nt is the population after t periods of growth, and r is the fractional growth rate per period.

e.g. If we assume that  in 40AD N0 = 1000 and r = 3.42% / yr (= 40% / decade), then the population in 350AD would be 1000 * 1.0342^310 = 33,682,581

You can also invert the formula to get the growth rate given the end points:

r = ((Nt / N0) ^ (1/t)) - 1   (as a fraction - multiply by 100 to get a percentage)

So for example:

with a starting population of 100 ending with 30,000,000 after 300 years growth, r = 4.29% / yr

with a starting population of 1000 ending with 30,000,000 after 300 years growth, r = 3.49% / yr

with a starting population of 10000 ending with 30,000,000 after 300 years growth, r = 2.70% / yr

So an annual growth rate of approx 3.5% (= 40% per decade) has to be in the ballpark regardless of the exact starting numbers, and while the precise curve will vary, bottom line is that with an exponential growth rate in that ballbark the curve is always going to be roughly the same if it is the big picture you are looking for.

Interestingly as Stark notes, the 40% / decade (3.42% / yr) growth figure that seems to be in the ballpark for Christianity to have grown to 50% of the population by 350AD is also about the exact same per decade figure that the Mormon religion has grown in the US over the last century (and no doubt that feels quite different whether one is in Utah or New York, just as it would have done in Antioch vs Trier).

Anyway, I highly recommend the book - it's much more than just statistics (the above examples are just my own, not from the book), and there is also much grounding as reality check for the numbers .

Ben

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