What if Rome Had Not Turned Christian

Speculating on how history might have changed if this or that had not happened is good entertainment. A recent article, I'm sure many others have been written, speculated about whether Christianity would have been as successful as it has been if Rome had never gone Christian.

The link points out that Christianity did not change acceptance of slavery. It just adopted slavery as a permanent institution. On top of that, slavery was a status symbol and part of the upper class. The upper class, we would call them the "5%" slice of society today, was the source of the written material such as the NT Bible. To have time to become literate and then to write required slaves. 

It is said sometimes Christianity was the religion of ordinary people, not the wealthy elite. From what I have read this is hard to swallow. Besides the wealth and literacy question, the final days of the Roman Empire were fraught with class. The Goths were good citizens in the empire but the empire would never give them full Roman citizenship. This was the reason, so I read in a book about them, the Goths charged into Rome and took over the government. Christianity did not save Rome.

I read that Constantinople, even after he converted to Christianity, was tolerant of other religions. There is some remaining evidence that was somewhat correct. There were, however, bands of Christians which destroyed Pagan temples and were not, so far as anyone knows, punished by the government. The link goes into a later dictator who hunted down Pagans. 

The Roman Empire had a large government and people who got into a good government positions lived well. That being the case, many people curried favor with officials and tried to shmooze their way up the social ladder. I read that as soon as Constantinople converted, schmoozers across the Empire converted hoping, of course, it might help them in their careers. 

So, would Christianity become so big without the conversion so Constantinople and the Roman Empire? It seems unlikely. Yet, cultures morph around in their own way and it might have fit the times in various countries even without Rome. Now we are seeing cultural change forcing a move away from Christianity. Someday future generations may ask, "Would Christianity have lived longer if there had been no computer?" Speculation lives on.