# Christianity Spread Only by the Sword Objection Defeater ## Intro The objection is short: *"Christianity only spread by the sword and colonialism."* Sometimes Constantine is added: *"It only got big because a Roman emperor made it the official religion."* The idea is that nobody chose Christianity freely. Armies, empires and colonial governments forced it on people, and that is the whole story. The short answer is that the word "only" fails a simple test. You can check it with numbers and dates. **First, look at who held the sword before Constantine.** For almost three hundred years, Rome held it, and Rome used it against Christians. Emperors such as Nero, Decius and Diocletian persecuted the church. Yet by the year 300, by one well-known estimate, there were about 6 million Christians, about one in ten people in the empire. Constantine did not start the movement. He joined one that was already millions strong. **Second, look at when Africa became Christian.** In 1900, about 9% of Africans were Christian. By 2020 it was nearly half. Most African countries became independent in the 1960s. About four out of every five of those new Christians came after 1970, when most of the colonizers had already gone home. **Third, births cannot explain the change.** Bigger families make a group bigger, but they cannot easily turn 9% into half. For that, many people have to change religion. **Fourth, look at places with no Christian sword at all.** In Korea, about 1% of people were Christian in 1900, and the colonial ruler from 1910 was Japan, which was not a Christian power. Today Christians are a large share of South Korea. In China, the church grew under a government that threw out the missionaries and for a time banned religion. Be honest about what is true. Christians have used force. Charlemagne threatened Saxons with death if they refused baptism. Spanish conquerors told Native Americans to submit to the Church or face war and slavery. Some missionaries worked hand in hand with colonial powers. Those were real wrongs. But the claim was that Christianity spread *only* that way. The record shows it spread most when it had no sword, and fastest after the swords were gone. ## In full Defeater for the objection, in three connected forms. **(A) The sword form:** *"Christianity spread by conquest and forced conversion, not persuasion."* **(B) The colonial form:** *"Christianity in Africa, Asia and the Americas is a product of European colonialism; take away the empires and there would be no Global South church."* **(C) The Constantine form:** *"Christianity was a small sect until Constantine (312) and Theodosius (380) put state power behind it."* A common follow-up, **(D) the colonized-mind form**, concedes that growth continued after independence and says the colonialism is now internal: Africans still think through categories installed by mission schools and Western money. This page divides the labor with neighbors. [Most of the World Was Colonized by Christians Objection Defeater](/codex/most-of-the-world-was-colonized-by-christians-objection-defeater/) answers the moral charge that colonialism discredits the faith (the genetic fallacy, colonizing as a human universal, the colonized turning the Bible against their masters). [Christianity Is the White Mans Religion Objection Defeater](/codex/christianity-is-the-white-mans-religion-objection-defeater/) and [African Christianity Pre-Colonial](/codex/african-christianity-pre-colonial/) answer the identity charge with the faith's ancient African history. [Forced Conversion By Sword Objection Defeater](/codex/forced-conversion-by-sword-objection-defeater/) answers the parallel debate about Islam. This page takes the narrower empirical question: **did force explain the spread?** It answers with dated figures from the sources named in each line. The defeat structure has five steps. (1) **Scope**: "only" is a universal claim, so a single large counterexample defeats it, and the objector's weaker fallback ("force helped") is not in dispute. (2) **The pre-Constantinian test**: on Rodney Stark's projection, a movement with no state power and under intermittent persecution had about 6.3 million adherents by 300, about 10.5% of an empire of 60 million; lower estimates still put it in the millions. (3) **The colonial-timing test**: Gordon-Conwell's World Christian Database figures put Africa's Christians at about 9.6 million in 1900, 137.9 million in 1970 and 663.7 million in 2020, so about 80% of the growth since 1900 came after 1970. (4) **The births-versus-share test**: the Christian share of Africa rose from about 9% (1900) to nearly 50% (2020), which population growth alone cannot produce. (5) **Comparison cases** from Korea and China, where the church grew without a Christian colonial sword or against a hostile state. Each step is set out as a premise below, with objections and rebuttals, followed by a cross-examination. **What the page does not claim.** It does not claim that no one was ever forced to become Christian, that missions were free of colonial entanglement, or that growth proves Christianity true. The claim is that force does not explain the spread, so the objection's "only" is false. Whether Christianity is true is argued elsewhere, chiefly in [Argument from the Resurrection](/codex/argument-from-the-resurrection/) and [Minimal Facts Argument](/codex/minimal-facts-argument/). ## Argument structure | # | Premise | |---|---| | **P1** | "Christianity spread *only* by the sword, colonialism and Constantine" is a universal claim; it is falsified by any large-scale growth that occurred without a Christian sword, or against one. | | **P2** | Before 312 the sword belonged to Rome, which persecuted Christians (Nero AD 64, Decius 250, Diocletian from 303), yet on Stark's projection there were about 6.3 million Christians by 300, about 10.5% of the empire; even lower estimates (2 to 3 million) leave millions before Constantine. | | **P3** | Constantine joined a movement already millions strong: toleration came in 311 and 313 and state establishment only in 380. Armenia (traditionally 301) and Aksum (mid-330s or 340s) adopted Christianity outside Roman control. | | **P4** | In Africa, most growth came after colonial rule ended: about 9.6 million Christians in 1900, 137.9 million in 1970, 663.7 million in 2020 and an estimated 754.2 million in 2025 (Gordon-Conwell), with independence concentrated in the 1960s. | | **P5** | The share of Africans who are Christian rose from about 9% (1900) to nearly 50% (2020); population growth cannot produce a share change of that size, so large numbers of people changed religion, mostly after colonial rule. Current growth is mostly births, and Islam is projected to grow faster in sub-Saharan Africa, but that concerns 2010 to 2050, not the twentieth-century shift. | | **P6** | Where there was no Christian colonial power (Korea under Japan from 1910) or the state was hostile (China after 1949), Christianity still grew substantially. | | **C** | **Therefore the claim that Christianity spread *only* by the sword, colonialism and Constantine is false. Force was real and should be confessed, but the faith's largest expansions happened without a Christian sword, and twice its growth accelerated when the sword was taken away.** | ## Form **Defensive (a defeater).** P1 is a **scope test**: it fixes what the objection actually asserts, so the reply does not have to deny that force was ever used. P2 to P4 are **empirical counterexamples**, each dated and sourced. P5 is a **demographic test** that separates growth by births from growth by conversion, and concedes what the births data actually show. P6 adds **comparison cases**. Soundness is **contemporary**: it rests on published demographic estimates (Stark, Gordon-Conwell's World Christian Database, Pew Research Center, national censuses), all of which are estimates with stated methods, and on the dated documentary record of the persecutions and edicts. ## Cheatsheet **The 30-second reply (read aloud).** I agree that some Christians used force, and that was wrong. But you said "only," so let's test that. For almost three hundred years, Rome had the sword and used it on Christians. By the year 300, one well-known estimate says there were about 6 million Christians anyway. Constantine joined a movement that was already huge. Now take Africa. In 1900, about 9% of Africans were Christian. By 2020 it was nearly half. Most African countries were free by the end of the 1960s, and about four out of five of those new Christians came after 1970. If the sword spread Christianity, why did it grow fastest after the swords went home? Bigger families can't turn 9% into half. People chose it. So what do you think made them choose it? **The 5 fast facts:** 1. **Millions before Constantine.** Stark projects 6,299,832 Christians in AD 300, 10.5% of an estimated 60 million (*The Rise of Christianity*, 1996, Table 1.1). The estimates he cites for 300 run from 5 to 7.5 million. Bart Ehrman's lower estimate (2018) is 2 to 3 million. 2. **The sword was pointed at the church.** Nero (AD 64), Decius (decree under which sacrifice certificates were issued in June 250), Diocletian (from 303). Toleration came under Galerius (311) and Constantine and Licinius (313). State establishment came only in 380. 3. **Africa: 9.6 million to 663.7 million.** Gordon-Conwell's figures: 9,640,000 Christians in Africa in 1900; 137,866,000 in 1970; 663,664,000 in 2020; 754,229,000 estimated for 2025 (*Status of Global Christianity, 2025*). About 80% of the growth from 1900 to 2020 came after 1970. 4. **The share went from about 9% to nearly half.** "From 9% Christian in 1900 to nearly 50% Christian in 2020" (Gina Zurlo, Gordon-Conwell, 2020). Seventeen African states became independent in 1960 alone. 5. **No Christian sword in Korea or China.** Korea was about 1% Christian in 1900 (Pew, 2014) and was annexed by Japan in 1910; the 2015 South Korean census counted 9.68 million Protestants (19.7%) and 3.89 million Catholics (7.9%). China expelled virtually all foreign missionaries by the late 1950s, yet surveys find tens of millions of Christians today. **The 3 strongest counter-moves:** - *"Which sword, before 312?"* Ask who held state power over Christians for the first three centuries. Then ask how a religion spread only by the sword grew to millions while the sword was being used against it. - *"When did the colonizers leave, and when did the growth happen?"* Put the two dates side by side: most independence in the 1960s, most growth after 1970. - *"What would count against your view?"* If growth under persecution and growth after independence do not count, ask what possibly could. A claim that no evidence can touch is not a historical claim. **Reciprocal concessions (grant the small point, then collect a bigger one):** - *Grant:* Christians used force, including Charlemagne's *Capitulary for Saxony* and the Spanish *Requerimiento* of 1513. *Now collect:* then you have shown that force was used in some places, not that it was the cause of the spread. The figures on this page show the largest growth came where no Christian power held the sword, or after it had gone. - *Grant:* missionaries often arrived with colonial powers, and in China Protestant missions entered under treaties forced on China after the Opium Wars. *Now collect:* then the test is what happened after the colonial powers left, and in both Africa and China the church grew after they were gone. - *Grant:* African Christian growth today is mostly births, and Pew projects Islam to grow faster in sub-Saharan Africa from 2010 to 2050. *Now collect:* then the twentieth-century rise from about 9% to nearly half still needs explaining, and births cannot produce a share change that large. **The closing line.** If the sword spread Christianity, it should have died when Rome was swinging it at Christians, and faded when the colonizers went home. It did the opposite both times. ## P1, The objection's key word is "only" ### Affirmative case 1. **"Only" makes it a universal claim.** "Christianity spread only by the sword" means that force is the whole explanation. A universal claim is defeated by a large counterexample. One century of growth under persecution, or one continent of growth after colonial rule, is enough. 2. **The weaker claim is not in dispute.** "Force played a part in some places" is true, and this page says so (P2 rebuttals, Master objections, Honest limits). An objector who retreats to it has given up the original argument. 3. **The test is checkable.** The objection is a historical claim, so it can be tested with dates and numbers: who held power, when growth happened, and whether the growth came from births or from people changing religion. ### Anticipated objections 1. *"I didn't mean only literally. I meant mainly."* 2. *"Even voluntary conversion happened inside power structures, so all of it was coerced in some sense."* ### Rebuttals 1. **Then test "mainly."** The same evidence answers it. If most Christians in history converted where no Christian state held power, or after it left, force was not the main cause. P2 to P6 show that the largest expansions fit that description. 2. **That stretches "sword" until it means nothing.** Every choice anyone makes happens inside some power structure, including the choice to leave Christianity in a secular society. If every conversion counts as coerced, the claim cannot be wrong, which makes it a definition rather than a finding (see the colonized-mind objection below). ## P2, Before 312 the sword was pointed at Christians ### Affirmative case 1. **The persecutions are dated.** Nero blamed the Christians for the fire at Rome in AD 64 (Tacitus, *Annals* 15.44; see [Tacitus](/codex/tacitus/)). Decius ordered everyone in the empire to sacrifice to the gods; nearly all the surviving certificates of sacrifice (*libelli*) date to June 250. Diocletian's persecution began in 303 and was continued by Galerius. The church had no legal standing until Galerius's edict of 311 and the agreement of Constantine and Licinius at Milan in 313 ([Edict of Milan](/codex/edict-of-milan/)). 2. **The movement grew anyway, to millions.** Rodney Stark's projection assumes 1,000 Christians in AD 40 and growth of 40% per decade (3.42% a year). That gives 7,530 Christians in 100, 217,795 in 200, 1,171,356 in 250 (1.9%) and 6,299,832 in 300, which is 10.5% of an estimated 60 million (Stark, *The Rise of Christianity*, 1996, ch. 1 and Table 1.1). 3. **Stark's range is not his alone.** He fits the curve to the estimates of others for the year 300: Goodenough's 10% of the empire, von Hertling's minimum of 7.5 million, MacMullen's 5 million. He concludes the number "lay within the range of 5-7.5 million" (ch. 1). 4. **Lower estimates still leave millions.** Bart Ehrman (*The Triumph of Christianity*, 2018) estimates 2 to 3 million Christians in 300, 3.5% to 5% of the empire, as reported by Jorge Lucero, whose 2021 paper "Subexponential growth of early Christianity" fits a slower, decelerating growth model to Ehrman's figures and gets about 3.4 million for 300. The debate is about *how many* millions and *how regular* the growth was, not about whether there were millions before Constantine. 5. **The Christians said they would not use the sword.** [Tertullian](/codex/tertullian/), writing to the Roman authorities, said, "We are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you," and asked, "For what wars should we not be fit, not eager, even with unequal forces, we who so willingly yield ourselves to the sword, if in our religion it were not counted better to be slain than to slay?" (*Apology* 37, ANF 3, PDF pp. 28-29). And: "The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed" (*Apology* 50, PDF p. 37). 6. **They also argued that faith cannot be forced.** Lactantius wrote, "religion cannot be imposed by force; the matter must be carried on by words rather than by blows, that the will may be affected," and "nothing is so much a matter of free-will as religion" (*Divine Institutes* V.20, ANF 7, PDF p. 137). ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Stark's numbers are guesses. There are no ancient censuses."* 2. *"The persecutions were sporadic. Most of the time Christians were left alone."* 3. *"Tertullian was exaggerating for rhetorical effect."* ### Rebuttals 1. **Granted, and the argument survives every estimate on offer.** Stark's figures are a projection fitted to scholars' estimates, and his critics say the growth was slower and less regular. But the lowest estimate cited here, Ehrman's 2 to 3 million, still describes a movement in the millions with no army behind it. The objection needs the number to be close to zero, and no one proposes that. 2. **Yes, and that does not hand Christians the sword.** Persecution was intermittent and often local, but the church never held state power before 312, and a Christian could be executed for refusing to sacrifice. The question is not whether Christians were always being killed; it is whether they had a sword to spread the faith with. They did not. 3. **Probably, on the numbers; not on the policy.** "We have filled every place" is rhetoric. The claim that Christians would rather be killed than kill is a statement of practice that the persecutors could check, and the record of the martyrs bears it out ([Historical Evidence for the Martyrs](/codex/historical-evidence-for-the-martyrs/)). ## P3, Constantine joined a movement already millions strong ### Affirmative case 1. **The order of events.** Constantine's conversion is dated to 312, before the battle of the Milvian Bridge ([Constantine](/codex/constantine/)). Galerius had already granted toleration in 311. Milan (313) granted freedom to Christians and to every other religion: "no one whatsoever should be denied the opportunity to give his heart to the observance of the Christian religion, of that religion which he should think best for himself." Establishment came in 380, when the Theodosian law ordered all peoples to hold "that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter" (Theodosian Code XVI.1.2), more than forty years after Constantine's death. 2. **Even Stark's critics place the growth first.** Stark argues that Constantine's conversion "would better be seen as a response to the massive exponential wave in progress, not as its cause" (ch. 1). Ehrman, who is no apologist, still places millions of Christians before 312. 3. **Christian kingdoms arose outside Rome's reach.** Armenia adopted Christianity under King Tiridates III, traditionally in 301, though sources give dates from 299 to 314 ([Armenian Apostolic Church](/codex/armenian-apostolic-church/)). In Aksum, King [Ezana](/codex/ezana-of-axum/)'s conversion probably came no earlier than the mid-330s and more likely in the 340s, decades before Rome's establishment in 380 ([Ethiopian Orthodox Church](/codex/ethiopian-orthodox-church/)). Neither was imposed by a Roman army. 4. **Africa's church predates Constantine.** North Africa produced [Tertullian](/codex/tertullian/) at Carthage, and Egypt was a center of the church long before 312. See [African Christianity Pre-Colonial](/codex/african-christianity-pre-colonial/). ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Without Constantine and Theodosius, Christianity would have stayed a minority."* 2. *"Armenia and Aksum were top-down too: a king converted and the people followed."* ### Rebuttals 1. **Possibly, and that is a different claim.** State support after 313 and the laws against paganism after 380 did add to the church's numbers, and should be admitted. But "Christianity would have grown more slowly without Constantine" is not "Christianity only spread because of Constantine." The first concedes the millions who came before. 2. **Royal adoption is not conquest by a Christian sword.** Both kings adopted a faith that reached them by missionaries and traders, not by an invading Christian army. Royal favor surely helped in each kingdom, which is a fair point about how state religion works. It does not explain how the faith got there. ## P4, Africa: most growth came after colonial rule ended ### Affirmative case 1. **The figures.** Gordon-Conwell's *Status of Global Christianity, 2025* (from the World Christian Database, Zurlo and Johnson, eds.) gives Christians in Africa as 9,640,000 in 1900; 137,866,000 in 1970; 383,463,000 in 2000; 663,664,000 in 2020; 754,229,000 for 2025; and 1,288,574,000 projected for 2050. 2. **The timing.** Most colonial rule ended in the 1960s. Seventeen African states became independent in 1960 alone, which is why 1960 is called the "Year of Africa," and "the colonial era in Africa drew to a close during the 1960's" (EBSCO Research Starters). Some territories came later (white-minority Rhodesia did not become Zimbabwe until 1980), but by 1970 most of the continent was self-governing. 3. **The arithmetic.** From 1900 to 2020, African Christians increased by about 654 million. About 526 million of that increase, roughly 80%, came after 1970. (This is simple arithmetic on the Gordon-Conwell figures above.) 4. **The inference, stated as an inference.** If colonial power were the engine of conversion, growth should have peaked under colonial rule and slowed when it ended. The record shows the reverse: the largest growth came after independence, under African governments, through African churches. 5. **African-led churches carried much of it.** Simon Kimbangu's ministry in the Belgian Congo lasted five months in 1921; the Belgian authorities arrested him on 12 September 1921, a military tribunal sentenced him to death on 3 October, and after the sentence was commuted he died in prison in 1951 after thirty years. The church that bears his name won official recognition only on 24 December 1959 and joined the World Council of Churches in 1969; it is "now considered as the largest African Initiated Church" (Gampiot, World Religion and Spirituality Project, 2023). The Redeemed Christian Church of God was founded in Nigeria in 1952 by Josiah Akindayomi, an African, not a missionary. See [Pentecostalization of Global Christianity](/codex/pentecostalization-of-global-christianity/). ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Gordon-Conwell is an evangelical seminary. Its numbers are inflated."* 2. *"The colonial seeds were planted before 1960; the harvest just came later."* ### Rebuttals 1. **An independent source shows the same pattern.** The World Christian Database is published by Brill, and its figures are revised as data improve (Gordon-Conwell's 2013 report gave 143 million African Christians for 1970; the 2025 table gives 137.9 million). Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan source using the separate World Religion Database, reports the same shape for sub-Saharan Africa: about 7 million Christians in 1900 and about 470 million in 2010. The datasets differ in detail, and none of them shows growth peaking under colonial rule. 2. **Then the seeds grew without the colonizers.** That concedes that the growth came from Africans choosing the faith after the colonial powers left, which is the point. A seed that only grows once the sower has gone is not evidence that the sower forced the harvest. ## P5, Births cannot turn 9% into half ### Affirmative case 1. **The share figures.** "Christianity grew tremendously in Africa over the 20th century, from 9% Christian in 1900 to nearly 50% Christian in 2020" (Gina A. Zurlo, Gordon-Conwell, 18 March 2020). An earlier Gordon-Conwell report put Africa at 38.7% Christian, 143 million people, in 1970 (Johnson and Bellofatto, *Christianity in its Global Context, 1970-2020*, 2013). 2. **Why births are not enough.** If Christians and non-Christians have children at similar rates, the Christian share stays about the same, however large the population grows. To move from about 9% to about half, either Christians must have had far more children than everyone else for a century, or many people must have changed religion. 3. **The births data point the other way.** Pew reports that in sub-Saharan Africa today the fertility rates of Muslims and of followers of folk religions are higher than those of Christians (Pew, *The Future of World Religions*, 2015). If anything, current births favor Christianity's rivals, so the twentieth-century rise in share is hard to explain without large-scale conversion. 4. **The concession, plainly.** Pew projects that from 2010 to 2050 sub-Saharan Christians will grow from 517 million to more than 1.1 billion (+115%) while Muslims grow from 248 million to 670 million (+170%), so the Christian share falls from 63% to 59% and the Muslim share rises from 30% to 35%. Pew expects religious switching to change the region "only modestly" in these decades. So today's growth is mostly births, and Islam is growing faster. 5. **Why the concession does not rescue the objection.** The 2015 projection describes 2010 to 2050. The question was how Africa went from about 9% Christian to nearly half in the twentieth century. That change happened, on the figures above, mostly after colonial rule ended, and it required people to change religion. ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Christian areas had better hospitals, so more Christian babies survived."* 2. *"Islam grew in Africa over the same century. Africans were simply taking up whatever religion powerful outsiders brought."* ### Rebuttals 1. **That can explain a little, not a quadrupling of share.** Better health care in mission areas could raise Christian numbers somewhat. But it cannot move a share from about 9% to nearly half within a century, and health care spread to non-Christian communities too, especially after independence. 2. **First the evidence, then the concession, then the consistency test.** On its own evidence, the claim fails for Christianity: its fastest growth came after the outside powers left, much of it through churches Africans founded and led (P4). The concession: both faiths did grow, and Pew reports Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa rising from about 11 million in 1900 to about 234 million in 2010. Then the test: does the objector hold that African Muslims, too, merely took up what outsiders brought? If not, the principle is not doing the work in the Christian case either, and the real question is why Africans chose each faith. This is a test of the rule, not a "you too" (see Tactical opening / closing). ## P6, Growth with no Christian sword: Korea and China ### Affirmative case 1. **Korea.** "In 1900, only 1% of the country's population was Christian" (Pew Research Center, 2014). Japan annexed Korea on 22 August 1910 (National Diet Library of Japan), and Japan was not a Christian power. In the 2015 census, Statistics Korea counted 9.68 million Protestants (19.7%) and 3.89 million Catholics (7.9%) (*Korea Times*, 10 January 2017). Christianity grew from about 1% of all Korea in 1900 to more than a quarter of South Korea in 2015 without ever being imposed by a Christian colonizer. 2. **China.** By 1949, "among the total of 540 million people in China, there were about 700,000 Protestants and 2.7 million Catholics, according to Chinese government estimates." By the late 1950s, "virtually all foreign Christian missionaries had been expelled," and during the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976) "religious activity was banned" (Pew Research Center, *Measuring Religion in China*, 2023). 3. **What China shows now.** Estimates differ widely, and all of them are estimates. In the 2018 Chinese General Social Survey about 2% of adults, roughly 20 million people, identified as Christian; the government estimated 38 million Protestants in 2018; in the 2018 China Family Panel Studies, 7% of adults, roughly 81 million, said they believe in Jesus Christ or *Tianzhu*. On any of these measures, the number of Christians is many times the 1949 figure, reached after the missionaries were expelled. 4. **The honest qualifier.** Pew also reports that recent surveys "do not offer much evidence that Christian growth continued after 2010" (2% of adults in 2010 and 2018, a difference that is not statistically significant). The church in China appears to have plateaued under renewed pressure. That does not touch the point here, which is that the growth after 1949 happened without, and against, state power. ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Korean Christianity grew after 1945 under American influence."* 2. *"Christianity entered China through the Opium War treaties."* ### Rebuttals 1. **American influence is not a sword.** The United States did not compel Koreans to convert, and Korea was never ruled by a Christian colonial power. Influence and attraction are the opposite of what the objection alleges. 2. **Yes, and then the treaties were torn up.** Pew notes that Protestant missions expanded after treaties following the Opium Wars "forced the lifting of restrictions on foreign access." That is a real colonial entanglement and should be admitted. But the missionaries were expelled in the 1950s and the church grew afterward, under a state that opposed it. ## The strongest version of the objection A fair opponent will not rest on "only." Here is the objection at its best, and an answer to each part. 1. **"Rice Christians."** *Schools, hospitals and aid gave people material reasons to convert, and colonial mission schools trained the elites who ran the new states.* **Answer:** partly true. Some conversions were motivated by access to education and care, and mission schools did shape many of Africa's first independent leaders. But incentives cannot explain growth where there were no rewards and real costs: Rome before 312, Kimbangu's followers under Belgian rule, China after the missionaries were expelled. Nor do they explain why growth accelerated after the colonial schools passed to African governments. 2. **"It's a market."** *Prosperity preaching and healing promises sell a product; Pentecostal growth is consumer behavior, not a search for truth.* **Answer:** the prosperity gospel is real, and orthodox Christians reject it as a distortion of the faith; Paul says the weapons of Christian warfare "are not of the flesh" ([2 Corinthians 10:4](/codex/2-corinthians-10-4/), ASV), and the same goes for its rewards. But the objection has now changed from "force" to "persuasion with bad arguments," which concedes that people chose. Whether the reasons were good is a fair question; it is not the question of the sword. 3. **"Growth proves nothing."** *Islam grows too, and so have other movements. Even if force does not explain Christianity's spread, spread is not evidence of truth.* **Answer:** agreed, fully. This page does not argue that Christianity is true because it spread. It answers an argument that Christianity is discredited because of *how* it spread, which is a form of the [genetic fallacy](/codex/genetic-fallacy/) with a false premise. The case for truth rests elsewhere: [Argument from the Resurrection](/codex/argument-from-the-resurrection/), [Minimal Facts Argument](/codex/minimal-facts-argument/), and the question of what could cause the first Christians' conviction ([Causal Adequacy Argument](/codex/causal-adequacy-argument/), [Resurrection-Centric Growth Argument](/codex/resurrection-centric-growth-argument/)). ## Master objections to the defeater **MO1: "Christians did use the sword. Charlemagne and the conquistadors prove it."** - They did, and it should be said without hedging. Charlemagne's Saxon Wars ran from 772 to 804, and his *Capitulary for Saxony* (dated 775 to 790 in the Fordham edition) decreed: "If any one of the race of the Saxons hereafter concealed among them shall have wished to hide himself unbaptized, and shall have scorned to come to baptism and shall have wished to remain a pagan, let him be punished by death." The Spanish *Requerimiento* of 1513 told Native Americans that if they refused, "we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you... and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them." Those are real crimes done in Christ's name. They contradict Jesus's own words: "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight" ([John 18:36](/codex/john-18-36/), ASV). And they show force *used*, not force as the explanation of the spread; see P2 to P6. Other Christians condemned the conquest at the time; see [Most of the World Was Colonized by Christians Objection Defeater](/codex/most-of-the-world-was-colonized-by-christians-objection-defeater/). **MO2: "The colonized mind: African Christianity is still colonialism working from the inside."** The usual source of the phrase is Ngugi wa Thiong'o's *Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature* (London: James Currey, 1986), a book chiefly about language and literature whose title became a slogan for wider claims. - **Steel-man and concede.** Colonial schools and missions did shape African elites, sometimes by teaching contempt for African languages and customs, and some African churches still depend on foreign money. Those are real and deserve honest attention. - **As usually stated, it cannot be tested.** If every African who chooses Christianity is thereby shown to be colonized, no evidence could ever count against the claim. Ask: *what would an uncolonized African conversion look like?* If there is no possible answer, the claim is a definition, not a discovery. - **It denies African agency.** It treats hundreds of millions of Africans as unable to weigh a religion and choose it, which is itself the paternalism it claims to oppose. - **The growth is African-led.** Kimbangu was imprisoned by the Belgian authorities for thirty years, and his church became, by one scholarly description, "the largest African Initiated Church." The Redeemed Christian Church of God was founded by a Nigerian in 1952. Movements founded, led and funded by Africans, often in tension with the mission churches, are hard to describe as colonialism by remote control. - **The faith in Africa is older than the colonizers.** Egypt, Ethiopia and North Africa were Christian centuries before any European colony: [Tertullian](/codex/tertullian/), [Athanasius](/codex/athanasius/) and [Augustine](/codex/augustine/) were Africans. Scripture itself records an Ethiopian official baptized in the first generation ([Acts 8:27-38](/codex/acts-8-26-39/)). See [African Christianity Pre-Colonial](/codex/african-christianity-pre-colonial/). - **Consistency, after the evidence.** The points above answer the claim on its own terms. Only then ask whether the objector applies the same rule evenly: is every African Muslim also a "colonized mind," since Islam too reached most of Africa from outside? If the objector says no, the rule is not what is driving the conclusion about Christians. The point is not "Islam did it too, so drop it"; it is that a rule which cannot be applied evenly is not a good rule. **MO3: "Africans were stripped of their traditional religion."** - **Concede first.** In some places missionaries and colonial governments suppressed traditional practices and treated African culture as something to erase. That was wrong, and many African theologians have said so. - **Traditional religion was not erased.** Pew's 19-country survey (more than 25,000 interviews, December 2008 to April 2009) found that "in four countries... half or more of the population believes that sacrifices to ancestors or spirits can protect them from harm," that "roughly a quarter or more of the population in 11 countries say they believe in the protective power of juju," and that in 14 of the 19 countries more than three in ten sometimes consult traditional healers (Pew, *Tolerance and Tension*, 2010). Pew also notes that relatively few people now identify primarily with a traditional religion, though many have relatives who do. - **After independence, Africans were free to return, and the growth accelerated anyway** (P4). - **Then the consistency test.** Pew estimates that in 1900 Christians and Muslims together were less than a quarter of sub-Saharan Africa, so both faiths grew at traditional religion's expense. If the objector counts that as "stripping" only when the new faith is Christian, the principle is being applied selectively, and it is not carrying the argument. - **The American form of the claim has a scholarly name: [E. Franklin Frazier](/codex/e-franklin-frazier/).** Applied to the enslaved in the United States, the objection usually means that slavery stripped Africans of their own religions and their masters handed them Christianity. The sociologist E. Franklin Frazier (1894 to 1962) gave the first half of that its scholarly form. In James E. Blackwell's summary, Frazier held that "the black American's African past was gradually 'sloughed off' as a consequence of his experiences in America," and that [Melville J. Herskovits](/codex/melville-j-herskovits/) and his followers "overstate the case for African survivals." Herskovits answered in *The Myth of the Negro Past* (1941) that African Americans "had retained their heritage from Africa in music, art, social structure, family life, religion, and speech patterns" (Wikipedia's summary). Blackwell's verdict on the debate: "The disagreement between Frazier and Herskovits is not so much over kind as degree." - **Frazier's thesis does not help the objection, whichever way the debate goes.** - *If Frazier is right* and the old religions were lost, then the Christianity that replaced them was built by the enslaved themselves. Frazier's own name for it was the "invisible institution," a phrase he is credited with coining in *The Negro Church in America* for "the spirituality on slave plantations that was primarily out of view of the mainstream American religious consciousness" (Wikipedia, "Invisible churches"). It was held out of view because it was held against the masters' wishes: enslaved believers would "participate in worship gatherings at night in secret locations, risking severe punishment to do so." A faith people risk the lash to practice in secret is not a faith imposed by the people holding the lash. See [Hush Harbors](/codex/hush-harbors/). - *If Herskovits is right,* African traditions were not erased, and the objection loses its premise from the other side. - *The middle position.* [Albert J. Raboteau](/codex/albert-j-raboteau/)'s *Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South* (Oxford University Press, 1978) took a middle course. In Paul Harvey's summary, Raboteau describes "the 'death of the gods,' meaning the inevitable demise of African religions in any systemic form," yet also "'retentions' and 'survivals,'" and shows that the enslaved "created their own covert religious culture, one with its own distinctive theology and rituals." From that root grew the independent Black church that [C. Eric Lincoln](/codex/c-eric-lincoln/) and Lawrence H. Mamiya studied in *The Black Church in the African American Experience* (Duke University Press, 1990), whose publisher's description opens: "Black churches in America have long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institutions in black communities." - The colonists' own statute books show what they feared the faith would do; see MO7. - **Honest limit.** Mixing Christian and traditional practice (syncretism) is a real discipleship issue that African churches themselves address; this page does not pretend it away. **MO4: "Christian minorities ruled over Africans."** - **Concede plainly.** In Liberia, Americo-Liberians, about 5% of the population by one encyclopedia's estimate (Worldmark, via Encyclopedia.com), dominated the 16 indigenous ethnic groups for more than 130 years after the republic's founding in 1847; the True Whig Party was the only legal party, and on 12 April 1980 a coup led by Samuel Doe killed President William Tolbert. In South Africa, the National Party won the election of 26 May 1948 and built apartheid, which ended with the first democratic election on 27 April 1994. White-minority Rhodesia declared independence on 11 November 1965 and became Zimbabwe only in 1980. Parts of the Dutch Reformed Church gave apartheid a theological defense. - **Then collect.** These were a handful of countries, not the continent. Most of Africa's Christian growth came after these regimes ended or in countries that never had them. And the Bible was turned against them: in 1982 the World Alliance of Reformed Churches suspended the Dutch Reformed Church and declared the theological justification of apartheid a heresy; in 1986 that church acknowledged its error in using "the bible as a foundation of racial segregation" (South African History Online). Desmond Tutu, an Anglican cleric and the first Black General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, received the Nobel Peace Prize on 10 December 1984 for his opposition to apartheid. **MO5: "Constantine made it the state religion, so the growth after 312 doesn't count."** - Constantine did not make it the state religion; that came in 380 (P3). Even if all growth after 312 were discounted, the millions before 312 remain, and so does the growth in Africa, Korea and China in the twentieth century. The Constantine argument, at most, covers one empire in one century. **MO6: "It's just social pressure. People convert because everyone around them does."** - Social networks do carry conversion, and Stark's own work stresses this. But social pressure is not the sword, and it cuts against the objection: in Rome before 312, in Kimbangu's Congo and in China after 1949, the social and legal pressure ran *against* becoming Christian. **MO7: "Christian colonies wrote slavery into law."** - **Concede fully.** They did. In October 1705 the General Assembly of Virginia passed "An act concerning Servants and Slaves" (Hening, *Statutes at Large*, 3:447-463, as printed by Encyclopedia Virginia). Its words: - **Section IV:** "all servants imported and brought into this country, by sea or land, who were not christians in their native country, (except Turks and Moors in amity with her majesty, and others that can make due proof of their being free in England, or any other christian country, before they were shipped, in order to transportation hither) shall be accounted and be slaves, and such be here bought and sold notwithstanding a conversion to christianity afterward." - **Section XI:** "no negros, mulattos, or Indians, although christians, or Jews, Moors, Mahometans, or other infidels, shall, at any time, purchase any christian servant" (the section continues). - **Section XXXIV:** if a slave resisting correction "shall happen to be killed in such correction, it shall not be accounted felony; but the master, owner, and every such other person so giving correction, shall be free and acquit of all punishment and accusation for the same, as if such incident had never happened." - **Section XXXVI:** "baptism of slaves doth not exempt them from bondage; and that all children shall be bond or free, according to the condition of their mothers." - It was not new. In September 1667 the same Assembly had passed "An act declaring that baptisme of slaves doth not exempt them from bondage," which enacted "that the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or ffreedome" (Hening, 2:260). - **Read what the baptism clauses admit.** The 1667 act opens by saying that "some doubts have risen" whether enslaved children baptized into the faith "should be vertue of their baptisme be made ffree." Legislators do not pass laws against a doubt nobody holds. The colonists were legislating *against* the implications of the faith they professed, and Section IV goes further, making a later "conversion to christianity" legally irrelevant to a person's bondage. A law built to stop baptism from doing what people expected it might do is evidence that the faith pointed the other way. - **Set the act beside the Bible it claimed** (all Scripture quotations ASV): | Virginia, 1705 | Scripture | |---|---| | Non-Christians imported "shall be accounted and be slaves, and such be here bought and sold" (IV) | "And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." (Exodus 21:16) | | A slave killed in correction: "it shall not be accounted felony" (XXXIV) | "And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall surely be punished." (Exodus 21:20) | | The trade in imported people underwrites the whole act (IV) | "menstealers" are listed with liars and false swearers among things "contrary to the sound doctrine" (1 Timothy 1:10) | | "baptism of slaves doth not exempt them from bondage" (XXXVI) | "There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) | | The baptized slave stays property, and race decides who may own a "christian servant" (XI, XXXVI) | Paul sends Onesimus back "no longer as a servant, but more than a servant, a brother beloved" (Philemon 16) | | The act's machinery exists to hold the enslaved in bondage | "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master a servant that is escaped from his master unto thee: he shall dwell with thee... thou shalt not oppress him." (Deuteronomy 23:15-16) | - **The same Bible fueled abolition.** The abolitionist textual case rested on exactly these verses, above all the death penalty for man-stealing and Paul's list naming "menstealers." [Frederick Douglass](/codex/frederick-douglass/), a formerly enslaved licensed preacher, wrote of "men-stealers for ministers" and set "the Christianity of this land" against "the Christianity of Christ"; [William Wilberforce](/codex/william-wilberforce/) fought the trade in Parliament as an evangelical. The enslaved themselves kept a faith the masters did not control (MO3). See [Biblical Slavery Objection Defeater](/codex/biblical-slavery-objection-defeater/) and [Christians Behaving Badly Defeater](/codex/christians-behaving-badly-defeater/). - **Honest limit.** The Mosaic law did regulate a form of servitude, and [Exodus 21:21](/codex/exodus-21-21/) ("for he is his money") is the verse critics press against Exodus 21:20. It needs its own careful treatment, given in [Biblical Slavery Objection Defeater](/codex/biblical-slavery-objection-defeater/) and [Chattel Slavery vs Biblical Servitude](/codex/chattel-slavery-vs-biblical-servitude/). The point here is narrower: the Virginia act is not an application of the Torah. It contradicts the Torah's death penalty for man-stealing at its foundation, and where Exodus 21:20 ordered punishment for a servant beaten to death, Virginia declared such a killing "not felony." - **Relevance to this page.** MO7 is a moral charge about how Christians in power behaved, not evidence that the faith spread by the sword. Africa's Christian growth came largely after colonial rule ended (P4), and the enslaved in Virginia kept the faith in secret against their masters' wishes (MO3), not because of them. ## Honest limits **The numbers are estimates.** Stark's figures are projections; the World Christian Database and Pew use different definitions of "Christian" and different methods; China's numbers vary several-fold depending on the survey question. This page reports each figure as its source states it, with the date, and does not combine them into a single "true" number. **Some conversion was coerced.** Saxony, parts of the Americas and other places saw conversion at sword point. Later Roman law also pressured pagans after 380. These are real, and Christians should name them as sins, not defend them. **Mission and empire were entangled.** Missionaries often traveled under colonial protection, some supported colonial rule, and in China missions entered under unequal treaties. The page's claim is not that missions were innocent; it is that the faith's growth does not depend on that entanglement and outlasted it. **Growth is not truth.** This page refutes "only by the sword." It does not prove Christianity true, and it should not be used as if it did. ## Tactical opening / closing **The defeater's claim is narrow.** Do not let the conversation slide into "Christianity spread, so it's true." Your goal is only to show that force does not explain the spread. Concede the real crimes early and plainly; it costs nothing and earns trust. **Tactical notes: a consistency test is not a "you too."** When Islam comes up (it also spread by conquest in places, it also displaced African traditional religion, the colonized-mind argument would also apply to it), keep the order. First answer the claim on its own evidence. Then concede what is true. Only then ask whether the objector applies the same principle evenly. A [tu quoque](/codex/tu-quoque/) says, "you do it too, so I am off the hook," and it is a fallacy. A consistency test says, "your rule, applied evenly, gives results you reject, so the rule is not doing the work," and it is a fair move. | | Phrasing | Why | |---|---|---| | **Fallacious (tu quoque)** | "Islam was spread by the sword too, so you can't criticize Christianity." | Dodges the charge; Christian wrongs stay wrong whatever anyone else did. | | **Legitimate (consistency test)** | "Here is the evidence that force doesn't explain Christianity's spread, and here is what I concede. Now, do you hold that every African Muslim is also a colonized mind? If not, what makes the rule apply only to Christians?" | Answers first, concedes, then tests whether the principle is applied evenly. | **Opening.** You're right that Christians have sometimes used force, and I won't defend that. But you said "only." Can we test that with some dates and numbers? If it holds up, I'll grant it. **Closing.** Here's what I see. Rome had the sword for three hundred years and used it on Christians, and the church grew to millions anyway. Africa was about 9% Christian in 1900 and nearly half by 2020, and most of that came after the colonizers left. Korea and China grew churches with no Christian army in sight. Force was used, and it was wrong, but it wasn't what made Christianity spread. So the real question is still on the table: why did all those people choose it? I think the answer starts with an empty tomb. If the sword spread Christianity, it should have died when Rome was swinging it at Christians, and faded when the colonizers went home. It did the opposite both times. ## Cross-examination Five rounds, asked in order. Each round has the question, the answer most objectors give, and the follow-up. The aim is clarity: let the objector see what the evidence shows. ### Round 1, Pin down "only" 1. **Question:** "When you say Christianity spread *only* by the sword and colonialism, do you mean only, or mostly, or sometimes?" 2. **Expected answer:** "Mostly. Without force it would never have become a world religion." 3. **Follow-up:** "Fair. Then if we find that the biggest waves of growth happened where Christians had no sword, or after the sword was gone, would that count against your view?" 4. **Expected answer:** "Depends on the numbers." 5. **Follow-up:** "Good. Let's look at two periods: the first three centuries, and Africa after independence." ### Round 2, Who held the sword before 312? 1. **Question:** "From the crucifixion to the year 312, who held state power in the Roman Empire: Christians or pagan emperors?" 2. **Expected answer:** "Pagan emperors." 3. **Follow-up:** "And what did Nero, Decius and Diocletian do with that power where Christians were concerned?" 4. **Expected answer:** "Persecuted them, sometimes." 5. **Follow-up:** "So for nearly three centuries the sword was pointed at the church. How did a religion spread only by the sword grow while the sword was being used against it?" ### Round 3, Constantine joined a movement already millions strong 1. **Question:** "How many Christians do you think there were when Constantine converted in 312?" 2. **Expected answer:** "A small minority. That's why he mattered." 3. **Follow-up:** "Rodney Stark's projection is about 6 million by the year 300, about 10% of the empire. Bart Ehrman, who is a skeptic, says 2 to 3 million. Take the lower number. Where did 2 million Christians come from with no emperor behind them?" 4. **Expected answer:** "Constantine still made it the state religion." 5. **Follow-up:** "That was Theodosius, in 380. Constantine legalized it in 313, along with every other religion. So the growth came first and the emperor came after. Did Constantine create the movement, or join it?" ### Round 4, Africa: when did colonial rule end, and when did most growth happen? 1. **Question:** "When did most African countries become independent?" 2. **Expected answer:** "The 1960s." 3. **Follow-up:** "Right; seventeen in 1960 alone. Now, Gordon-Conwell's figures: 9.6 million African Christians in 1900, about 138 million in 1970, about 664 million in 2020. How much of that growth came after 1970?" 4. **Expected answer:** "Most of it, I suppose." 5. **Follow-up:** "About 80%. If colonialism was the engine, why did the engine run fastest after the colonizers left?" ### Round 5, Births versus share change 1. **Question:** "Could population growth explain it? Africa's population exploded." 2. **Expected answer:** "Yes. More people, more Christians." 3. **Follow-up:** "More people would give more Christians, but would it change the *share*? In 1900 about 9% of Africans were Christian. In 2020, nearly half. If everyone had children at the same rate, what would the share be?" 4. **Expected answer:** "About the same, I guess." 5. **Follow-up:** "So something besides births moved it from 9% to half. And Pew finds that today Muslims and followers of folk religions in sub-Saharan Africa have *higher* fertility than Christians. What moved the share, if not people choosing to become Christians?" ### Dodge table | Dodge | What it does | Reply | |---|---|---| | "Islam is growing faster in Africa." | Changes the period and the subject | "Pew projects that for 2010 to 2050, and I accept it. Today's growth is mostly births. My question is about the twentieth century, when the share went from about 9% to nearly half." | | "Missionaries came with the colonizers." | Treats arrival as cause | "Often, yes, and some were complicit. Then the test is what happened when the colonizers left. The church grew faster." | | "Africans were brainwashed by colonial schools." | Makes the claim untestable | "Then what would an uncolonized African conversion look like? If nothing could count, it isn't a historical claim. And it treats hundreds of millions of Africans as unable to think for themselves." | | "African Christianity is still colonialism from the inside." | Shifts from force to the 'colonized mind' | "Kimbangu sat in a Belgian prison for thirty years and his church grew. The Redeemed Christian Church of God was founded by a Nigerian. Are those colonial churches?" | | "Africans were stripped of their traditional religion." | Assumes erasure | "Pew found that in four countries half or more still believe sacrifices to ancestors protect them. After independence anyone could return, and the church kept growing." | | "Christian minorities ruled Africans, like in Liberia and South Africa." | Generalizes from a few states | "True, and wrong. It was a handful of countries, most growth came after those regimes ended, and Reformed churches declared apartheid's theological defense a heresy." | | "Constantine made it the state religion." | Misdates the establishment | "Theodosius did, in 380. Constantine legalized it, with every other religion, in 313, after millions had already joined." | | "Christians did use the sword." | Proves 'sometimes,' not 'only' | "Agreed, and it was wrong. Charlemagne threatened Saxons with death. That shows force was used, not that force explains the spread." | | "It's just social pressure." | Swaps sword for pressure | "In Rome before 312 and in China after 1949, the pressure ran against becoming Christian. It grew anyway." | | "Growth doesn't prove it's true." | Changes the question | "Agreed. I'm not arguing that. I'm answering your claim that it spread only by force. Want to talk about whether it's true? Let's start with the resurrection." | ## Live-cite kit **Scripture:** - [Acts 5:38-39](/codex/acts-5-38-39/), "if this counsel or this work be of men, it will be overthrown: but if it is of God, ye will not be able to overthrow them; lest haply ye be found even to be fighting against God." (ASV) - [Zechariah 4:6](/codex/zechariah-4-1-6/), "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith Jehovah of hosts." (ASV) - [2 Corinthians 10:4](/codex/2-corinthians-10-4/), "for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds" (ASV) - [John 18:36](/codex/john-18-36/), "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight" (ASV) - [Matthew 26:52](/codex/matthew-26-52/), "Put up again thy sword into its place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." (ASV) - [Acts 8:4](/codex/acts-8-4/), "They therefore that were scattered abroad, went about preaching the word." (ASV) **Patristic:** - [Tertullian](/codex/tertullian/), *Apology* 37 (ANF 3, PDF pp. 28-29), "We are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you," and "if in our religion it were not counted better to be slain than to slay." - Tertullian, *Apology* 50 (PDF p. 37), "the blood of Christians is seed." - Lactantius, *Divine Institutes* V.20 (ANF 7, PDF p. 137), "religion cannot be imposed by force; the matter must be carried on by words rather than by blows." **Statistical (each dated):** - Stark (1996): 6,299,832 Christians in AD 300, 10.5% of 60 million (projection); cited range 5 to 7.5 million. - Ehrman (2018), as reported by Lucero (2021): 2 to 3 million in 300. - Gordon-Conwell (2025): Africa 9.64 million (1900), 137.87 million (1970), 663.66 million (2020), 754.23 million (2025). - Zurlo, Gordon-Conwell (2020): Africa 9% Christian in 1900, nearly 50% in 2020. - Pew (2015): sub-Saharan Christians 517 million (2010) to 1.1 billion (2050), Muslims 248 million to 670 million. - Pew (2014): Korea 1% Christian in 1900. Statistics Korea, 2015 census: Protestants 19.7%, Catholics 7.9%. - Pew (2023): China 1949, about 700,000 Protestants and 2.7 million Catholics. **Scholarly (the objection, stated fairly):** Ngugi wa Thiong'o, *Decolonising the Mind* (1986); Bart Ehrman, *The Triumph of Christianity* (2018), on slower early growth and the role of Constantine. **Scholarly (the reply):** Rodney Stark, *The Rise of Christianity* (1996), ch. 1; Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Database and the annual *Status of Global Christianity*; Pew Research Center, *Tolerance and Tension* (2010) and *Measuring Religion in China* (2023). **Aphorism:** "Rome had the sword for three hundred years. The church grew anyway." **Aphorism:** "If colonialism was the engine, why did it run fastest after the colonizers left?" ## Connection to Scripture - [Acts 5:38-39](/codex/acts-5-38-39/), Gamaliel's test: a movement of men will be overthrown. - [Zechariah 4:6](/codex/zechariah-4-1-6/), not by might, nor by power. - [John 18:36](/codex/john-18-36/) and [Matthew 26:52](/codex/matthew-26-52/), Jesus refuses the sword. - [2 Corinthians 10:3-5](/codex/2-corinthians-10-3-5/), weapons not of the flesh. - [Acts 8:4](/codex/acts-8-4/), growth by scattering under persecution. - [Acts 8:26-39](/codex/acts-8-26-39/), an African official baptized in the first generation. ## See also - [Most of the World Was Colonized by Christians Objection Defeater](/codex/most-of-the-world-was-colonized-by-christians-objection-defeater/), the moral version of the colonial charge. - [Christianity Is the White Mans Religion Objection Defeater](/codex/christianity-is-the-white-mans-religion-objection-defeater/), the identity version, with the faith's ancient African history. - [Forced Conversion By Sword Objection Defeater](/codex/forced-conversion-by-sword-objection-defeater/), the parallel debate about Islam's spread. - [Christianity in Africa](/codex/christianity-in-africa/) and [African Christianity Pre-Colonial](/codex/african-christianity-pre-colonial/), Africa's Christian history before the colonizers. - [Pentecostalization of Global Christianity](/codex/pentecostalization-of-global-christianity/), the movement behind much of the post-colonial growth. - [Constantine](/codex/constantine/) and [Edict of Milan](/codex/edict-of-milan/), what Constantine did and did not do. - [Armenian Apostolic Church](/codex/armenian-apostolic-church/) and [Ethiopian Orthodox Church](/codex/ethiopian-orthodox-church/), Christian kingdoms outside Rome. - [Resurrection-Centric Growth Argument](/codex/resurrection-centric-growth-argument/) and [Causal Adequacy Argument](/codex/causal-adequacy-argument/), what best explains the early growth. - [Christianity Is Brainwashing Objection Defeater](/codex/christianity-is-brainwashing-objection-defeater/), the companion charge that rulers invented the faith to control people. - [Christians Behaving Badly Defeater](/codex/christians-behaving-badly-defeater/), when believers fail their own faith. - [E. Franklin Frazier](/codex/e-franklin-frazier/), [Melville J. Herskovits](/codex/melville-j-herskovits/), [Albert J. Raboteau](/codex/albert-j-raboteau/) and [C. Eric Lincoln](/codex/c-eric-lincoln/), the scholars of the "stripped of their religion" debate and the invisible institution (MO3). - [Hush Harbors](/codex/hush-harbors/) and [Black Christian Agency](/codex/black-christian-agency/), the secret worship of the enslaved and the faith they made their own. - [Biblical Slavery Objection Defeater](/codex/biblical-slavery-objection-defeater/), the Bible and slavery in full, including Exodus 21:20-21 (MO7). - [Genetic Fallacy](/codex/genetic-fallacy/), judging a belief by how it spread. - [Atheism](/codex/atheism/), the master hub. - [African Participation in the Atlantic Slave Trade](/codex/african-participation-in-the-atlantic-slave-trade/), the African and Western links in the Atlantic slave trade. ## Common questions this page answers **Q: Did Christianity only spread by the sword?** No. Force was sometimes used, as with Charlemagne's Saxon laws and the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and those were real wrongs. But Christianity grew to millions in the Roman Empire while Rome was persecuting it, and its fastest growth in Africa came after colonial rule ended. A faith that grows most when it has no sword was not spread only by the sword. **Q: Did Christianity only spread because of Constantine?** No. Rodney Stark estimates about 6 million Christians by the year 300, roughly one in ten people in the empire, and even skeptical estimates put the number at 2 to 3 million. Constantine converted in 312 and legalized Christianity, along with every other religion, in 313. It became the state religion only in 380, under Theodosius. **Q: Was Christianity forced on Africa by colonialism?** The figures say otherwise. Gordon-Conwell counts about 9.6 million African Christians in 1900, 138 million in 1970 and 664 million in 2020. Most African countries became independent in the 1960s, so about 80% of that growth came after 1970. Christianity was also in Egypt, Ethiopia and North Africa many centuries before any European colony. **Q: Isn't African Christian growth just population growth?** Today it mostly is, and Pew projects Islam to grow faster in sub-Saharan Africa from 2010 to 2050. But in the twentieth century the Christian share of Africa rose from about 9% to nearly half. Births alone cannot change a share that much, so many people must have changed religion, and most of that change came after colonial rule ended. **Q: Isn't African Christianity just a "colonized mind"?** Colonial schools did shape African elites, and that should be admitted. But if every African who chooses Christianity is called colonized, nothing could ever count against the claim. Many of the fastest-growing churches were founded and led by Africans, such as the Kimbanguist Church, whose founder spent thirty years in a Belgian colonial prison. **Q: How did Christianity grow in Korea and China?** Korea was about 1% Christian in 1900 and was ruled by Japan, not a Christian power, from 1910; in the 2015 South Korean census, Protestants were 19.7% and Catholics 7.9%. In China in 1949 there were about 700,000 Protestants and 2.7 million Catholics, by Chinese government estimates; the government expelled the missionaries in the 1950s, yet surveys now count tens of millions, though growth seems to have leveled off since about 2010. **Q: Does the spread of Christianity prove it is true?** No, and this argument does not claim that. Spread shows only that force does not explain how Christianity grew. Whether it is true depends on other evidence, especially the historical case for the resurrection of Jesus.