I agree with most of what you say here. My quibble is that I think that it is worse than even you suggest. In the First Century, there was hostility to Christianity. It was a small, minority religion. It was also very different in its monotheism from the polytheistic syncretistic religions around it. And it began primarily from the fringes of society.
One advantage that it had was that it was new. There were people who were dissatisfied with the religions that they grew up with and which were around them and so were looking for a new faith. There was much religious foment in those times. Exotic religions were being explored, Eastern from Persia and points east, Egyptian cults, esoteric mystery religions, and Gnostic cults were all being tried. Christianity was in that mix, and eventually won out.
We are now an old religion that many consider tried and worn out. It is no longer rebellious to become Christian as it may have been in the First Century.
So, Brian, I mainly agree with you. I just see that there are some important differences with the First Century that we need to recognize.
I will also note, that for the First Century Christians, success did not come by modifying their beliefs and practices to fit in with the larger cultural and religious trends. They were from the beginning different. They succeeded while not fitting in.
The first era of Christianity, according to Loren Mead, was the period before Constantine (which brought about the rise of the state church).
He argues that the main differences was that in the first century, Christians were put to death because of their beliefs. The persecution was extreme and real. They couldn't advertise their worship services, for fear they would be discovered and tried, jailed, and executed, as traitors to the empire (because they wouldn't worship the Roman and Greek gods; nor declare the emperor "god and lord."
Whatever persecution Christians in America may face today, is pales compared to that of the first century. This also meant that for anyone who converted, they knew that they were risking their lives. It was a whole different kind of decision than deciding to attend a worship service or (in ages past,) a Billy Graham Crusade.
The church spread because the people (there really wasn't a roster of clergy yet,) were willing to witness to Jesus and the changes he brought to their lives and the new community that (secretly) gathered in his name.
In spite of the persecutions, Acts indicates that the church kept growing. The believers were willing to suffer and even die for the faith. I'm not sure that we can say that for many of our church members. I'm certain that we can't point to most church fellowship as being better than the fellowship one
experiences at a lodge or even a bar.
A friend (raised Roman Catholic, attended an ultra-conservative mega-church, in southern California, studied, at a college level Judaism and Islam - and went to Israel and Saudi Arabia to further his education in those religions and the languages of Hebrew and Aramaic,) but recently joined a Mormon church because of the way they made him
feel when he gathered with them. He knows their beliefs and disagrees with many of them - and told the missionaries that. They didn't care.
This brings up another paradigm of the changing church - one by Harvey Cox in
The Future of Faith.
[T]he nearly two thousand years of Christian history can be divided into three uneven periods. The first might be called the “Age of Faith.” It began with Jesus and his immediate disciples when a buoyant faith propelled the movement he initiated. During this first period of both explosive growth and brutal persecution, their sharing in the living Spirit of Christ united Christians with each other, and “faith” meant hope and assurance in the dawning of a new era of freedom, healing, and compassion that Jesus had demonstrated. To be a Christian meant to live in his Spirit, embrace his hope, and to follow him in the work that he had begun.
The second period in Christian history can be called the “Age of Belief.” Its seeds appeared within a few short decades of the birth of Christianity when church leaders began formulating orientation programs for new recruits who had not known Jesus or his disciples personally. Emphasis on belief began to grow when these primitive instruction kits thickened into catechisms, replacing faith in Jesus with tenants about him. [pp. 4-5]
Cox sees the church entering into a third period, which he suggests we call the “Age of the Spirit.” He concludes his chapter with a brief description of this period:
The experience of the divine is displacing theories about it. No wonder the atmosphere in the burgeoning Christian congregations of Asia and Africa feels more like that of first-century Corinth or Ephesus than it does like that of the Rome or Paris of a thousand years later. Early Christianity and today’s emergent Christian appear closely akin. [p. 20]
Or, to summarize even shore distinctly:
0-400 CE – faith IN Jesus – people trusted Jesus
400-1900 CE – faith ABOUT Jesus – fights occurred over right theology
1900 CE – experience of Jesus – this began with the modern Pentecostal experience