In every lecture on Christian history, practically the first question to arise concerns persecution. Why would people convert to Christianity in the face of dire hatred and gruesome punishments? Purely from a human perspective, persecution must have been an enormous barrier to the gospel. Given this, how could the early church expand as greatly it eventually did?

The typical explanation is that the persecution itself was not evenly enforced, or not rigorously enforced, especially by governors, for instance, who were sympathetic to the new movement. Even besides this, most governors presumably had other stuff to do besides specifically persecuting this group. Unlike Hitler, for whom the Jews were a kind of obsession, Nero was not devoted to exterminating Christians. They just kind of annoyed him.

And clearly, sporadic single persecutions would not contribute much towards reducing Christianity — rather the opposite, as they would, we might say, boost ‘morale’ for people who enjoyed suffering, and considered martyrdom as a quick way to heaven.

Still, if one imagines beginning St Paul beginning the work in a new area — who are the converts in your mind? Aren’t they slaves? Isn’t that the stereotypical Christian around AD 40? That, at any rate, was what occurred to me. Would they be persecuted? The slaves, I mean.

Of course, I don’t mean to destroy any heroic image you may have of these AD 40 Christians. But it seems somewhat unlikely that they would be specifically persecuted, muzzled, and hunted to the death. And here’s my chain of reasoning.

Even in the worst kind of persecution, where every Roman citizen was required to swear the oath of worship towards the Emperor, slaves would probably have been exempt. After all, they have no money, and even were considered of no importance. Yet suppose they were not exempt. It seems unlikely that the slave-owners are at all eager to abandon their slaves to the travails of Roman justice. Why would they? Probably, if the slaves had reformed morally, they would even be impressed by the new ‘sect’. And so they would not be eager to turn their slaves in, but rather they might protect them.

And even supposing our slave — slave Joe — did not support Christianity, slaves were not exactly worthless. To simply send a slave to the lions for supporting Christianity would be foolhardy. Would you send your computer to the recycling dump just because it isn’t ‘green’ enough?

While I’m not suggesting that the usual obstacles to Christianity — annoying co-slaves, evil ‘bosses’ and nasty jealous wives weren’t involved — I do think that on the basis of the last, government persecution was more or less ruled out for your average slave.