ter for several hundred years, and thus did not constitute a special com-
modity in a crowded marketplace of innumerable and undifferentiated pagan
offerings during the crisis years of 300–476. Lastly, paganism did not clearly
die but continued to influence Western civilization long after Christianity rose
to dominance. The socio-historical facts do not support rational-choice the-
ory as applied to the ancient world and the rise of Christianity. Yet, the dis-
cussion is not complete. Let us also build a theoretical counter-argument.
Section III: Multi-Dimensional Social Action
The Role of Class
Rather than assume that instrumental choice is a universal truth, I offer first
a class distinction. Rational choice explains mostly the behavior of the rul-
ing class, who have the power of choice at their disposal. For the subordi-
nate classes, most of life is not a choice, but a fact of birth. As Angus noted
long ago, the main benefit of Christianity after Constantine’s acclamation was
consistent with ancient pre-Christian practice; in the ancient world, “the atti-
tude of that age toward authority was altogether different from that of the
present day. The tendency of the age was to seek authority and rest in it”
(Angus [1928] 1975:298). Through its attachment to the ruling classes in the
Empire, Christianity gained newfound authority and thus attracted members
on that basis. Far from a popular movement that rationally broke with the
past, Christianity arose to dominance in the traditional Roman manner – asso-
ciation with power.
Thus, the assumption that Christian charity maximized the cost-benefit
equation to favor active participation in early Christianity pretends that class
inequality did not exist. Wealthy and powerful Romans had a much higher
survivability in times of crisis (Chadwick [1967] 1993; MacMullen 1997) because
they isolated themselves in vast estates far from the squalid and diseased
urban areas. Indeed, early Christianity consisted mostly of patricians, not
freemen or slaves (Martin 1990). As Martin shows, the metaphorical use of
“slavery” in early Christianity applied to spiritual, not worldly relations, and
thus imposed no particular constraints or obligations on the elite converts.
It is difficult to imagine, as Stark readily assumes, that Christians from the
patrician class would directly give of themselves to alleviate the suffering of
a member of the lower classes simply because their new religion dictated so.
The Concept of Choice in the Rise of Christianity • 239