How does/did religion spread?

[Dis]

a post I made in off topic got me thinking about this.

I'm not a religious enough person to know exactly.

Why would a devoted person give up the religion they already have for another one? Yeah I know people change. I've been known as a flip flopper about some issues. But nothing as personal as religion. I've pretty much had the same religious beliefs all my life.

So that's why I can't understand how a new religion could "spread". I'm mainly thinking about Jehovah's Witness and LDs. Islam had the threat of force and war to push the spread of that religion.

Enlighten me please. And don't give me a civ4 definition of open borders or trade routes.

On a side note, what would it take to give up your current religious beliefs for something else?

[Lonestar]

Usually by the Sword. That's what Charlemagne did.

[General Ludd]

Nations and states use religion to rule. The people that are ruled by the state, must follow the religion. Otherwise they are traitors, heretics,or aliens.

[BeBMan]

There are a number of reasons why people would change a religion.

Force has already been mentioned as one major factor, but it's certainly not the only one.

There were also peaceful conversions in the middle ages for example, sometimes on a large scale. And some new religions simply may seem more appealing to people, like when the old faith was seen as increasingly "decadent" or when it appeared "inferior" compared to others.

[Dr Strangelove]

The old Roman state religion allowed the deification of some of histories greatest loonies. People got fed up.

Between Paul's mission to Rome and the raising of the Chritian religion to the status of state religion after Constantine's death Christianity provided the closest thing to social welfare that Roman's had ever received with the exception of the food passed out by the emporers during mass killings.......... errrr, I mean spectacles. Maybe people got fed up with gods who were nastier than most of their neighbors.

[Cort Haus]

Even if the sword is not directly applied, unequal treatment of non-adherents (oppression) is another tool.

[Imran Siddiqui]

As BeBro said, force is one tool, but one should not discount that people want to believe in something bigger than themselves. They want to know why they are here, etc. Religion fits that need to feel a part of something greater than themselves and that their lives aren't been lived in vain (especially those of the lower classes who spend much of their lives in toil).

[Barnabas]

I believe religions can spread to say, up to 20% of a population peacefully, just thru missionary work, voluntary conversions etc, but if a state/country etc is over 90% of one religion, there was probably force used.

[Tattila the Hun]

You build a Missionary, and sent him to someplace where his religion doesn't yet exist. Works in real world, too.

I wonder, how effective "you will pray to my god, or I will kill you" was, in history? Ratio of converts/killed...

[Dis]

people must be more flip floppers than I am then.

I just can't see chaning my religious beliefs because someone sends a missionary over. Unless she was a really hot chick.

my religion is as it always was. I don't know exactly what. . I kinda sorta believe in some sort of creator. That's about the extent of it. I don't believe in god or heaven or any of that funny stuff.

[molly bloom]

In the 'Dark Ages', Irish Celtic monks often had a choice of two types of martyrdom: the 'white' martyrdom, which would mean shipping off to some remote spot like Iceland or Skellig Michael:

http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&id_site=757

http://www.skelligexperience.com/skellig_michael.html

and living in extremely spartan conditions in bare beehive shaped dry stone cells, or a 'red' martyrdom, which meant shipping off to somewhere in England, Scotland or Wales or further afield to continental Europe and attempting to show pagans that your God was bigger than their gods, be they a world tree or the usual pantheon of human like entities.

In Asia, Buddhist scholar monks and traders and Muslim Sufis and merchants spread their religions in similar ways. One advantage any organised religion had was learning- Islam and Judaism and Christianity relied on lunar and solar calendars, so adepts and missionaries would have some knowledge of the calendar for instance.

Also, the evident wealth (and occasionally good health) of some religious communities would have been another incentive- Muslim & Jewish strictures relating to clean and unclean foods, Islamic attitudes towards cleanliness and clean water- especially in the tropics- must have impressed peoples often prey to waterborne diseases.

Sometimes a more obvious 'demonstration' of the power of the god helps, presumably- the Biblical accounts of Moses besting the court magicians of Pharaoh, or the supposedly divine intervention against the Assyrians besieging Jerusalem, when illness struck them down in the night.

With the Khazars (a Turkic tribe of the steppes) the choice of Judaism was allegedly based on astute political decision-making- caught between Christian Byzantium and the Muslim Caliphate they opted for neither.

Gallarus Oratory:

[Ecthy]

Free of judgement

History for molly bloom is a mosaic. History for Ecthy is the science of mosaics.

[molly bloom]

Re: Free of judgement

Originally posted by Ecthy
History for molly bloom is a mosaic. History for Ecthy is the science of mosaics.

History is too loose and baggy and unpredictable to be a science.

I lack the quasi-millenarian faith of Marx in 'historical inevitabilities' - smacks too much of messianic delivery for my liking.


Two Jews, one 'faith':

[Ecthy]

I'm not talking prediction, I'm talking making sense of it all. I personally get lost in the jungle of details that you provide. It's astute research, but it lacks essence.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ecthy
I'm not talking prediction, I'm talking making sense of it all. I personally get lost in the jungle of details that you provide. It's astute research, but it lacks essence.

I'm not sure which 'essence' you're asking for; even amongst the three monotheistic faiths, missionary work and conversion differed.

If we're discussing the spread of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, especially over an extended period of time, then the reasons for conversion and the processes are all going to be different, prompted by different movements (Muslim traders and Sufi mystics in South and South East Asia versus Muslim militaristic brotherhoods in North Africa and Spain) within the faiths or different rulers.

Charlemagne's reasons for converting Saxons and Avars had as much to do with territorial aggrandizement and security as with spreading the light of Christianity.

His armed crusade against the Saxons earned him just criticism from Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon monk and his secretary.

But then Charlemagne's Frankish empire was also run on a booty system, with his warlords and government officials being rewarded with the spoils of campaigns against the pagans.