THE SECT-CHURCH DYNAMIC AND CHRISTIAN EXPANSION IN THE ROMAN-EMPIRE -PERSECUTION, PENITENTIAL DISCIPLINE, AND SCHISM IN SOCIOLOGICAL-PERSPECTIVE

In terms of world-historical significance, few developments can rival the enduring impact of the triumph of Christianity within the Roman wo rld. Originating as a minor sect within Judaism, and subjected to spor adic persecution over the course of three centuries of growth and miss ionary expansion, the social fortunes of this marginal religion were a bruptly transformed by the conversion of the emperor Constantine, whos e imperial support laid the organizational and ideological basis for t he making of a 'Christian Empire'. The analysis presented here seeks t o explicate that dramatic 'reversal', i.e., from persecution to patron age, by charting the critical internal changes that carried Christiani ty from its original stance of world-opposition and renunciation to ac commodation and affirmation. Weber's sect-church model is employed to frame the evolving dialectic of persecution, penitential discipline, a nd schism that marks the protracted struggle over religious organizati on and self-identity within pre-Constantinian Christianity.