According to the tradition, it was in the time of Caesar Tiberius’ reign, that Jesus of Nazareth first appeared among the Jews, whose birth of date later became the starting point of the calendar. Jesus, son of a carpenter, preached the gospel to the poor and the oppressed.

The new tenets comforted an oppressed nation, the poor Jewish people of Ancient Times, as well as all those oppressed and suffering in the enormous Roman Empire. This is exactly why the movement did not remain within the narrow range of Ancient Jewish, soon new followers speaking different languages, not exclusively Jews, occurred.

Jesus preached the gospel to the poor and the oppressed; the first Christian communities were formed out of these people. Christianity in the beginning was the religion of the poor. Those more well off started penetrating into Christian communities in larger numbers only in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

Christians did not oppose state power openly, they were not rebels. Hard they tried to avoid conflicts with mundane power/secular authorities as they did, their life style and world view, the community of goods they maintained and their belief of the wealth being the source of Evil, the esteem of Mammon, turned them against the ruling class and its state. Roman emperors regarded Christians, consisting of mainly slaves and the “lowest of the low”, as conspirators and the enemies of the existing order, as people who only intensify/increase social disorder/turmoil in the empire. As early as the reign of Nero, when Rome was burnt down in a terrible fire, suspicion fell on the Christians: what if they were the arsonists/fire-raisers, being such relentless/implacable enemies of the rich? The very reason/cause of the persecution of the Christians was that the ruling class 

The reason for the persecution of Christians lies in the fact that the ruling class opposed even this movement of the oppressed.  For the Christians, even though they did not advocate any conflict with the state as the instrument of ruling class oppression, yet they, in their own way, spelt danger for the oppressors.  They refused, for example, to offer sacrifices before the statue of the emperor, as they considered this to be idol-worship.

Besides changes in the life-style of Christians, the emphasis of Christian teachings was also changed by the permeation of the rich into the congregations.  Now that there were wealthy Christians too, the tenets of Christianity came to be interpreted as teaching that Christians should not fight against the existing unjust social order.  The rich could very well utilize in their own interest the forbearance and docility taught by Christianity, since Christianity, by promising an afterlife of happiness to the poor also pacifies the discontented and oppressed.

A change in the fortunes of Christianity came when the Emperor Constantine recognized Christianity as a potential ally on whom he could rely in power struggles with his rivals.

Christian congregations, having gained the support of the secular authorities, quickly organized themselves into a universal (Catholic) church extending over the whole of the empire.  After a while they even crossed the borders of the disintegrating Roman Empire as well.  Even the non-Roman barbarians had become Christians and for centuries Christianity, now organized into a church, had been a loyal support of the state, the instrument of ruling class oppression.