Make sense in the context of very early Christianity - which was a cult of the apocalypse, of leaving your family, giving up your property, and joining roving disciples. It was driven by Jesus's promise to return (and bring the Kingdom of God with liberty and justice for all) before his listeners are all dead (which prompted the later Christian myth that one of the listeners was made immortal to fulfill the prophecy). In that case, urging patience was excusable - all shall be made right by God destroying the world and bringing heaven to Earth - why bother overthrowing the unjust state now?
imo christianity was a protosocialist movement that formed in reaction to plague, income inequality, and incursions into the farmland of the roman empire. this of course was coopted by the elites
There were also immaterial bases for it. Roman ideology had no explanation for life in the empire in general, not just its negative/cataclysmic turns. Republican Rome was martial, democratic, austere, industrious, superstitious, blindly traditional, blindly patriotic - the Mos Maiorum. Imperial Rome's elites were bathed in luxuries without needing to work for them - they had no use for war (even conquest only upset stability and the military was guarding borders, far away), no use for hard work, no use for democracy, no use for civic duty. Roman traditional polytheism lost all authority. Roman philosophical traditions - stoicism and epicurianism - had no appeal to the non-elites, because even though they rejected useless luxury and unjust inequality - they dictated acquiescence to the status quo. Christianity and other Eastern mystery cults promised explanation, change, active rebellion against existing life under the empire. Once the Empire began to collapse under waves of crises - conversion to Christianity skyrocketed, and the elites had to co-opt it to stay in power.
...But the reasons behind the immaterial worldviews shifting were the material changes from tiny soldier-farmer republic to massive slave-plantation/mercenary army empire.
Make sense in the context of very early Christianity - which was a cult of the apocalypse, of leaving your family, giving up your property, and joining roving disciples. It was driven by Jesus's promise to return (and bring the Kingdom of God with liberty and justice for all) before his listeners are all dead (which prompted the later Christian myth that one of the listeners was made immortal to fulfill the prophecy). In that case, urging patience was excusable - all shall be made right by God destroying the world and bringing heaven to Earth - why bother overthrowing the unjust state now?
imo christianity was a protosocialist movement that formed in reaction to plague, income inequality, and incursions into the farmland of the roman empire. this of course was coopted by the elites
There were also immaterial bases for it. Roman ideology had no explanation for life in the empire in general, not just its negative/cataclysmic turns. Republican Rome was martial, democratic, austere, industrious, superstitious, blindly traditional, blindly patriotic - the Mos Maiorum. Imperial Rome's elites were bathed in luxuries without needing to work for them - they had no use for war (even conquest only upset stability and the military was guarding borders, far away), no use for hard work, no use for democracy, no use for civic duty. Roman traditional polytheism lost all authority. Roman philosophical traditions - stoicism and epicurianism - had no appeal to the non-elites, because even though they rejected useless luxury and unjust inequality - they dictated acquiescence to the status quo. Christianity and other Eastern mystery cults promised explanation, change, active rebellion against existing life under the empire. Once the Empire began to collapse under waves of crises - conversion to Christianity skyrocketed, and the elites had to co-opt it to stay in power.
...But the reasons behind the immaterial worldviews shifting were the material changes from tiny soldier-farmer republic to massive slave-plantation/mercenary army empire.