> Is Christianity even a religion? For a while, the Romans weren't so sure. Robert Louis Wilken documents this question well in his The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. Some Romans thought Christianity was a burial society, a kind of social eating club mixed with funeral insurance (you pay annual dues, the society covers your funeral expenses). Some thought it was a political organization, kind of like a grassroots faction. Some thought it was more a philosophy, and indeed, early Christian thinkers preferred the label "philosopher" to "theologian," which had pagan undertones. Some considered them atheists because they refused to participate in the imperial cult. A lot of this came down to bad or faulty information—Romans accused Christians of being cannibals ("They have a meal where they eat someone's body and blood!") and incestuous ("Husband and wife refer to one another as 'brother' and 'sister!'"). But the point stands that it's sometimes only retroactively that we see something as being a religion, and that definition is culturally dependent. Is a secular nation state a kind of religion? It might be harder to say no than you might think. Looking around us today, you and I might not think of football or CrossFit as religions, but an alien visiting our planet might. Give it two or three hundred years, and you might too! > > <cite>[Have Judaism, Christianity and Islam always been the only Abrahamic religions? Or are they just the only ones that are left? : AskHistorians](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/oyt4h5/have_judaism_christianity_and_islam_always_been/?user_id=107156619577&web_redirect=true)</cite> ## See Also - [[classification is difficult]]