(The Early Church,KN)

In AD 33, after Jesus had lived his life, preached his message, performed his miracles, died, risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, Christianity was still a long way from being an organized 'Church' as we understand the term. How, then, did Christianity actually get started as an institution? Just what happened to the Christians - Jesus' friends, those who had heard him preach, those who heard the new doctrine from others, and all of the generations of Christians that followed them over the next two hundred and eighty years until Christianity was finally legitimized in AD 313?

We do not know very precisely. The new religion appealed largely to a small minority of the population of the Roman Empire - a predominantly poor, uneducated and powerless minority at that. Whenever Christianity did show signs of rising to greater prominence, it attracted the attention of the authorities, who viewed it as theologically, philosophically, socially and politically suspect and a threat to the status quo. They reacted by firmly and repeatedly quashing it. So Christians kept a very low profile, meeting in secret in people's houses, in out-of-the-way places in the countryside, or underground in catacombs.

What we do know about the first centuries of Christianity is mostly to be found in the New Testament of the Bible, written between AD 50 and 120, the writings of the Apostolic Fathers )the second- and third-generation Christians of the first century and the first half of the second century) and, ironically, through records of the verbal and physical attacks on Christians and Christianity by their detractors. Traces of early Christianity are also to be found in a few catacombs with early Christian art and artifacts - fortunately and wonderfully preserved down through the millennia - where Christians met and worshiped in secret and buried their dead. The most famous and extensive of these are in Rome, but they are also to be found in much more unlikely places, such as the Greek island of Milos.