Did Christianity destroy the Roman Empire?

Did Christianity destroy the Roman Empire?

This question may at first seem rather provocative.  But if you take a look at the historical record, one can see the basis for this question.  Tradition has it that Rome was said to be founded by Romulus in 753 BC.  The Roman Republic was founded over 200 years later in 509 BC and the Roman Empire was founded almost 500 years after that in 27 BC with the end of the crisis period that saw the death of Ceaser and the rise of Augustus.  The Roman Empire then lasted about another four hundred years until Romulus Augustulus was deposed by Odoacer in September of 476 AD.

Over most of that period, the Romans practiced a form of paganism that honored a series of gods and goddesses similar in many ways to the familiar Greek pantheon.  The gods were linked to all aspects of day to day life with many identified with specific aspects of nature or everyday life, such as Neptune, the god of the sea and Mars, the god of war.  Jupiter, the head of all gods, was the patron deity of Rome.  Rome contained numerous temples and statues in honor of the gods including the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill and the Alter of Victory to Victoria, the goddess of victory, in the Curia (the Roman Senate House). 

Over the centuries Rome also adopted and absorbed foreign practices and religious cults into the greater pagan pantheon.  Isis, an Egyptian fertility goddess became a popular deity in Rome.  Mithras, a deity with possible Persian origins, had a secret cult in Rome that was particularly popular with the military.  Sol Invictus, an eastern sun god, became very popular in the later Roman Empire period.  Throughout all this though, most Romans continued to honor their traditional pantheon of gods and goddess.  Sacrifices to Jupiter were still made.  The Vestal Virgins still tended the sacred fire in Rome that, it was said, could not be allowed to go out.

This all changed with the coming of Theodosius the Great.  In February of 380 AD, Theodosius declared Christianity, based on the Nicene Creed, as the only official religion of Rome.  In 382 AD, the Alter of Victory was removed from the Curia forever and destroyed. The Ancient Olympic Games, a religious festival as much as an athletic competition, were last held in 393 AD and eventually banned.  In 394 AD, Theodosius disbanded the Vestal Virgins and has the sacred flame extinguished.  Temples were converted to churches or destroyed. Participating in any pagan religious right or ceremony was considered, essentially, treason and grounds for execution. 

Theodosius the Great died in 395 AD.  Upon his death, the Roman Empire was split into an eastern half and a western half, each governed by one of his sons.  The empire would never be united again.  In 410 AD, just thirty years after the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of Rome, the Visigoth under Alaric I sacked Rome.  This was the first time a foreign army had sacked Rome in almost 800 years.  Only sixty years later, as mentioned above, Romulus Augustulus was deposed and the Roman Empire was gone forever.

So, question remains, was the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the empire the cause of the empire's fall less than one hundred years later? There is evidence that many people at the time felt that there was.  They were concerned that the break with the traditional pantheon angered the gods who punished Rome.  In fact, St. Augustine of Hippo wrote the City of God soon after the sack of Rome in 410 AD in an attempt to address this very question.  Augustine essentially dodged the question and attempted to console the early Christians that it was the City of God, not the City of Rome, that truly mattered.

Apart from the metaphysical argument, there is also an argument that the adoption of the new religion was a divisive force and drove the empire apart just at a time when it needed a strong, unifying force to face increasing threats from the outside.  The period in European history, called the Volkerwanderung or Migration Period, was a time of great upheaval in Northern and Eastern Europe.  Possibly due to climatic changes, tribes like the Goths, the Franks, the Angles, the Saxons, the Vandals and the Huns began migrating west and south into the Roman Empire.  Britain was abandoned in the face of Angle and Saxon raids by 407.  Honorius, the son of Theodosis the Great and Emperor of the Western Empire, sent a letter in 410 telling the Roman Britons to essentially fend for themselves.  Most of Hispania (modern day Spain) was ceded to the Visigoths after their sack of Rome in 418.  The Huns, under Attila, raided raided Thrace and the Baltic before moving into Gaul in 451.  Cities were cut off.  Some welcomed the invaders.  The political strength of Rome as a unifying idea was over.

On the other hand, the Roman Empire has been in very dire straights for some time.  The crisis of the Third Century ended the Roman Empire about 200 years earlier.  Rome's status as the most important city in the empire was waning.  The center of power was moving east.

There is also an argument to be made that the Roman Empire never really feel in 476 AD.  The Eastern Roman Empire, what we now call the Byzantine Empire, continued on, ruled from Constantinople until 1453.  This empire, although Hellensized and increasingly influenced by the east, considered themselves Roman and they refereed to themselves as such.  In fact, in the 530's and 540's, Justinian I reconquered Rome, along with the rest of Italy, parts of Spain and most of North Africa.  In many ways, the last vestiges of the Roman Empire didn't fall until May 29, 1453 with the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks.

So, to return to our initial question, did Christianity destroy the Roman Empire?  Certainly it increased tensions in the Roman world at a time of great upheaval and pressure on the borders from migrating tribes.  Romans were again persecuting Romans at a time when the empire needed to show a unified face.  And yet, I believe it was only a controibuting factor to any otherwise decaying and increasingly weak western empire.  Power was shifting from the west to the east and Rome would be a prime victim.