How did the Christian church change or modify its practices in order to attract new followers?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: Even as they changed the societies in which they triumphed, the new religions changed in their turn, compromising with vested interests, modifying their messages to suit mighty patrons, serving the needs of warriors and kings, even becoming organs of the state, instruments of government, and means of training bureaucrats and communicating with subjects. A further consequence of expansion was that different traditions in each of the religions lost patience or touch with each other. Christians in different parts of the world adopted different theologies. In Ethiopia, for instance, the church believed that Jesus was wholly divine, with no distinctly human person. The Nestorian Christian communities of the Silk Roads preached the opposite doctrine: that the human Jesus was wholly human, leaving his divine nature in heaven. Theological differences gradually drove Christians in Europe apart. After 792, most congregations in Western Europe followed the pope in modifying the creed, the basic statement of Christian belief, to make the Holy Spirit "proceed" from "the Father and the Son" rather than "the Father" alone. Most churches in eastern, Byzantine Europe denounced—and still denounce—the new wording as heresy.