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To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity and hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered immediate fellowship. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family.. Christian women benefitted further from their considerable status within the church. We have it from the apostle Paul that women held positions of leadership, as was confirmed by Pliny the Younger, who reported to Emperor Trajan that he had tortured two young Christian women "who were called deaconesses."

Yet the early church attracted and held members of both sexes, and not just because it offered longer life and raised social standing. Christianity also offered a strong community in a disorganized, chaotic world.

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If you liked this article, you'll love the author's The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Even though it is sociology, not history, his insights into urban religious development, the ramifications of Christian compassion, and other such topics make the book a quick and fascinating read.
A newer, paperback version of his work is The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries.
Stark (with co-author Roger Finke) has given much the same free-market treatment to American religious history in The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy.

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For more information on the world the Christians converted, check out the Perseus Project Home Page. This is truly an amazing site. More than 70 museums have shared pictures of their art objects. So far, it is mainly about the Greek world, but they are adding Roman materials constantly.

Greco-Roman cities were terribly overpopulated. Antioch, for example, had a population density of about 117 inhabitants per acre—more than three times that of New York City today.

Tenement cubicles were smoky, dark, often damp, and always dirty. The smell of sweat, urine, feces, and decay permeated everything. Outside on the street, mud, open sewers, and manure lay everywhere, and even human corpses were found in the gutters. Newcomers and strangers, divided into many ethnic groups, harbored bitter antagonism that often erupted into violent riots.

For these ills, Christianity offered a unifying subculture, bridging these divisions and providing a strong sense of common identity.

To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity and hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate fellowship. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family.

It seems obvious that in periods of persecution, church membership would decrease dramatically. In fact, persecutions rarely occurred, and only a tiny number of Christians were ever martyred—only "hundreds, not thousands" according to historian William H. C. Frend. Usually only bishops and other prominent figures were singled out for martyrdom. The actual threat to rank-and-file Christians was quite small.

However, the martyrdoms played a crucial role in cementing the faith of early believers. Persecution eliminated the "free-rider" problem common to many new religions. Those who stayed in the church believed strongly in the tenets of the faith because it was "expensive" to do so.