Pardon me, but you're being awfully dense. Do you assume that all of your neighbors are Christians, and let it go at that? Does it not occur to you that you live in a very different world than that which obtained in Palestine 2000 years ago? If someone were practicing a different religion, they certainly would not go to the local, established places of worship. If they were not attempting to hide their differing religious practice, it would quickly be known. If they were to attempt to keep their religious practice out of the public eye, then it would quickly be known by the local qidnuncs that they weren't practicing religion as their neighbors were, and that they were going off to a certain place at a certain time, for a gathering of an unspecified purpose. They didn't need to wear some sort of uniform to attract unfavorable attention.
About 90% or more of the stories of the early persecution of christians are very likely apocryphal, especially the popular image of them being "thrown to the lions" in the coliseum. The passage in Tacitus which describes Nero blaming the fire at Rome on christians and persecuting them as a result is almost certainly an interpolation (someone writing a new passage and inserting it into the existing text), and scholars feel they can even pinpoint the year in which it happened. There were already problems with that story, in that even christian did not call themselves christians when Nero was emperor, nor did they yet have the habit of referring to the putative Jesus as "the Christ," because the church has not yet been thoroughly Hellenized at time, and "Christ" come from the Greek.
Nor did the Romans immediately and systematically persecute christians, as the perfervid christians would have everyone believe. Had they done so from the early years of the first century, the odds are pretty good that the christians would not have survived, or would have taken a lot longer to have gotten their religion established. The Emperor Trajan, who ruled from the last years of the first century into the early years of the second century wrote a letter to Pliny the Younger, who was asking for guidance on how to deal with christians, who were a problem because they publicly defied the civic religion. In ancient Rome, you could practice any religion you wanted, and even proselytize publicly, so long as you paid a
pro forma lip service to the civic religion. Both christians and Jews refused to do this (and early on, christians were just Jews as far as everyone else was concerned), and were unpopular as a result. Trajan basically outlined a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for Pliny:
Quote:You observed proper procedure, my dear Pliny, in sifting the cases of those who had been denounced to you as Christians. For it is not possible to lay down any general rule to serve as a kind of fixed standard. They are not to be sought out; if they are denounced and proved guilty, they are to be punished, with this reservation, that whoever denies that he is a Christian and really proves it--that is, by worshiping our gods--even though he was under suspicion in the past, shall obtain pardon through repentance. But anonymously posted accusations ought to have no place in any prosecution. For this is both a dangerous kind of precedent and out of keeping with the spirit of our age.
No emperor persecuted christians in earnest until Septimius Severus, who was emperor at the end of the second and the beginning of the third century--193 to 211 CE. That was only because Severus was a strict observer of the letter of the law, and did not interfere with local officials who persecuted both christians and Jews, neither of which group was willing to deny their faith and publicly go through the motions of sacrificing to the civic gods simply to save their lives. Even as late as the end of the 2nd century, to the Romans, there was no practical distinction to be made between christians and Jews. When such persecutions took place, they were almost always the product of the anger of local people, who felt they'd suffer for harboring in their midst people who would not observe the civic religion, and therefore either denounced them to local officials, or simply took matters into their own hands. Later in the 3rd century and in the fourth century, christians took sides in the struggles between individuals to become emperor, and it was only then that christians were sought out in earnest by officials at the highest levels, and their motives were political.
The image of christians being thrown to the lions is dramatic, and it is very likely bullshit. Most christians who were persecuted were in southwest Asia (in the province of Syria, which would include Palestine and what we call Jordan; and in Asia Minor, what we call Turkey) and in northern Africa. Christians didn't throng to Rome and the melodramatic bullshit stories of christians dieing in their thousands in the Coliseum are just that--bullshit.
The ealiest persecutors of christians were other Jews. Witness Paul, the alleged "St. Paul":
First Corinthians, 15:9 (in the King James Version)
For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
Galatians 1:13 (KJV)
For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it
Christians, to this day, are really fond of the image of martyrs, and even like to think of themselves as martyrs--as long as they don't themselves actually suffer real, physical pain. Witness the whining of modern fundamentalists in the United States, who are practitioners of what is overwhelmingly the majority confession in this nation, and yet who claim that they are persecuted, and that their religion is under attack.
The "persecution" of christians stopped (it was never widespread or continuous) in the early 4th century, when the christians finally picked a winner to back, Constantine, and were allowed publicly to practice their religion. Constantine's wife and mother-in-law (Dog help him) were christian, but contrary to christian bullshit, there is no reason to believe that Constantine himself was a christian, and it was to be a while before christianity became the state religion, and christians got the chance to slaughter others for their religious convictions.