Need for a new religion

The search for "an emotionally satisfying religion" began long before it actually captured people’s minds. Even during the Pax Romana, a growing number of people searched for spiritual and emotional meaning, which they could not find in the prosperity, security and civilized life of the empire. The reasons for these confused feelings in a time when there was so much prosperity is that they were looking for emotional justification as to what exactly was their individual worth in such a vast empire.

Religion did exist during the Pax Romana. However, religion in Imperial Rome was divided into a number of spheres and traditional cults. Various Gods such as Jupiter and Juno to the Romans, which were the equivalent to that of Zeus and Hera in Greece, were worshipped by the Romans. Moreover, the Roman gods were not considered loving and personal (Page 161, McKay) and thus was just a ritual that was to be carried out when there were favors needed of the Gods. Also, they worshiped Gods for...