How did Christianity promote mutual respect among all social classes?

The coming of our Lord Christ changed our mindsets. We have come to identify ourselves by our spiritual birth, and not by the social class to which we belong, and to always fulfill our imperative to edify all social groups for the common good of all.

First: Christian masters and servants together shared the blessing of martyrdom. The acts of the martyrs present us with many living examples of noble, wise, and wealthy individuals who accepted the Christian faith, and did not just give alms to the poor in abundance, but also joyfully gave their very lives as sacrifices for the faith. We also find masters who were martyred together with their menservants and maidservants. Thus, servants became heroes; honored and cherished by the Church regardless of their social class.

Second: Christians of different social classes intermarried. For example, Callistus, the bishop of Rome (217–223 A. D.) approved the marriage of an aristocratic Christian lady to a Christian man who belonged to a lower social class; despite it being forbidden under Roman law.

Third: Our Messiah united us all in Him. In response to the pagan philosopher Celsus who belittled the Lord Christ by calling Him a beggar who gathered people of bad reputation around Him, such as tax collectors and sinners, and wandered the land in search of food amidst much poverty and shame, Origen writes, “our Jesus, who is reproached with being born in a village … and being despised as the son of a poor laboring woman, and as having on account of his poverty left his native country and hired himself out in Egypt … has yet been able to shake the whole inhabited world not only to a degree far above what Themistocles the Athenian ever did, but beyond what even Pythagoras, or Plato, or any other wise man in any part of the world whatever, or any prince or general, ever succeeded in doing.”¹⁰¹⁶

Fourth: As Christians, we glory in the fact that many of us are poor in terms of temporal possessions. Minucius Felix says, “But that many of us are called poor, this is not our disgrace, but our glory; for as our mind is relaxed by luxury, so it is strengthened by frugality. And yet who can be poor if he does not want, if he does not crave for the possessions of others, if he is rich towards God? He rather is poor, who, although he has much, desires more … Blessed is he in this journey of life who lifts himself along in poverty, and does not breathe heavily under the burden of riches.”¹⁰¹⁷

1016 Origen of Alexandria, Against Celsus 1.29 (ANF 4:409).

1017 Minucius Felix, The Octavius 36 (ANF 4:195).

“Are you a king? Yet you fear as much as you are feared; and however you may be surrounded with abundant followers, yet you are alone in the presence of danger. Are you rich? But fortune is ill trusted; and with a large travelling equipage the brief journey of life is not furnished, but burdened. Do you boast of the fasces and the magisterial robes? It is a vain mistake of man, and an empty worship of dignity, to glitter in purple and to be sordid in mind. Are you elevated by nobility of birth? Do you praise your parents? Yet we are all born with one lot; it is only by virtue that we are distinguished.”¹⁰¹⁸

Fifth: Christians make friends with everyone, not just those of a particular social class. St. Augustine says, “friendship is not confined by narrow limits; it includes all those to whom love and affection are due, although it goes out more readily to some, more slowly to others, but it reaches even our enemies, for whom we are commanded to pray. Thus, there is no one in the human race to whom love is not due, either as a return of mutual affection or in virtue of his share in our common nature.”¹⁰¹⁹