Socioeconomic hardship and persecution in the earliest church

Recently I had a chat with a theological college lecturer about whether Christians in the earliest church suffered from socioeconomic and political hardship when they were persecuted. For him, there is no evidence for that. But for me, it's quite obvious.

Think about why Joseph, Mary and Jesus had to escape to Egypt as refugees in Matthew 2. They left for Egypt because the magi just visited them and that they had told Herod that there was a King born to the Jews. Jesus was a political refugee! And that's because he was to be the King. Any refugee would know that socioeconomic hardship was part of their life. (The life as refugees would not be easy for Jesus' family despite the magi's gifts.) Imagine that you were a Christian living in the Roman Empire and that you declared that Jesus was the true Lord and King of the whole world (hence by implication Caesar was not Lord). You would not assume that your life would be easy, would you?

Another example. The imprisonment of Paul and Sila in Philippi (as in Acts) sounds like that they were in a carcer (a type of prison in the Roman Empire). According to Capes, Reeves & Richards, Discovering Paul, "The carcer entailed the harshest conditions for the worst criminals. Prisoners feared this form of custody since many died from malnutrition, exposure or disease. There were no food rations or state-issued clothing for criminals or laws governing due process. These prisons operated at the discretion of the magistrate; many prisoners were left to rot in jail." (p. 205)

Paul and Sila left the prison with relatively little hardship. But one can imagine that for many Christians in Philippi (a Roman colony), they would expect harsh socioeconomic hardship if they were persecuted. They might not be put into a carcer type of prison. But nonetheless its condition would not be like the prisons in Australia. They would have to rely on relatives and friends for food and clothing. If they were freed in the end, their health would have been deteriorated greatly. They and their loved ones would be suffering socioeconomically, which, in turn, was part of the unjust ancient Roman political system.

Ask Christians who suffered in the former Soviet Union, or ask a Christians who suffers in an oppressive regime today, they would tell us how they suffer socioeconomically and politically when they were/are persecuted.

I wonder how much our theology today is influenced by our own middle-class Western thinking? Let's read the Bible in its own social and historical context. Most Christians in the earliest church knew what it means to be poor and how it feels to live in an unjust social and political system. Let us enter their world and allow God to speak to us.