Christians: a threat to the roman empire

[Karel de Stoute]

I had a little discussion about this on the EB subforum and this is basicly my statement:
Roman state religion and the deification of the emperor were a form of ideology with the purpose of uniting the empire through a common pantheon and establishing the autority of the emperor as a God/King/pharaoh(they got the idea in the east) with a statue in every town and his head on every coin. Decius for example ordered the whole empire to make sacrifice to the gods of which he is one for this reason(officialy for the safety of the empire). Because most people were polytheistic in that time, they didn't have a problem to erect another shrine for the emperor or to make an extra sacrifice. But then you have your jews and christians. They refuse to acknowledge the existance of any other god than their own. This was a serious threat to the ideology wich kept the whole empire together. After Decius, Diocletianus banned the whole religion because he to favored the old roman gods. Apart from that, the first christians were also very fixated on the afterlife. Why serve the emperor in this life if the only thing that mattered were God and the next life? These problems were fixed by Theodosius by adopting christianty as the new statereligion and portraying himself as the most important servant of Christ. In the west, this idea was adopted at the same time by the other emperors(edict of thessalonica). However, in the West other factors made the collapse inevitable. But the barbarian kings who established their kingdoms on the remains of the empire and the pope who also became a major political factor adopted the idea of a christian emperor. I find this very ironic: first on of the reasons for decay, later the biggest heritage of the roman empire.

what your opinion on this subject?