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Notes -
That argument at book length is Tom Holland's Dominion. I am about 2/3 of the way through, and the book is excellent. Unfortunately part of why it is excellent is that it can't be condensed to a tl;dr, but the most important single idea is the way that the idea of Christ crucified (which has no equivalent in other religions) changes the nature of the religion, particularly viz-a-viz the paganism of the early Principiate, where the idea of the Emperor as a God was still being taken seriously. This leads into a number of things, including Christian asceticism (and thus indirectly the Christian intellectual tradition and the University), the Christian idea of martyrdom, and the (limited by modern American standards) degree of separation between civil and religious authority that we see in Christian society.
Also important is the idea of the Peace of God - the idea that multiple legitimate Christian rulers can co-exist and they should ideally not fight each other. Islam and Temple Judaism believe that the faithful should form a single political entity under a single ruler. In so far as it is tied into Chinese political thought, Chinese spirituality does the same thing. Most paganisms including Roman paganism, Judaism, and most traditions within Hinduism are non-universal - they teach that most people are outside the protection of our gods because of who they are, and that therefore whether we fight them or not is a matter of pure prudential calculation. All "other things being equal, war is bad" thought in today's world is downstream of Christianity. (And, obviously, not ancient Rome).
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