Giving

From Rodney Stark's Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome:

In 362, when Emperor Julian launched a campaign to revive paganism, he recognized that to do so it would be necessary to match Christian "benevolence." In a letter to a prominent pagan priest, Julian wrote: "I think that when the poor happened to be neglected and overlooked by the priests, the impious Galileans observed this and devoted themselves to benevolence ... [They] support not only their poor, but ours as well, everyone can see that our people lack aid from us."

But his challenge to the temples to match Christian benevolence asked the impossible. Paganism was utterly incapable of generating the commitment needed to motivate such behavior. Not only were many of its gods and goddesses of dubious character, but they offered nothing that could motive humans to go beyond self-interested acts of propitiation.