I hate seeing "the religion of peace" bullshit here.

[JDPriestly]

119. Even if you assume without a historical record that Jesus' death was the result of some

violent incident, that still would not change the historical record that the Christians (the group only existed after his death; before that he and his disciples were simply Jewish) were violent.

Facing the Roman empire, the Christians would not have survived if they had resorted to force.

The early Christian movement was definitely pacifist. In the story of the crucifixion, John 18:10, Jesus' disciple, Simon Peter draws a sword and cuts of the ear of the servant of a high priest. Jesus tells Peter to "put up the sword into the sheath the cup; the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?"

That is the pacifist instruction in the Christian religion. The belief that there is a life beyond the material life we live on this earth which is awarded to those who do God's will is essential to the Christian faith as I was taught it. That belief teaches: "the cup which [God] hath given" must be drunk. That is the teaching of complete submission or obedience to the will of God.

Whether you believe this story or not, it was the basis of early Christian belief and conduct.

Here is that story in St. Luke:

Luke 22:38 -- (The disciples are together prior to the arrest of Jesus.) "And (the disciples)said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And (Jesus) said unto them, it is enough."

Jesus prays to be given the ability to accept what he knows will happen to him. Judas betrays -- identifies -- Jesus with a kiss, and this is what is reported to have happened:

Luke 22:40 -- "When they who were alone with (Jesus) saw what would follow (referring to Jesus arrest), they said unto (Jesus), shall we smite him with the sword?"

Luke 22:50 -- "And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear."

Luke 22:51 -- "And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched his ear and healed him."

Jesus' rebuke to the priests who arrested him is particularly moving. He saidi "Be ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and slaves?" (Luke 22:52) and further, "When I was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched forth no hands against me; but this is your hour, and the power of darkness." (Luke 22:53.)

Those are powerful words that have comforted many nonviolent people.

That story is repeated in Mark 14:45-50 and Matthew 26:50-56.

I will cite the text for that reference:

50 Jesus replied, “Do what you came for, friend.”[a]

Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. 51 With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

52 “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. 53 Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”

55 In that hour Jesus said to the crowd, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me. 56 But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+26%3A50-56&version=NIV

These were the four gospels, stories of Jesus that were chosen for the standard Christian Bible. There are other stories or reports about Jesus.

What is important is not whether the story is an accurate account of what happened but rather how this report or story affected the essential pacifistic nature of early Christianity.

The early Christians were essentially although perhaps not always individually, pacifists based on what they understood to be Jesus' teaching at the time of his arrest as well as other teachings of Jesus.

This is not true of the Muslim religion (Islam). The Muslims very quickly spread their religion through conquest. The Christians did not do that until Constantine.

"The first Roman emperor to claim conversion to Christianity,[notes 4] Constantine played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan, which decreed tolerance for Christianity in the empire. He called the First Council of Nicaea in 325, at which the Nicene Creed was professed by Christians."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great

The Council of Nicaea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

Whether it is or is not accurate historically, there is no record of violent Christian conversion prior to Constantine that I am aware of.

Here is a simplified history of what happened in the centuries after Jesus' crucifixion and I am providing an excerpt from an interesting article:

The Romans tried to beat down Christianity but failed. By the fourth century Christianity becomes the state religion and by the end of the fourth century it is illegal to do any form of public worship other than Christianity in the entire Roman Empire. There is a great mystery in how this happened -- how such an extraordinary reversal, that begins with Jesus who is executed by the Romans as a public criminal, as a threat to the social order, and somehow we wind up three centuries later with Jesus being hailed as a God, as part of the one, true God who is the God of the new Christian Roman Empire. There is a remarkable progress, a remarkable development in the course of three centuries. ... It's hard to understand exactly how it happened or why it happened, but it is important to realize that we have a progression and a set of developments, and that Christianity by the fourth century is not the same as the Christianity that we see in the first or even the second.

. . . .

One of the first things Constantine does, as emperor, is start persecuting other Christians. The Gnostic Christians are targeted...and other dualist Christians. Christians who don't have the Old Testament as part of their canon are targeted. The list of enemies goes on and on. There's a kind of internal purge of the church as one emperor ruling one empire tries to have this single church as part of the religious musculature of his vision of a renewed Rome. And it's with this theological vision in mind that Constantine not only helps the bishops to iron out a unitary policy of what a true Christian believes, but he also, interestingly, turns his attention to Jerusalem, and rebuilds Jerusalem just as a righteous king should do. But what Constantine does is take the city, which was something of a backwater, and he begins to build beautiful basilicas and architecturally ambitious projects in the city itself. The sacred space of the Temple Mount he abandons. It's not reclaimable. And what he does is [to] religiously relocate the center of gravity of the city around the places where Christ had suffered, where he had been buried, or where he [had] been raised. So that in the great basilicas that he built, Constantine has a new Jerusalem, that's splendid and beautiful and... his reputation as an imperial architect resonates with great figures in biblical history like David and Solomon. In a sense, Constantine is a non-apocalyptic Messiah for the church. ...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/why/legitimization.html