[eleni121]

Yes you are right-—In general Gibbon has done more damage to the accuracy of historical narration than not. He is the most well known of historians to allow his biases to take over when reporting historical events.

[Billthedrill]

Gibbon's case was a little stronger than that, IIRC. It wasn't so much a matter of religion - he also claimed that the charitable practices of the early Christian movement siphoned off potential tax money and more important, that the structuring of the early Church drew off administrative talent that might have done better - well, actually, Gibbon showed that it DID do better - in maintaining administrative efficiency through times of stress than the time-servers who were in the formal Roman government.

It was never a particularly strong case to begin with and I half suspect Gibbon of including it out of a bit of late 18th-century sensationalism. Nor did he claim it was the only cause of the fall of the Western empire. But I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. The Church did abide, after all, and the (Western) Roman government did not.