There's a fantastic book called "Dominion: the creation of the western mind" that takes an academic, secular and factual approach to the early Church, as you might imagine, specifically in relation to our worldview here.

According to them, it took so long because of just how genuinely anti-wealth the bible is. It literally took centuries of work to push it round to the "gospel according business owners" we have today.

Ironically, a fair few of the reformations throughout the centuries were due to the wealth accumulated by the church and the outrage that could be drummed up by wild holy men, who would appear infinitely more saintly than a gold-clad bishop, all the way up to large parts of early protestant outrage.