Written by an independent, non-Catholic, Pulitzer Prize shortlisted historian of international standing

A landmark reinterpretation of why Christianity became the dominant faith of the West The idea that Christianity started as a clandestine movement among the poor is a widely accepted notion. Yet it is one of many myths that must be discarded if we are to understand just how a tiny messianic movement on the edge of the Roman Empire became the dominant faith of Western civilization. In a fast-paced, highly readable book that addresses beliefs as well as historical facts, Rodney Stark brings a sociologist's perspective to bear on the puzzle behind the success of early Christianity. He comes equipped not only with the logic and methods of social science but also with insights gathered firsthand into why people convert and how new religious groups recruit members. He digs deep into the historical evidence on many issues—such as the social background of converts, the mission to the Jews, the status of women in the church, the role of martyrdom—to provide a vivid and unconventional account of early Christianity. The author plots the most plausible curve of Christian growth from the year 40 to 300. By the time of Constantine, Christianity had become a considerable force, with growth patterns very similar to those of modern-day successful religious movements. An unusual number of Christian converts, for example, came from the educated, cosmopolitan classes. Because it offered a new perspective on familiar concepts and was not linked to ethnicity, Christianity had a large following among persons seeking to assimilate into the dominant culture, mainly Hellenized Jews. The oversupply of women in Christian communities—due partly to the respect and protection they received—led to intermarriages with pagans, hence more conversions, and to a high fertility rate. Stark points out, too, the role played by selflessness and faith. Amidst the epidemics, fires, and other disasters that beleaguered Greco-Roman cities, Christian communities were a stronghold of mutual aid, which resulted in a survival rate far greater than that of the pagans. In the meantime, voluntary martyrdom, especially a generation after the death of Christ, reinforced the commitment of the Christian rank and file. What Stark ultimately offers is a multifaceted portrait of early Christianity, one that appeals to practical reasoning, historical curiosity, and personal reflection.

Rodney Stark takes on the long-held view that the Crusades were the first round of European colonialism, conducted for land, loot, and converts by barbarian Christians who victimised the cultivated Muslims. To the contrary, Stark argues, the Crusades were the first military response to unwarranted Muslim terrorist aggression.

Does religion have the power to regulate human behavior? If so, under what conditions can it prevent crime, delinquency, suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse, or joining cults? Despite the fact that ordinary citizens assume religion deters deviant behavior, there has been little systematic scientific research on these crucial questions. This book is the first comprehensive analysis, drawing on a wide range of historical and contemporary data, and written in a style that will appeal to readers from many intellectual backgrounds.

In Religion, Deviance and Social Control, the authors analyze data from many times and places to explore the subtle interplay between the religiousness of individuals and that of their social context. This book asks whether religion has power to control behaviour and whether religious people are less apt to steal, cheat, commit suicide or become mentally ill. The results are often surprising, and so are many of the interpretations given by the authors.

What has the Reformation ever done for us? A lot less than you might think, as Rodney Stark shows in this enlightening and entertaining antidote to recent books about the rise of Protestantism and its legacy. 'Rodney Stark takes no prisoners as he charges through five hundred years of history, upsetting apple carts left and right. Almost everything you thought you knew about the Reformation turns out to be a false narrative. . . In future, anyone who makes sweeping claims about the benefits of Protestantism ought to check their assumptions against Stark's research first.' Clifford Longley, author and journalist 'Stark brings the insights of a distinguished sociologist of religion to bear on a range of inherited assumptions about the impact of the Reformation . . . The result makes for salutary reading in this year of commemoration and (not always justified) celebration.' Peter Marshall, Professor of History, University of Warwick 'Stark changed the way we think about the early Church and this book may change the way you think about Protestantism . . . Reformation Myths cuts through pious certainties and challenges us to think again about our cultural history.' Linda Woodhead MBE DD, Professor of Sociology of Religion, Lancaster University

In The Triumph of Christianity, acclaimed religious and social historianRodney Stark explains how an obscure Jewish sect became the largestreligion in the world and presents the real story behind the tragediesand triumphs that have shaped the trajectory of the Christian faith--and indeed, much of global history.

A shocking snapshot of the most current impulses in American religion. Rodney Stark reports the surprising findings of the 2007 Baylor Surveys of Religion, a follow up to the 2005 survey revealing most Americans believe in God or a higher power. This new volume highlights even more hot-button issues of religious life in our country. A must-read for anyone interested in Americans' religious beliefs and practices.

How did the preaching of a peasant carpenter from Galilee spark a movement that would grow to include over two billion followers? Who listened to this "good news," and who ignored it? Where did Christianity spread, and how? Based on "quantitative" data and the latest scholarship, preeminent scholar and journalist Rodney Stark presents new and startling information about the rise of the early church, overturning many prevailing views of how Christianity grew through time to become the largest religion in the world.

Drawing on both archaeological and historical evidence, Stark is able to provide hard statistical evidence on the religious life of the Roman Empire to discover the following facts that set conventional history on its head:

Contrary to fictions such as "The Da Vinci Code" and the claims of some prominent scholars, Gnosticism was not a more sophisticated, more authentic form of Christianity, but really an unsuccessful effort to paganize Christianity.

Paul was called the apostle to the Gentiles, but mostly he converted Jews.

Paganism was not rapidly stamped out by state repression following the vision and conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine in 312 AD, but gradually disappeared as people abandoned the temples in response to the superior appeal of Christianity.

The "oriental" faiths--such as those devoted to Isis, the Egyptian goddess of love and magic, and to Cybele, the fertility goddess of Asia Minor--actually prepared the way for the rapid spread of Christianity across the Roman Empire.

Contrary to generations of historians, the Roman mystery cult of Mithraism posed no challenge to Christianity to become the new faith of the empire-- it allowed no female members and attracted only soldiers.

By analyzing concrete data, Stark is able to challenge the conventional wisdom about early Christianity offering the clearest picture ever of how this religion grew from its humble beginnings into the faith of more than one-third of the earth's population.

For the last five decades, Rodney Stark has been one of sociology's most prolific and important scholars of religion. The theoretical depth, the scientific rigor, and the clarity of style manifested in Stark's oeuvreaover 30 books and 140 articlesahave made his work the standard texts. Stark's research career encompasses a wide spectrum of the necessary topics in sociology of religion. He has applied groundbreaking theory and method to issues of secularization, religion and society, religious movements, social theory, and the history of religion. Sociology of Religion: A Rodney Stark Reader mirrors Stark's influential career by highlighting these very topics. In this anthology, Stark's significant articles are not only, for the first time, collected together but also clearly organized according to the thematic trajectory of Stark's carefully developed theory of religion. This volume is the essential reader for any scholar, teacher, or student encountering the work of one of this century's most compelling sociologists.

Rodney Stark's provocative new book argues that, whether we like it or not, people acting for the glory of God have formed our modern culture. Continuing his project of identifying the widespread consequences of monotheism, Stark shows that the Christian conception of God resulted--almost inevitably and for the same reasons--in the Protestant Reformation, the rise of modern science, the European witch-hunts, and the Western abolition of slavery. In the process, he explains why Christian and Islamic images of God yielded such different cultural results, leading Christians but not Muslims to foster science, burn "witches," and denounce slavery.

With his usual clarity and skepticism toward the received wisdom, Stark finds the origins of these disparate phenomena within monotheistic religious organizations. Endemic in such organizations are pressures to maintain religious intensity, which lead to intense conflicts and schisms that have far-reaching social results.

Along the way, Stark debunks many commonly accepted ideas. He interprets the sixteenth-century flowering of science not as a sudden revolution that burst religious barriers, but as the normal, gradual, and direct outgrowth of medieval theology. He also shows that the very ideas about God that sustained the rise of science led also to intense witch-hunting by otherwise clear-headed Europeans, including some celebrated scientists. This conception of God likewise yielded the Christian denunciation of slavery as an abomination--and some of the fiercest witch-hunters were devoted participants in successful abolitionist movements on both sides of the Atlantic.

"For the Glory of God" is an engrossing narrative that accounts for the very different histories of the Christian and Muslim worlds. It fundamentally changes our understanding of religion's role in history and the forces behind much of what we point to as secular progress.

The idea that Christianity started as a clandestine movement among the poor is a widely accepted notion. Yet it is one of many myths that must be discarded if we are to understand just how a tiny messianic movement on the edge of the Roman Empire became the dominant faith of Western civilization. In a fast-paced, highly readable book that addresses beliefs as well as historical facts, Rodney Stark brings a sociologist's perspective to bear on the puzzle behind the success of early Christianity. He comes equipped not only with the logic and methods of social science but also with insights gathered firsthand into why people convert and how new religious groups recruit members. He digs deep into the historical evidence on many issues--such as the social background of converts, the mission to the Jews, the status of women in the church, the role of martyrdom--to provide a vivid and unconventional account of early Christianity.

The author plots the most plausible curve of Christian growth from the year 40 to 300. By the time of Constantine, Christianity had become a considerable force, with growth patterns very similar to those of modern-day successful religious movements. An unusual number of Christian converts, for example, came from the educated, cosmopolitan classes. Because it offered a new perspective on familiar concepts and was not linked to ethnicity, Christianity had a large following among persons seeking to assimilate into the dominant culture, mainly Hellenized Jews. The oversupply of women in Christian communities--due partly to the respect and protection they received--led to intermarriages with pagans, hence more conversions, and to a high fertility rate. Stark points out, too, the role played by selflessness and faith. Amidst the epidemics, fires, and other disasters that beleaguered Greco-Roman cities, Christian communities were a stronghold of mutual aid, which resulted in a survival rate far greater than that of the pagans. In the meantime, voluntary martyrdom, especially a generation after the death of Christ, reinforced the commitment of the Christian rank and file. What Stark ultimately offers is a multifaceted portrait of early Christianity, one that appeals to practical reasoning, historical curiosity, and personal reflection.

Western history would be unrecognizable had it not been for people who believed in One True God. There would have been wars, but no religious wars. There would have been moral codes, but no Commandments. Had the Jews been polytheists, they would today be only another barely remembered people, less important, but just as extinct as the Babylonians. Had Christians presented Jesus to the Greco-Roman world as ''another'' God, their faith would long since have gone the way of Mithraism. And surely Islam would never have made it out of the desert had Muhammad not removed Allah from the context of Arab paganism and proclaimed him as the only God.

The three great monotheisms changed everything. With his customary clarity and vigor, Rodney Stark explains how and why monotheism has such immense power both to unite and to divide. Why and how did Jews, Christians, and Muslims missionize, and when and why did their efforts falter? Why did both Christianity and Islam suddenly become less tolerant of Jews late in the eleventh century, prompting outbursts of mass murder? Why were the Jewish massacres by Christians concentrated in the cities along the Rhine River, and why did the pogroms by Muslims take place mainly in Granada? How could the Jews persist so long as a minority faith, able to withstand intense pressures to convert? Why did they sometimes assimilate? In the final chapter, Stark also examines the American experience to show that it is possible for committed monotheists to sustain norms of civility toward one another.

A sweeping social history of religion, "One True God" shows how the great monotheisms shaped the past and created the modern world.

""Acts of Faith" is the single 'big book' in the sociology of religion in the past decade, a monumental effort that both demolishes old theories and creates brilliant new ones. Stark and Finke have mastered the literature in the field, gathered ingenious data analysis to sustain their positions, and presented their work with flair, imagination, and brilliance. Though it is quite impossible to turn around the social science profession completely with a single book, or indeed within a single decade, these two authors have achieved a powerful beginning in this task. This landmark publication marks a turning point."--Andrew M. Greeley, University of Chicago

"This book is a major next step in developing the sociology of religion's 'new paradigm'--an important summary of the evolving 'religious economies' theory. Stark and Finke's spirited deconstruction of antireligious secularization theories and other theories of 'irrational' religion is simply delightful. And its own constructive theory offers a valuable resource for those friendly to the rational choice approach to religion, as well as a continuing challenge to its critics."--Christian Smith, University of North Carolina

Will Mormonism be the next world faith, one that will rival Catholicism, Islam, and other major religions in terms of numbers and global appeal? This was the question Rodney Stark addressed in his much-discussed and much-debated article, "The Rise of a New World Faith" (1984), one of several essays on Mormonism included in this new collection. Examining the religion's growing appeal, Rodney Stark concluded that Mormons could number 267 million members by 2080. In what would become known as "the Stark argument," Stark suggested that the Mormon Church offered contemporary sociologists and historians of religion an opportunity to observe a rare event: the birth of a new world religion.

In the years following that article, Stark has become one of the foremost scholars of Mormonism and the sociology of religion. This new work, the first to collect his influential writings on the Mormon Church, includes previously published essays, revised and rewritten for this volume. His work sheds light on both the growth of Mormonism and on how and why certain religions continue to grow while others fade away.

Stark examines the reasons behind the spread of Mormonism, exploring such factors as cultural continuity with the faiths from which it seeks converts, a volunteer missionary force, and birth rates. He explains why a demanding faith like Mormonism has such broad appeal in today's world and considers the importance of social networks in finding new converts. Stark's work also presents groundbreaking perspectives on larger issues in the study of religion, including the nature of revelation and the reasons for religious growth in an age of modernization and secularization.

More than 40 percent of the people on earth today are Christians, and their number is growing more rapidly than that of any other major faith. In The Triumph of Christianity, acclaimed religious and social historian Rodney Stark explains how an obscure Jewish sect became the largest, most thriving religion in the world.

In Stark's groundbreaking book The Rise of Christianity, he examined the early success of Christianity and how it conquered Rome. Now, in this much-anticipated volume, Stark tells a far more extensive story, beginning with the religious and social situation prior to the birth of Jesus and continuing to the present.

As it moves through six historical eras, The Triumph of Christianity gets right to Christianity's most pivotal and controversial moments--often turning them on their heads:

Christmas Eve surveys the religious situation within which Christianity began.

Christianizing the Empire looks at Jesus's life and the formative days of the movement he inspired, explaining why Christianity was a reprieve from the miseries of daily life for so many.

Consolidating Christian Europe argues that Constantine's conversion did the church a great deal of harm, examines the gradual demise of paganism, and clarifies the motives behind the Crusades.

Medieval Currents sheds new light on the misleadingly named "Dark Ages" and the essential role that faith played in the scientific revolution.

Christianity Divided examines two Roman Catholic "Churches"--the Church of Piety and the Church of Power--as they respond to the challenges of heresy, Luther's Reformation, and the Spanish Inquisition.

New Worlds and Christian Growth considers the development of religious pluralism in the United States and the continuing vigor of Christianity worldwide, disproving the popular notion that religion must disappear to make room for modernity.

With his signature knack for making the boldest and most original scholarship accessible to all readers, Stark presents the real story behind the tragedies and triumphs that have shaped the trajectory of the Christian faith and, indeed, much of global history. For scholars and armchair historians alike, this is a brisk and thought-provoking journey through events we think we know--and need to reconsider.

Winner of the 2008 "Christianity Today" Award of Merit in Theology/Ethics

The History of God

In "Discovering God," award-winning sociologist Rodney Stark presents a monumental history of the origins of the great religions from the Stone Age to the Modern Age and wrestles with the central questions of religion and belief.

Many books have been written about the success of the West, analyzing why Europe was able to pull ahead of the rest of the world by the end of the Middle Ages. The most common explanations cite the West's superior geography, commerce, and technology. Completely overlooked is the fact that faith in reason, rooted in Christianity's commitment to rational theology, made all these developments possible. Simply put, the conventional wisdom that Western success depended upon overcoming religious barriers to progress is utter nonsense.
In The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark advances a revolutionary, controversial, and long overdue idea: that Christianity and its related institutions are, in fact, directly responsible for the most significant intellectual, political, scientific, and economic breakthroughs of the past millennium.
In Stark's view, what has propelled the West is not the tension between secular and nonsecular society, nor the pitting of science and the humanities against religious belief. Christian theology, Stark asserts, is the very font of reason: While the world's other great belief systems emphasized mystery, obedience, or introspection, Christianity alone embraced logic and reason as the path toward enlightenment, freedom, and progress. That is what made all the difference.
In explaining the West's dominance, Stark convincingly debunks long-accepted "truths." For instance, by contending that capitalism thrived centuries before there was a Protestant work ethic-or even Protestants-he counters the notion that the Protestant work ethic was responsible for kicking capitalism into overdrive. In the fifth century, Stark notes, Saint Augustine celebrated theological and material progress and the institution of "exuberant invention." By contrast, long before Augustine, Aristotle had condemned commercial trade as "inconsistent with human virtue"-which helps further underscore that Augustine's times were not the Dark Ages but the incubator for the West's future glories.
This is a sweeping, multifaceted survey that takes readers from the Old World to the New, from the past to the present, overturning along the way not only centuries of prejudiced scholarship but the antireligious bias of our own time. The Victory of Reason proves that what we most admire about our world-scientific progress, democratic rule, free commerce-is largely due to Christianity, through which we are all inheritors of this grand tradition.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Though religion is for most people one of the most important aspects of their lives, social scientists and other observers of human society too often misunderstand and misrepresent the nature and role of religion in history and in daily life. From the supposed decline of religious attitudes in Western Europe and the venal motivations attributed to the Christian Crusaders to the very definition of religion, personal biases and an inadequate grasp of relevant data have led to the formulation and propagation of unsupportable views on the sacred. In "Exploring the Religious Life," Rodney Stark boldly overturns much received wisdom within the social sciences about religion, drawing on a wide range of sources to reassess a diverse selection of topics in the study of religion.

In his first essay, Stark addresses the carelessness with which scholars use the term "religion" and the conviction that the belief in divinity evolved from the practice of magic in primitive cultures. In subsequent chapters, he challenges the widespread attitude among social scientists that religion is nothing more than a mask for material realities and examines the effectiveness of religious doctrines in attracting converts and influencing individuals; uncovers the surprising prevalence of upper-class asceticism in medieval Christianity; and explores the relationship between gender, piety, and criminal activity. Divine revelation is a central aspect of many religions, and Stark next applies empirical research to the phenomenon to assess its meaning in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism. He then turns to the confusion between faith and practice in debates over the secularization of the developed world before investigating the validity of the classic proposition within the social sciences that religion functions to sustain the moral order. He does so, examining the correlation between criminal behavior and depth of religious belief. Stark concludes with an essay on the ingenious methods he uses to unearth data about the popularity of new religions in California and northern Europe, the decline of Christian Science in America, the spread of Christianity in the Roman world, and the execution patterns during the antiwitchcraft frenzy of Enlightenment Europe.

Together, the essays that constitute "Exploring the Religious Life" offer an engaging introduction to Rodney Stark's provocative insights and a fearless challenge to academic perceptions about religion's place in history, society, and private life.

In The Churching of America, 1776-2005 Roger Finke and Rodney Stark once again revolutionize the way we think about religion in America. Extending the argument that the nation's religious environment acts as a free market economy, this extensively revised and expanded edition offers new research, statistics, and stories that document increased participation in religious groups in the twenty-first century. Adding to the thorough coverage of ""mainline"" religious groups, new chapters chart the remarkable development and growth of African American churches from the early nineteenth century forward. Finke and Stark show how, like other ""upstart sects,"" these churches openly competed for adherents and demonstrate how American norms of religious freedom allowed African American churches to construct organizational havens with little outside intervention. This edition also includes new sections on the ethnic religious communities of recent immigrants - stories that echo those told of ethnic religious enclaves in the nineteenth century. Bringing together timely new information and evidence, this provocative book insists, more than ever, on a major reevaluation of established ideas about American religious institutions. Written with lively prose, it will stir debate within church and academic communities, as well as among laypersons interested in the history of religion in America.

Religion is alive and well in the modern world, and the social-scientific study of religion is undergoing a renaissance. For much of this century, respected social theorists predicted the death of religion as inevitable consequence of science, education, and modern economics. But they were wrong. Stark and Bainbridge set out to explain the survival of religion. Using information derived from numerous surveys, censuses, historical case studies, and ethnographic field expeditions, they chart the full sweep of contemporary religion from the traditional denominations to the most fervent cults. This wealth of information is located within a coherent theoretical framework that examines religion as a social response to human needs, both the general needs shared by all and the desires specific to those who are denied the economic rewards or prestige enjoyed by the privileged. By explaining the forms taken by religions today, Stark and Bainbridge allow us to understand its persistence in a secular age and its prospects for the future.

Stark and Corcoran have assembled remarkable facts and figures with which to assess religious hatred and terrorism around the world. Not content merely to document the extent of religious hatred and terrorism, they also to explain why it occurs and whether it can be overcome.

The world is aflame with religious hostility. Thousands of people are dying for their religion, or because of it. Churches are burned, mosques are blow up, and people are machine-gunned while they pray. Hundreds of thousands of Christians are fleeing Muslim nations - many more would join them if they had anywhere to go. In too many schools the textbook advocate killing the Jews; in too many families, daughters are honor killed on the basis of the flimsiest suspicions. Far too many governments are actively complicit in religious repression and terrorism, while too many others fail to act. Meanwhile, religious hatred flourishes; anti-Semitism, anti-Christianism, anti-Muslimism, as well as anti-Atheism.

Can individual decisions concerning whether or where to attend church, to contribute time or money to religious organizations, or to forgo certain activities be explained as a special case of economic theory? In Sacred Markets, Sacred Canopies, Ted G. Jelen brings together the leading scholars in the sociology of religion to debate market theories of religion. As the contributors examine whether or not religious choices can be understood as responding to the same laws of supply and demand as other forms of consumer behavior, they bring out many of the issues, controversies, and concerns surrounding this innovative theory. The result is a concise source for the arguments, evidence, and criticism of the market model of religious economies-a perfect starting point for students and scholars approaching this set of problems.