Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark is University Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Before earning his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, he was a staff writer for several major metropolitan newspapers and his prose style retains the clarity and rhythm developed under tyrannical copy desk editors. His 26 books on the history and sociology of religion include The Cities of God, The Rise of Christianity,One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism, For the Glory of God which won the 2004 award of merit for history/biography from Christianity Today, and The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success.

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The Triumph of Christianity

How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

Talking Points

Rodney Stark is the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University. His thirty books on the history and sociology of religion include The Rise of Christianity; Cities of God; For the Glory of God (which won the 2004 Award of Merit for History/Biography from Christianity Today); Discovering God (which won the 2008 Award of Merit for Theology/Ethics from Christianity Today); and The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. Stark received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where he held appointments as a research sociologist at the Survey Research Center and at the Center for the Study of Law and Society. He is past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and of the Association for the Sociology of Religion.

Description

How did an obscure Jewish sect—likely numbering no more than several hundred people when the provincial teacher at its heart was executed by the Romans—become the largest religion in the world?

Religious historian and sociologist Rodney Stark has spent his career engaging with that very question. Indeed, after thirty highly regarded books on the matter, he has created a true master course in Christian history. Now, for the first time, he distills his research to just the most important and interesting episodes—the seminal moments in the story that, he now believes, demand new perspectives. Stark gets right to the events of greatest interest, often turning them on their heads: He argues that Constantine’s conversion did the Church a great deal of harm, for example, and that the majority of converts to early Christianity were women. And he asks the questions at the heart of the human story: What role did Jesus’s family play in the early Church? How was Christianity’s rise influenced by the misery of daily life in Greco-Roman cities? What role did vigorous competition play in the success, and failure, of churches in colonial America? Finally, having brought readers to the present day, Stark makes a compelling case that the popular notion that religion must disappear to make room for modernity is amply disproved by the sociological evidence.

The Triumph of Christianity is a brisk and thought-provoking journey through events we think we know—and need to reconsider.

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Biography/History

Catholicism

Islam/Middle East

God’s Battalions

The Case for the Crusades

Talking Points

As a former journalist, Rodney Stark writes brillantly for a general audience with the authority of a top scholar of Christian social history. In the wake of many recent books justifying Muslim holy wars by criticizing the historic use of violence by Christians, Stark presents the other side of the story. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources, Stark argues the facts and figures about why and how Christianity attempted to secure the Holy Lands and protect the safety of Christian pilgrims. Stark can speak about the exciting story of medieval Templar knights, swords and scimitars, seige engines, and battles to keep the most ardent military history buff enthralled.

Description

In God’s Battalions, award-winning author 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 victimized the cultivated Muslims. Instead, Stark argues that the Crusades were the first military response to Muslim terrorist aggession.

In God’s Battalions, Stark reviews the history of the seven major crusades from 1095-1291, demonstrating that the Crusades were precipitated by Islamic provocations: by centuries of bloody attempts to colonize the West, and by sudden new attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places. Although the Crusades were initiated by a plea from the pope, this had nothing to do with hopes of converting Islam.

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Biography/History

Spirituality

Discovering God

The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief

Talking Points

RODNEY STARK is University Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Before earning his Ph.D. at Berkeley, he was a staff writer for several major metropolitan newspapers and his prose style retains the clarity and rhythm developed under tyrannical copy desk editors. His 26 books on the history and sociology of religion include The Cities of God, The Rise of Christianity, One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism, and For the Glory of God which won the 2004 award of merit for history/biography from Christianity Today, and The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success.

Description

Charting the rise of religion from Stone Age spirituality to the recent spread of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and South America, Discovering God asks the age-old question, if god was present from the beginning of time, why did god wait to reveal god’s self to humans until Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, etc., came along?

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Biography/History

Cities of God

The Real Story of How Christianity Became and Urban Movement and Conquered Rome

Talking Points

RODNEY STARK is professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University. His twenty-six books on the history and sociology of religion include The Rise of Christianity; One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism; For the Glory of God, which won the 2004 award of merit for history/biography from Christianity Today; and The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success.

Description

Since early Christianity was primarily an urban movement, the thirty-one cities of the empire having populations of at least 30,000 as of the year 100 serve as the basis for testing hypotheses about the early church.

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