Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome

by Rodney Stark

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 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.

Genres: History, Religion, Church History, Nonfiction, Christian, Christianity, Audiobook

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Rodney Stark grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota, and began his career as a newspaper reporter. Following a tour of duty in the U.S. Army, he received his PhD 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 left Berkeley to become Professor of Sociology and of Comparative Religion at the University of Washington. In 2004 he joined the faculty of Baylor University. He has published 30 books and more than 140 scholarly articles on subjects as diverse as prejudice, crime, suicide, and city life in ancient Rome. However, the greater part of his work has been on religion. He is past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. He also has won a number of national and international awards for distinguished scholarship. Many of his books and articles have been translated and published in foreign languages, including Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Slovene, and Turkish.

Reviews

[Hilary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book wasn't at all what I expected. I thought I would learn a lot about cities in the Greco-Roman world, how Christianity developed in those areas, what churches might have looked like in those contexts, etc. Instead I learned a little bit about life in Greco-Roman cities (only about 5 pages are devoted to a discussion of "urban life"), a few things about certain cults and heretical movements, and a LOT about how spectacularly condescending Rodney Stark can sound when he feels like he's being more scientific than historians.

More than a real history, this book felt like an extended argument for a particular approach to historiography -- Stark thinks historians need to spend more time counting. He's really quite vehement about it, and about as subtle as a marble column falling on your head. Basically, Stark tries to answer questions about the spread of Christianity through the urban centres of the Roman Empire by, yes, counting: counting people, counting inscriptions, counting churches...suffice it to say, he likes it when things are counted. This is history via statistics, and it yields some interesting results.

Stark basically takes the 30 or so largest cities in the Roman Empire from about 100 to 300 CE and starts looking at correlations between different variables related to the level of "Christianization" in the area. For example, he determines that port cities, cities with large Jewish populations, very Hellenized cities, and cities with high numbers of Isis worshippers all tended to have churches earlier than cities that didn't fit these categories. He makes some genuinely interesting observations that give him a chance to weigh in on some historical controversies, such as whether gnostic texts like the Gospel of Thomas prove that many equally valid "Christianities" circulated widely before being brutally silenced by the "orthodox" church. (He says no, which to my mind is the historically credible answer, though it's not clear that he contributes anything original to the conversation.) All this is relatively interesting.

I had a few real problems with this work, however, especially because the tone Stark uses in his introduction and conclusion is frankly obnoxious. Stark is very much a sociologist and very much convinced of the superiority of his discipline's methods: he's out to tell the world how stupid it is that historians don't rely more on "objective" scientific methods like statistical analysis, and if they don't listen he'll just say it again, louder. It either doesn't occur or doesn't matter to him that he's on historians' turf here and might be straying out of his element.

In fact, Stark does come across as out of his element in a few ways. He seems to think that he was the first to suggest applying social science methodology to historical study (he wasn't) and that this solves all of history's annoying little interpretive tangles (it doesn't). Social science history has been fashionable in the past and perhaps will be again one day, but it's not anything new at this point. Ironically, it seems to me that Stark inadvertently highlights some of the reasons why social science history's heyday was rather fleeting.

First, Stark comes across as extremely confident in his numbers and statistics, but he gives little if any attention to how he came up with those numbers. He mentions that population estimates for ancient cities can vary extremely widely (40,000 to 200,000 in Pergamum, for example), but pretty much just tells readers to trust him that he has the right numbers (which are essential to the arguments he's making). Realistically, one of the reasons historians don't do more of what he's urging them to do is that making calculations about the past is extremely difficult when evidence is limited. Stark is either so overconfident in his statistics that he doesn't see the need to explain or argue for them, or doesn't respect his readers enough to share his evidence with them.

Second, the whole framework of argumentation struck me as contrived. Stark wants to prove that he's doing "scientific" history, so he sets up his chapters as series of hypotheses that -- surprise! -- all seem to be confirmed by the statistical data. Maybe I'm just cynical, but I kept wondering how many unsuccessful "experiments" didn't make it into the book. That aside, the format made the book feel very fragmented, and it was sometimes hard to know what larger point, if any, Stark was trying to make. Some chapters felt more like collections of scattered factoids than coherent arguments.

Third, even if we assume that all Stark's numbers and calculations are right and all his data-crunching is sound and relevant, we basically end up with a collection of correlations or relationships (e.g. Christianity and Isis-worship tended to be popular in the same places) but no real insight into their meaning. Stark proposes and sometimes seems to assume some conclusions from the correlations he finds, but he doesn't really argue for his interpretations. This seems to me to be a fundamental weakness of social science methodology applied to history: it can sometimes tell you THAT something happened, but it rarely tells you WHY. A sociologist studying contemporary phenomena can go and ask people questions about what's going on, but historians can't. In the absence of documentary evidence, Stark's methodology leaves a gap between data and interpretation that can't be bridged without serious speculation.

Finally, for all Stark's insistence that historians need quantifiable data to be credible, there are only so many historical questions that lend themselves to quantifiable answers. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't find the questions that numbers can answer nearly as interesting as the ones they can't. Statistics can't tell us what it was like to live in the ancient world; they don't bring the past to life; they don't let the voices of the past speak for themselves. At the end of the day, that's why I think the "unscientific" narrative style of history that so obviously frustrates Stark isn't going anywhere: when we want to learn about people, sometimes counting them is less important than trying to listen to their stories.

[Rafael Salazar · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting quantitative approach to tracking the urban growth and influence in the Roman Empire. Stark undoes several caricatures about the process of Christianization and explains a very sociological account that is sympathetic to Christianity (though it unhelpfully minimizes the importance of the Holy Spirit and robust doctrine in conversion). Read with reservations. It's informative about religious trends both preceding Christianity and after its arrival in the classical scene, and definitively thought-provoking.

[Aaron Carpenter · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you can explain statistical regression and don't think that Christianity requires a supernatural conversion experience, then this is the book for you! Yes, even though the book is badly mistitled, the history explained here has nothing to do with God, nor will you find a story.

Instead, you will find a social scientist bent out of shape that historians routinely ignore quantitative analysis of the available evidence. You will also find some interesting historical conclusions, such as...
...the Apostle Paul actually evangelized more Hellenized Jews than Gentiles
...the expansion of Christianity had almost nothing to do with Paul
...oriental religions that worshipped Isis and Cybele actually prepared the way for the widespread acceptance of Christianity
...Constantine Christians didn't persecute paganism out of existence, though the pagans certainly tried to exterminate the Christians
...Gnosticism was not an offshoot of Christianity but rather a mystical paganism that incorporated Christian elements
...and many other interesting tidbits that either confirm or overturn common historical consensus on the basis of statistics.

Don't get me wrong. There is much to discover here, but it is poorly presented, tedious at times, and without any trace of the supernaturalism that makes Christianity worth studying at all.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is in a sense more of a critique of the manner in which historians write history than it is strictly a work of religious history. Stark, a sociologist, sets out to show how useful numbers and statistical analysis can be to historians, and the case study he uses to set out his theory is that of the growth of Christianity in thirty-one cities in the Roman Empire in the first two centuries of the Christian era.

The thirty-one cities that he chooses are those that had populations of more than thirty thousand. He uses various means to count to how popular Judaism was in each city and how popular the goddesses Isis and Cybelle were in each city. Using these numbers and the fact that some cities were ports and others inland to reach certain conclusions regarding how Christianity spread and what types of Christianity spread. He shows, for example, that it spread more quickly to places near Jerusalem and to ports. But he also shows that gnostic versions of the faith were more often tied to those cities where Isis and Cybelle were worshipped, which, he notes, suggests that gnosticism did not derive so much from within Jewish settings but from those more influenced by paganism.

Using such ideas, he proposes various reasons that Christianity caught on in popularity, including how cities are troubled places with itinerant populations, such that the Jewish faith (and by extension the Christian) offered a kind of community less often offered from the proliferating pagan faiths. He also shows how paganism hung on much longer than many historians give it credit, long after Constantine.

The study is enlightening and the text very readable, even for folks less familiar with the scholarship he seems to be critiquing.

[Glen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stark has produced a penetrating analysis of the patristic era that utilizes quantitative data of the 31 cosmopolitan centers in the Roman Empire in order to reveal how Christianity advanced among the masses. His methodology leads to a series of intriguing hypotheses about Paul’s mission, heretical groups and the intersect of pagan cultures with gospel proclamation in the Church’s first three centuries.

There are a number of observations in the book that are tactfully bolstered by the author’s scientific approach. For example, Stark argues that Paul was not necessarily a highly impacting missionary among the gentiles. However, he quickly notes Paul’s is a towering figure for the gentile mission due to his New Testament writings and his mission organization skills that equipped the diaspora church to impact their pagan neighbors.

Cities for God has an academic tone, yet it remains an accessible text. Such works as these deepen our understanding of how God’s Mission unfolds within the cultures of our world. My thinking was greatly provoked in a way that cultivated a greater desire to comprehend the New Testament and Early Church missionary enterprises.

[Kendrick Hardin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It's all about the numbers."

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author seems slightly torn between his boostering of statistical techniques with history and his historical narrative. The Narrative is, superficially, about how Christianity penetrated the Roman world and the competition with paganism and Judaism. He makes the interesting point that, although Paul was credited with taking his word to the gentiles, that in fact, he found his most fertile source of converts among the Hellenised Jews of the diaspora. And they found the new religion attractive because they didn’t really have to give anything up ...they just added in Jesus. Paul, even made it more attractive for them by saying that they didn’t have to keep the [Jewish] Law any longer.

What about Stark’s statistics? Well he rather comes across as someone who has discovered the power of statistics for the first time and I’m not really sure about the real power of his stats. I guess, using all the larger known cities as his foundation and comparing variables such as port city vs non port city. And Hellenised vs non-Hellenised is ok and it does allow him to draw certain conclusions from the data. But the regression analysis seems fairly basic. I wonder if an analysis of variance would have been a better way of analysing his data?.
I DID learn quite a lot from the book and found it very interesting. But it was probably more with the historical and descriptive material than with his conclusions like:...” Port cities, with their constant flow of foreigners, were more likely than inland cities to have Cybelene temples”. ...I mean, this is interesting but not surprising. But I guess, Stark would claim that at least he’s “proved” it statistically...and I guess that is true to the extent of the probability.
I’ve extracted some of his arguments below:
Stark says “Reality exists and history actually occurs. The historian’s task is to try to discover as accurately as possible what took place. Of course, we can never possess absolute truth, but that still must be the ideal goal that directs historical scholarship. Even if the complete truth eludes us, some historical accounts have a far higher probability than others of being true, depending on the available evidence”.
Early Christianity was primarily an urban movement. The original meaning of the word pagan (paganus) was “rural person,” or more colloquially “country hick.” It came to have religious meaning because after Christianity had triumphed in the cities, most of the rural people remained unconverted......In a religious context [which is] populated by many gods, to accept a new god usually does not involve discarding an old one.....However, a shift in patronage from one god of a pantheon to another is not conversion, but reaffliation.
Once Christianity became safely ensconced as the Roman state church, its missionary activities very rapidly decayed.....As every orthodox Jewish scholar agrees, the historical facts are clear: Judaism was the “first great missionary religion.” Maimonides, the famous medieval Jewish scholar, put it plainly: “Moses our teacher was commanded by the Almighty to compel all the inhabitants of the world to accept the commandments.” The renowned third-century-CE rabbi, Eleazar ben Pedat, [was said] to assert that “God sent Israel into Exile among the nations only for the purpose of acquiring converts.”.....As the practice of inviting guests to worship makes clear, Jews in the Diaspora sought converts,
The best estimate is that by the first century, Jews made up from 10 to 15 percent of the population of the Roman Empire, nearly 90 percent of them living in cities outside Palestine.
This would have amounted to from six to nine million people......We must assume… that a very large number of pagans… trooped over to Yahweh.”........A consensus has formed among historians of the early church that regardless of biblical assurances to the lower classes, the early Christians were drawn mainly from the ranks of the privileged.
[As an example from the modern era with the Unification Church] Moon’s claims were sufficient to place him outside the Christian tradition per se, and thus his followers qualified as converts. The sociologists, as they began to observe the group, carefully studied the Unification Church doctrines.....Of all the people the Unificationists encountered in their missionary efforts, the only ones who converted were those whose interpersonal ties to members overbalanced their ties to non-members.
Conversion is primarily about bringing one’s religious behaviour into alignment with that of one’s friends and relatives, not about encountering attractive doctrines......Most conversionist groups must devote considerable time and effort to the religious education of new converts.
Portions of Paul’s letters are excellent examples of this activity,.....Converts are rarely atheists, but most are only very weakly attached to any religion.....By now dozens of close-up studies of conversion have been conducted. All of them confirm that social networks are the basic mechanism through which conversion takes place.....Many of the Jews of the Diaspora were only weakly connected to Judaism, either as a religion or as an ethnicity, and were quite available for conversion to a new religion.
To qualify as a scientific theory the set of abstract statements must give rise to empirical consequences—to outcomes that are, at least in principle, observable. Put another way, a set of statements does not qualify as a scientific theory or even a scientific thesis unless it predicts or prohibits certain empirical states of affairs.
Contradictory theories and theses cannot all be true (although all of them could be false).
for many theoretical purposes, all mammals are alike! The same is true of sects......and each raises the same questions about sect formation, growth, or persecution.
Conclusion A major purpose of this book is to demonstrate that quantitative methods can help to resolve many debates about early church history.
Chapter Two
Within twenty years of the crucifixion, Christianity was transformed from a faith based in rural Galilee, to an urban movement reaching far beyond Palestine.....Missionaries need to go where there are many potential converts, which is precisely what Paul did. His missionary journeys took him to major cities.....Paul was not a special case: it was several centuries before the early church made serious efforts to convert the rural peasantry—
Any study of how Christians converted the empire is really a study of how they Christianized the cities......Consider Antioch. Having a population of about 100,000, it was two miles long and a mile wide, which yields a result of 78.2 persons per acre. Subtract the 40 percent of the city devoted to streets, temples, and public buildings, and the density of the inhabited area rises to 130 per acre—greater than in modern Calcutta......The main street of Antioch was admired throughout the empire for its spaciousness—it was 30 feet wide! 4
As for sewers, except for several overcited examples of actual underground sewers flushed by running water, sewers in Greco-Roman cities were ditches running down the middle of each narrow street—ditches into which everything was dumped, including chamber pots at night, often from second-or third-story windows. We know this was a common practice because officials so often condemned it.
It was a filthy life. And it stank! No wonder the ancients were so fond of incense.
there always were a number of people who were unattached, and many of them eked out a living by victimizing others. Compared with even the most crime-prone modern cities, these cities were overrun with crime.
Diverse groups did not assimilate, but created and sustained their own separated enclaves—.......Indeed, as did [historian] Dodds, these historians rely heavily on “must have” assertions—people must have felt alienated from city life; they must have feared their increasingly despotic government; they must have longed for a life beyond death. But to say something “must have been” is not evidence.
The power of Christianity lay not in its promise of otherworldly compensations for suffering in this life, as has so often been proposed. No, the crucial change that took place in the third century was the rapidly spreading awareness of a faith that delivered potent antidotes to life’s miseries here and now! The truly revolutionary aspect of Christianity lay in moral imperatives such as “Love one’s neighbour as oneself,” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and “When you did it to the least of my brethren, you did it unto me.” These were not just slogans. Members did nurse the sick, even during epidemics; they did support orphans, widows, the elderly, and the poor; they did concern themselves with the lot of slaves. In short, Christians created “a miniature welfare state in an empire which for the most part lacked social services.”
In most cities there were temples for from fifteen to twenty major gods, and additional temples or shrines for a mass of others.
In his History, the Greek historian Herodotus (ca. 484–425 BCE).....will never believe that the rites [of Dionysus] in Egypt and those in Greece can resemble each other by coincidence…. The names of nearly all the gods came from Egypt to Greece… but the making of the Hermes statues with the phallus erect, that they did not learn from the Egyptians but from the Pelasgians, and it was the Athenians first of all the Greeks who took over this practice, and from the Athenians, all the rest.
Whereas competition within or among monotheistic faiths can result in strengthening each, within polytheism the greater the pluralism the weaker each particular temple was likely to become.......Greco-Roman paganism may have proliferated to the point that it was nearly overwhelming in its variety.....But the rapid procession of new gods created a cultural fluidity that made it progressively easier for new faiths to gain a foothold:
Assuming that 30,000 residents is a reasonable minimum city-size, there were thirty-one cities of that size or larger within the Roman Empire in the year 100 CE.
It is agreed that by 350 CE the Christian population of the Roman Empire had grown very large......There is no disputing that Christians were everywhere and numbered many millions......But mass conversions seem very unlikely on four primary grounds: theological, sociological, historical, and arithmetic.....Mass conversions also are incompatible with the sociology of conversion. First of all, no one who has studied conversion has seen even one ‘normal’ person join up spontaneously following initial exposure to a group’s message.
No-one can cite any reliable historical cases of mass conversions. Most instances that have been offered as examples have turned out to be revivals, not conversions.
The Christianization of the empire could easily have been achieved by an arithmetic of
growth that is entirely compatible with the normal processes of network conversion.....Let us be conservative, and assume there were a thousand active Christians in 40 CE. If so, at what rate would Christianity need to have grown in order for their numbers to have grown as large as many historians estimate it to have been by the beginning of the fourth century?
Approximately 3.4 percent per year.
By the year 150 there still aren’t quite 40,000 Christians,......by the year 250 there are only slightly more than one million Christians, or 1.9 percent of the imperial population.
by the year 300 reaches slightly fewer than 6 million.
Most cities (71 percent) within a thousand miles of Jerusalem had a church by the year 100, compared with only one (7 percent) of the fourteen cities farther away.
In the first century far more Jews spoke Greek than Hebrew or Aramaic. Nearly all the Jews in the Diaspora spoke Greek—which was why the Torah was translated into Greek (the Septuagint)......Not only did the first Christians speak Greek, but Christian scripture was initially written in Greek, not in Hebrew or Aramaic. Bible translators have long complained that peculiarities of Greek concepts make it difficult to fully communicate scripture in other languages.
When Paul stripped the Jewish prerequisite from Christianity, he not only made the faith open to Gentiles, but offered the Hellenized Jews an attractive religious option, which many of them took.......And by the second century, the early church fathers were making sophisticated use of various Greek philosophers and their schools. In this respect, Justin Martyr was unsurpassed. “For him the gospel and the best elements in Plato and the Stoics are almost identical ways of apprehending the same truth......For all of these reasons, Christianity should have found a home sooner and more securely in cities having a dominant Hellenic culture than in those where Hellenism was not dominant.......Once again the hypothesis is very strongly confirmed. [By his statistics]. ........and no Hellenic city lacked a church by 180.
The larger the population, the easier it is to assemble the “critical mass” needed to form a deviant subculture—....The data show a substantial difference: three-fourths of the larger cities had a church by 100 CE, while only a third of smaller cities did so.
Because it is based on acceptance of One True God, monotheism generates strong, competitive organizations of people prepared to act on behalf of their faith, unlike those attached to a multitude of gods, or even those attached to one god from among a pantheon.
far greater value and credibility of exchanges with a God of maximum scope, power, virtue, and dependability, as opposed to small gods.....
Polytheistic faiths cannot withstand monotheistic missionizing. The evidence on this point is not merely historical, but current. A recent study in Singapore found that the overwhelming majority of college students from Buddhist families or those committed to various Chinese folk religions had converted to Islam or Christianity, while conversion from these monotheisms to Buddhism or to folk religions was essentially unknown.
The historical record strongly supports the idea that Cybelene worship and Isiacism served as important stepping-stones to Christianity by shaping pagan culture in ways that made the Christ story more familiar and credible.
Most of the Jews of the Diaspora who did not assimilate [to pagan religions] were remarkably Hellenized.
Accommodation of paganism also is reflected in the fact that Paul found it necessary to admonish his Corinthian congregation to shun the worship of idols…For many Hellenized Jews, a monotheism with deep Jewish roots, but without the Law, would have been extremely attractive......People will tend not to change religions, and the greater their religious capital, the less likely they are to change.
In contrast with paganism, Christianity offered Diasporan Jews a chance to preserve virtually all of their religious capital, needing only to add to it, since Christianity preserved the entire Old Testament heritage. Although it made observance of many portions of the Jewish Law unnecessary.
Christian missionaries quickly grasped that the Hellenized Jews of the Diaspora were especially receptive to Christianity, far more so than the Jews in Palestine. [I’m reminded of the Christian missionaries in India who found it hard going to try and convert either Hindus or Buddhist. But the have found fertile ground in working with the untouchables. An Indian friend of mine pointed out that the Muslims had made most progress in converting the untouchables and lower casts because Islam was (supposedly) cast-free].
Paul did not travel alone, but often took a retinue of as many as forty followers with him, sufficient to constitute an initial ‘congregation,’.....far too little has been made of the impact of his subsequent demand that Jewish Christians cease observing the Law. This had no consequences for Gentiles, but it would have had immense appeal to Hellenized Jews who wished to be free of the Law’s social limitations.
All of the cities with Diasporan communities had a church by the end of the first century, while only 18 percent of the cities without such a community had a church that early—
Paul was only one of many traveling professional missionaries,
The term Gnosticism has long been applied to a number of esoteric ancient manuscripts, some of which claim to reveal a secret Christianity that is very different from the faith that appears in the New Testament..........the only element common to all is that each is remarkably heretical..........Not just “one heresy but a swarming ant-heap of heresies,” as the distinguished Simone Pétrement explained.......The conflicts between many of these manuscripts and the New Testament are so monumental that no thinking person could embrace both.......In addition, many of the Gnostic scriptures are obvious forgeries, easily recognized as such by the early church fathers,
The word Gnosticism comes from a Greek word meaning “one who knows,”.....It refers to ‘revealed knowledge’ available only to those who have received secret teachings of a heavenly revealer.”......The typical Gnostic work, like The Secret Book of John, gives its origins as the author’s visions and mystical revelations, which are set in another reality and include almost no historical or geographical content.....In this way, Gnostic scriptures far more resemble pagan mythology than the New Testament.....[This is actually a bit rich when virtually all of Pau’s doctrines are based on his visions and spiritual communication with Christ].
Not only did paganism die out slowly, but it persisted far longer in some places than in others.........In the end, of course, the pagan temples did close and Christianity became, for many centuries, the only licit faith.......It didn't happen suddenly, nor did it involve substantial bloodshed......Consider one fact alone: Theodosius, the emperor who, according to Gibbon, extirpated paganism, appointed nearly as many men who were openly pagans as he did Christians to the positions of consuls and prefects......"A groundswell of confidence that Christians enjoyed access to the powerful spelled the end of polytheism far more effectively than did any imperial law or the closing of any temple." Even many pagan philosophers broke ranks, some of them becoming leading bishops of the church.
What's my overall take on the book. I found it fascinating and convincing, (In part because of his statistics...but more because of the historical and descriptive material. An easy five stars from me.

[Lynn Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like his previous books, this one is well worth reading.

Stark disproves many currently popular views about early Christianity such as: 'Christians forced paganism out of existence' and 'pagan beliefs produced Christian thought.'

Stark also debunks the myth that Gnosticism represents a more authentic Christianity. He shows that "Gnostic writers are known to have gathered only small schools of devotees". They were not an alternative Christianity. They were paganism's attempt to paganize Christianity.

I was interested to read his view that the faith spread not because of the promise of reward hereafter, but because of the way it could "provide an antidote to life's miseries here and now. The truly revolutionary aspect of Christianity lay in moral imperatives" (!) And it mostly spread, not by missionaries, but by personal contact among friends, neighbors and coworkers.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF.

If you have a head for disparate facts and figures (I don't) then this book is for you. I need a cohesive narrative with plenty of context and a dash of humanity in it. I gave it a hundred pages and realized all that I retained at that point could be summed up in about four sentences:

Multitheism is open to other Gods, allowing Christianity an inlet.
Christianity spread mainly in urban areas, particularly in port cities.
Other single powerful God religions, such as Cybelene and Isis, made the transition to Christianity easier for some people.
Some Jewish people converted to Christianity too.

That's about it.

I'm beginning to realize that if a book summary emphasizes "scholarly" it's probably not for me.

[Degenerate Chemist · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dudeman went in to this book with an agenda and I have no trust in this guys ability to let the evidence speak for itself. He makes his bias very, very clear in the first 5 pages. His rant at the beginning reads like a propaganda pamphlet than the work of a scholar. I had been interested in finding out what a quantitative study of history would entail- what I found was a man spouting random, disconnected statistics. This will probably be very convincing if you already agree with the author and don't know a thing about data collection.

[[Name Redacted] · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant and elegant refuation of many of the most prevelant theories surrounding the nature and origin of Christianity. Why are members of non-Abrahamic religions called "pagans"? How did Christianity become an imperial power? Why did the elite and the intelligentsia engage in Christian exegesis? All explored herein!

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too rare are intellectuals of minority and unpopular conviction who can back up their hypotheses with quantitative data. Rodney Stark’s analysis of the movements of early Christian history refutes trendy gnostic claims and the preferences of those who will not count the facts evident on the ground.

[Crystal · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you enjoy
A) church history
B) intricate detail to the nth degree
C) academia
D) dry writing

then you might enjoy this book. Some interesting tidbits here and there, but very hard to sink into and enjoy. Some readers will probably love it. I was simply not one of them.

[Sierra Cusson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disclaimer - I listened to this as an audiobook, so I probably didn't get as in-depth with it as I could have.
Going into this book, I had a different impression of what this book would be about & who was writing it vs. what it actually was. Rodney Stark is clearly pro-religion, pro-monotheism, etc. and knows a lot about the ancient Roman world and the travels of Paul and the spread of Christianity. But throughout the book, there was a distinct lack of accounting for the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in spreading the Gospel of Christ. For example, on page 65 he says, "Intervention [God's] in human affairs to compel even one person, let alone a few thousand people, to embrace Christianity is inconsistent with central Christian doctrines. Mass conversions are also incompatible with the sociology of conversion...no one can cite any reliable historical cases of mass conversions." These statements had me wondering what Rodney Stark believe happened in Acts 2:41 and 4:4, where 3000 and then 5000 believed after hearing the Gospel preached. The way that the author speaks of conversion - as if it was something that happened once an individual realized that it makes the most logical sense to convert and that it is attractive or compatible to their way of life - doesn't fully line up with what I see in the Scriptures: "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." (1 Cor. 1:18). If you are perishing & unbelieving, you don't just look at the Gospel of Christ and say "That is the most logical explanation I've ever heard." And if you were a Hellenic Jew, "This is great, I can still believe in the one true God without following all the Old Testament laws!" If you are perishing, it is all foolishness to you. Only when you are BEING SAVED is the veil removed and you see that it all makes sense, and of course it is the most logical, and the most attractive thing to you. And we are not being saved unless we are being saved BY someone. That is, that the Holy Spirit is drawing our hearts to God and the salvation found at the cross of Christ. The Spirit is absolutely the initiator, the leader, the guide, and the convincer in the story of the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, but I saw no mention of Him in this book.
Since I am coming to this book as Christian, it felt a little 'off' to see how Stark compared Christianity to other religions in terms of the sociology of how it spread through its evangelism and how other pagan religions paved the way to make Christianity more palatable for Gentiles, etc. He says, "...the findings relative to Cybele and Isis encourage us to recognize the extent to which Christianity also was an 'oriental' faith, appealing to the emotions, the conscience, and the intellect...This recognition encourages us to examine more closely how similarities between Isis worship and Christianity may have made the latter more appealing and plausible to pagans" (221).
If I had known going into this book that the author was coming from a mindset different than what I just stated, then I probably would have judged it less and just taken it for what it was.
There is definitely interesting information and facts dispersed throughout this book, and if you are a numbers/statistics fan, then you'll probably appreciate it even more! Stark states, "...the statistics inspire confidence because they are so stable and consistent" (220). This book is all about the quantitative data - the author has included numerous charts and maps. In this sense, I understand why there was no accounting for the supernatural in the spread of Christianity; Stark was going for hard & fast evidences only, things that could be calculated and tracked via historical records. I disagree with going about it in this way, because the work of the Holy Spirit is too vital to the whole process.

[Rodney Harvill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sociologist, Dr. Stark uses an approach to history in this book that I have never seen before. He uses statistical analysis of available data to validate hypotheses about the growth and spread of Christianity. Furthermore, he starts with “no-brainer” hypotheses about which there is little disagreement to demonstrate confidence in his approach and then moves on to more controversial issues. So, while he starts out with hypotheses regarding city size and the timing of the existence of a church in a city, he moves on to geographical considerations such as proximity to Jerusalem or whether the city is a port. Finally, he compares the locations of heretical movements (gnostic variants, Montanists, etc.) relative to the locations of orthodox congregations to assess whether these heretical groups represented early diversity within the church or represented separate movements entirely.

Dr. Stark’s initial thesis that churches tended to get an early start in large cities isn’t just backed by the data; it is a no-brainer. Because that is where the people are, missionary evangelists would tend to focus their efforts there. Furthermore, the larger the population, the more likely it is that fringe groups like the early church would fit within the diversity of the population, a dynamic that is less likely villages and rural areas, which tend to hold to traditional values much longer. Interestingly enough, this fringe group dynamic is exactly why, when I was in the Navy years ago, I requested assignment to an aircraft carrier. I was with a small denomination and realized that I was more likely to encounter fellow members on a larger ship rather than on a cruiser or submarine. As it was, the denomination had a few members within the crew and air wing, and we held Sunday morning and Wednesday evening services at sea with a typical attendance of five men, fairly evenly split between the two major sects of that denomination. So, I get Dr. Stark’s thesis.

I found the port thesis was more intriguing, though because I remember discussions in church about how “the fullness of time” included the Roman roads to facilitate missionary efforts. On the contrary, Dr. Stark asks, “Have you actually seen a Roman road?” He then proceeds to describe them and how they actually operated before making the point that a major means of commerce within the Roman empire was coast-hugging ships. This is attested by the large number of ancient shipwrecks found in the Mediterranean. Furthermore, while Paul’s missionary journeys featured significant overland travel, they all featured substantial time at sea. Furthermore, 2 Corinthians 10:25 documents three shipwrecks he had endured and Acts 27 actually describes a shipwreck that took place during his trip to Rome as a prisoner at least a decade after he wrote 2 Corinthians. So, Paul suffered a minimum of four shipwrecks as a Christian missionary. The bottom line is that because ships were a major source of commerce and transportation, early Christian missionaries traveled through ports all the time; as a result, churches were founded very early in the port cities, as attested by available historical data available to Dr. Stark.

Ever since Walter Bauer’s thesis that early Christianity featured many forms and that orthodoxy was the variant that won out and wrote the history, there has been a lively ongoing scholarly debate regarding the nature of the early church, with Bart Ehrman being the most prominent current proponent of the Bauer thesis. By consequence, Dr. Stark gives consideration to various heretical movements:

• Marcionism was an attempt to expunge Christianity of Jewish influence that disregarded the Old Testament and rewrote Luke and the Pauline epistles to eliminate any Jewish references. Speculating that this was a symptom of rising Christian-Jewish conflict, Dr. Stark verifies that Marcionite congregations tended to be located in cities with Jewish Diaspora communities while not correlating with other parameters such as city size, port status, etc.
• Valentinianism was a variant of Gnosticism. Dr. Stark identified that Valentinian congregations were overwhelmingly located in cities with heretical schools and also tended to be in the larger cities. However, they didn’t statistically correlate with other factors such as ports, Marcionite congregations, Diaspora communities or Christianization.
• Montanism was heresy known for its charismatic tendencies. To validate the scholarly thesis that it is not Gnostic, Dr. Stark verified that Montanists congregations were no more likely to be in a city with a heretical school than a city without one. He also noted that such congregations didn’t correlate with Christianization or Diaspora communities, either.
• Manachaeism was a highly developed Gnostic sect with some bizarre teachings (I found Dr. Stark’s description to be absolutely entertaining.). Like Valentinianism, Manichaeist congregations tended to be located in cities with heretical schools as well as in larger cities. There was no correlation with Diaspora communities and Christianization.

Because Dr. Stark found no correlation between Valintinian, Montanist and Manichaeist congregations and Christianization, he concludes that they were never part of the Christian mainstream. The heretical sect that comes closest to validating the Bauer thesis is Marcionism, which by attempting to form its own canon, prompted the church to formalize what we now know as the New Testament canon.

One weakness of the book pertains to its tables of statistical data. While tables are cited in the body of the book (e.g. Table 6-1 in chapter 6), they are all located in the Statistical Appendix. I think the book would probably be more readable if the tables were located in the chapter where cited. Regardless, I found Dr. Stark’s approach to be an intriguing method of challenging the Bauer thesis. I have read other books that use different methods to come to similar conclusions.

[Frode · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Rodney Stark’s books. He writes well, is clear and documents his work. Recently I finished Cities of God, a rather scientific book about the rise of Christianity. His thesis, which he proves with quantitative research, is that Christianity took hold in cities, mostly port cities to begin with that had a good number of Jews in them.

The first chapter talks about missions and how they work, how monotheism was particularly suited for mission work, and why Christianity was uniquely shaped to do mission work. He also speaks to subjective versus objective views of history. His position is that history can be viewed through quantitative analysis, and that it will actually prove what went on. Too many historians, according to Stark, are subjective as to causes and events.

He devotes one chapter to Paul and his missionary activities. Stark contends that Paul worked mostly with Hellenized Jews and that in many cases churches already existed before Paul got to a city. Mission work was going on naturally through relatives and friends and business contacts. He includes a chart that begins with 1000 Christians in 40 AD and ends with 31,722,489 Christians in 350 AD. This is achieved by a 3.4% growth rate per year, which is perfectly achievable with person to person evangelism. He appreciates Paul and is thankful for his epistles but says that Paul made little difference in the overall growth of the church.

In later chapters the author explains how a rural Galilean faith became urbanized, and he identifies 31 cities in the Roman Empire having at least 30,000 inhabitants. He also talks about Isis and Cybele, two oriental goddesses that moved west and were monotheistic. These two religions helped set the stage for Christianity and its monotheism. I think he gives a good explanation of why Christianity displaced polytheism and the two goddesses. Mr. Stark also explains why many Jews of the Diaspora were inclined to accept Christianity. Finally he deals with Gnosticism and other heresies. He also shows why Mithraism was never a serious contender; it was for men only and mostly for soldiers and very secretive.

His final chapter is titled “Why Historians Ought to Count.” In this chapter he argues for quantitative data and that serious historians should make use of it to be accurate in their conclusions. He chides many historians for being subjective and parroting what others said before. Edward Gibbon comes in for his share of criticism. Gibbon was very anti-Catholic which biased his views. Gibbon’s views were not based on quantitative data but on subjective feelings. Those people longing for the good old days of tolerant paganism just don’t know their history.

There are lots of charts and maps and tables in this book. It is well presented and done so in a clear and logical fashion. It is a book for serious Christians to read and to be inspired by. The only reason I give it 4 stars is because it is technical and requires concentration when reading, especially the part explaining concepts and theories, concepts and indicators, and hypothesis. This part is necessary to understand how he goes about using the data, but it is not easy reading.

[Jessie Adamczyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a difficult time fighting the urge to put this book down throughout the first chapter. The beginning of the book is laid out much as a student of rudimentary statistics would present quantitative information. I found it grating to read. It's only as I read the book that I came to understand that this format of argumentation is precisely why Stark wrote the book and not the subject matter it entails.
This book had more to do with an urging for historians to go back to this fundamental quantitative way of analyzing history than it did for any sort of Earth-shattering revelations on Christianity (Stark admits this in his conclusion, aptly named "Why Historians Should Count"). By explaining his methods for collecting societal data (for instance, examining grave stones for pagan/christian inscriptions to support his assertions about which had more prominence in a particular community), Stark lays out his argument that certain facts about the ancient world can be known and therefore are no longer up to question. I found this information fascinating and was more intrigued by his methods than I was the actual data he was presenting.
Unfortunately, however, some things simply cannot be quantified. Stark makes many qualitative arguments about religion, such as the moral superiority of monotheism to paganism. Stark never really develops this argument. He simply states it as if this were a fact we the readers should just accept (I am a practicing Catholic, so it is not for religious dissent that I find his argument lacking). He also states that Constantine used Christianity to further his success rather than the other way around, but again, this thought is not developed. I wish Stark would have either left those qualitative statements out of the book, acknowledged their weaknesses, or strengthened them with stronger backing.
His analysis of the Gnostics as a specific attempt to fold Christianity into paganism and not as a different view of the faith was fascinating and my favorite part of the book. I enjoyed reading the bits he included and his statements on them, though I wish he'd leave his harsh judgments of other historians out.
If you can make it through the first chapter or go into it knowing exactly what Stark aims to do, the book goes smoother for you. It is important that the reader maintains the ability to swallow Stark's truly interesting information with a spoonful of condescension, which Stark deals out heavily.

[MG · Rating 5 out of 5]

While some complain this is an overly academic work, Stark's work is in service to the utility for historians to use quantitative analysis in their work. In other words, that makes it almost impossible to make the book sound like a popular work. Still, he is rather successful in arguing for his thesis. He analyzes data for the 31 most populous cities around the Mediterranean to see what he can discover through the numbers others have gathered. Some of his findings or arguments I found interesting: that Judaism was a missionary religion until a a few centuries into the Common Era; that while Paul was called a missionary to the Gentiles, he spent most of his time preaching to Hellenized Jews; that Paul was more of a leader of a missionary enterprise rather than the key missionary himself, since many of the towns he preached at already had a Christian presence; that a couple successful Eastern cults, such as one devoted to Isis, prepared the way for conversion to Christianity since Isis followers already believed in a deity born of a mother and that we could expect resurrection; that many Hellenized Jews were attracted to Christianity since it solved a tension they felt of straddling two worlds but not fully accepted in either; that people are more likely to convert when they can retain cultural and religious norms they already had, which is why Christianity was preferrable to the cult of Mithros and Isis; that Jewish Christians played an active role in the church until the fourth century; that Jews and Christians interacted harmoniously (mostly) until the third or fourth centuries; that the persecution of pagans did not kick off until the short-lived rule of Julian the Apostate, who, in his 18 month reign, tried to return the Empire to paganism and persecuted Christians--thereby making Christians afraid and allowing the anti-pluralism Christians to ascend after Julian's death. So, yes, this is not the most scintillating reading but worthwhile nonetheless.

[Joel Wentz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was quite a bit more technical and polemic than I was expecting, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but is certainly an interesting combination the reader should know about.

First, Stark devotes a significant portion of the book to methodology, even explaining statistical regression and how it applies to historical research. Some will find this helpful, others will be bored out of their minds. If you are expecting more historical-cultural background, then be warned (though some of that is definitely present). Stark is more interested in providing hard, quantitative data, even while acknowledging the difficulties of applying it to history. This all does well to buffer his conclusions, but the reader should know that some technical writing is ahead.

Second, the polemics.....this is where I could imagine many being turned off. Stark clearly has a bone to pick with popular historical theories and leftist-academic "orthodoxy," and he does not try to hide his disgust. Even as someone who is largely in agreement with him, I found the tone to be a bit grating, so know this going in.

All that said, I am glad Stark is writing at a mostly popular level with this stuff. His arguments are both compelling and convincing, and certainly enriched my own understanding of the first generations of Christians, the cultural setting in which the faith was born, the activities of the first apostles, and why the faith may have taken root the way it did. His data on heretical movements is also extremely rich, and sheds a lot of light on pop-conspiracy theories about the Gnostics and the early church.

So, if you are interested in history, particularly the early church, and can stomach some hard data, methodology, and a polemical tone, then this is an easy recommendation!

[Maynard Handley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those "three books in one", and as usual most people will love one or two of the books and hate one or two...

The first book is a rousing argument for cliometrics and history tested against evidence, with plenty of examples of how to do this. I certainly want to see a lot more of this sort of thing practiced, though I don't need another rant on how and why to do this.

The second book applies the technique to test a set of claims about Early Christianity
- was it primarily a faith of the well-to-do or the bottom of society
- did it first spread among Hellenized Jews or among pagans
- were there antecedent religions that established the tone and practices for Christianity to follow
- what's the relationship between Gnosticism, Christianity, Judaism, and Paganism
This was truly fascinating stuff.

Finally the third book is a defense of (a certain) traditional, somewhat Catholic theory of both the truth of Christianity and how its history played out. I was utterly uninterested in this stuff.

Rodney Stark is something of a mirror image of Bart Ehrman. Both are sufficiently smart and intellectually honest that whatever they write is interesting and novel. Whereas Ehrman's analyses eventually led him to abandon Christianity, Stark's analyses seem to have made him an ever more fervent believer; but both prioritize truth as best they can discover it (as historians and social scientists) over their belief system, making them both very interesting companions.

[Geoff Atwater · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! A book that makes history fall into place with a resounding "Kerchunk!"
The author uses a statistical analysis technique to clearly demonstrate the slow growth of Christianity in the first three hundred years as opposed to the tidal wave of conversions supposed by so many writers. This technique shows that the number of Christians in the entire Roman Empire was about 40,000 by the year 100 CE growing to reach just over one million by 350 CE! This reduces to a 3.4% compound growth rate or the equivalent of the slow process of friends leading friends to the new faith. The author refutes the supposed tidal wave as lazy historians assuming no valid data exists.

OK, full disclosure - I am an analytic personality, but I love history, particularly of Rome. However, I have wondered from time to time how historians could make such sweeping judgments about historical events based on very little data. Now it makes sense. As this author illustrates, most historians are intuitive rather than analytic. What a difference that makes!

He also hammers Edward Gibbon for sweeping statements about the takeover of the empire by Christians during the reign of Constantine. Here he uses the actual data of known appointments to high level positions by emperors beginning with Constantine clearly showing that the majority were not Christian, but were pagan! Again, data prevails.

While much of his criticism of historians and other writers seems spot on, I do feel he came down a little too hard on Elaine Pagels in several scattered comments.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thesis not supported by the book

I have enjoyed Rodney a Stark’s books in the past and looked forward to this one. However, instead of a treatise on how Christianity progressed in the 1st and 2nd centuries after Jesus, it was more an analysis of the different religions that existed at that time. Only about 1/4 actually dealt with what enabled the church to progress, and even that was more assertion that it was supported. Also, it was disappointing that he dismissed out of hand the report of thousands being saved in Acts 2, with no support, just his opinion that it couldn’t have happened. While helpful to understand the religious culture into which the church was born, it wasn’t helpful to understand how it grew.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rodney Stark has done such a great deal of good work to shed light on the historical reality of the early spread of Christianity. His earlier work "The Rise of Christianity," later expanded into "the Triumph of Christianity" is so helpful and informative.
Here, in this book, he goes into greater detail on the dynamics of the spread of Christianity (and other new religions and sects) in urban environments in the Roman Empire.
It may not be as interesting to read right through, but would serve well as an aide to research.

[Frank Peters · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an excellent book. I greatly appreciate how the author has objectively destroyed many of the false statement made by the historian Gibbons. The authors objective style is interesting and enlightening. I probably should give the book a higher rating, except that I greatly dislike statistics. I recognise the importance of statistics, but never enjoy such discussions. As a result, the ideas presented, and the result obtained were fascinating, while the statistical arguments (for me) were lesser so. The conclusion at the book’s end was especially fun.

[Adam Bloch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that not everyone would like, and I’m on the edge of the subset of people who would like this. Some parts were dry, but the data within were extremely interesting to me.
The book did not, however, deliver what I thought it would—an historical analysis of how Christianity spread throughout cities. Instead, it presented information about the cities in which Christianity spread. There’s a fine nuance there, and I still thought the book interesting, but I don’t think the book accomplishes what it seems to promise.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uses data regarding the spread of early Christianity to describe how it permeated the Roman empire while other, competing religions either did not or faded. He uses the data to give better description to the "other gospels", shows how they not popular expressions of religion but rather are esoteric.

His supposition is that the simple outlines of the Christian religion (one God of love) better suited people's ideas of reality, especially those of urban and flexible circumstance.

[Lindsey Reiswig · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed Stark's methodical approach to the statistical research and data he used to write this book. His theory is presented in a straightforward accessible manner and his theory seems plausible, though I would like to read more on the history of the first 3 centuries before I decide if the jewish Diaspora was the largest determining factor in the spread of early Christianity. Overall, interesting and it sparked my curiosity.

[Nicholas Howard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping for a really good examination of the rise of Christianity and the centers of the faith. Instead the other gives a little bit about every day life in ancient Rome and then goes into large chunks of statistics. While the chapters on paganism, Gnosticism, and heresy are interesting there is not a lot of new ground covered.
I love books on church history. Unfortunately this one was not as good as advertised.

[Caleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clearest understanding of the religious environment of the early church that I’ve come across. Using quantitative methods Stark located the spread of Christianity among Hellenized Jews in the diaspora. Particularly helpful with regards to placing Gnosticism, the Manichaeans, the Marcionites and the Mithraists in a broader context. Would recommend picking this up before reading Elaine Pagels’ work, which he addresses within. Prefer this book to his earlier The Rise of Christianity.

[cameron ross paton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book, with statistical analysis of the growth of Christianity in the Roman Empire in the first centuries AD.
Comparing various populations and religious groups rates of growth and decline.
Written in every day language, but with an academic audience in mind.
Revelations about other non mainstream competitors to Christianity and debunking of popularity held beliefs about groups, such as the Gnostics.