The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History

by Rodney Stark

A landmark reinterpretation of why Christianity became the dominant faith of the WestThe 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.

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

255 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1996

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

[[Name Redacted] · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stark continues to impress; he's like Jenkins without the weird (and often-irrelevant) anti-Mormon bias. The premise of this book is: that neither the growth of Christianity nor the Christianization of the Roman Empire required divine or imperial intervention. He uses the information which we possess to demonstrate that the growth of Christianity occurred quite naturally, did not require any mass public conversions, and that Emperor Constantine's Edict of Toleration and death-bed conversion were responses TO rather than causes OF the Christianization of the Empire. He approaches the available historical and textual evidence without trying to make it fit his a priori assumptions about antiquity, allowing the evidence to inform rather than forcing it to conform. This is (as always) refreshing.

The author offends some with his sympathetic depictions of early Christianity and Second Temple/pre-rabbinic Judaism, but his intent isn't to defend or to champion either religion. Likewise, he offends some by arguing that things other than the influence of God could lead to Christianity's rise, but balances it out by by reminding the reader that he is neither arguing for nor against any sort of supernaturalism. Ultimately his purpose is to uncover the social and cultural dynamics which led to the growth and expansion of Christianity in the ancient world, focusing on the ancient Roman Empire as a sort of religious marketplace and treating the various religions vying for supremacy as products and "firms" -- it's a healthy combination of history, economics and sociology.

Also notable is the fact that, while Stark seems generally sympathetic to Christianity (and Judaism), he is similarly sympathetic to the various specific paganisms he discusses. He never treats paganism as a single, monolithic entity, always addressing (albeit tangentially) the various religious traditions which make up the category we now refer to as "paganism".

And though Stark uses Mormons frequently as an example, he's doing so in full possession of the facts, and because it is directly relevant to the topic under discussion -- not because he has some barely-concealed ideological axe to grind for or against them. Stark is not a member of any of the various Mormon sects, but he has done extensive research into the growth of the main Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the factors which contributed to that growth. He makes a convincing argument that the growth of "Mormonism" from less than a dozen adherents to several million (at the time of this book's initial printing) in the space of under 300 years is a plausible match for the growth patterns and methods of early Christianity.

He also takes 19th and then-contemporary 20th century academia to task for being more interested in disproving religion than actually trying to understand religion, religiosity or religious people. This is especially relevant today, as for my three separate academic Religious Studies degrees I was required to attend three separate seminar classes designed to "prove" that religion was hogwash. Using martyrdom as an example, Stark points out that the social and psychological explanations of religious activity and belief usually involve contemptuously writing religion off as the product of psychological illnesses and disorders; he then demonstrates how, from an economic perspective, the choices made by believers in religion (and specifically martyrs) are actually completely rational. The problem, he argues, is that we have come to conflate "rational" with "accurate" and "truthful" when there is rarely any correlation between them. Someone can make a perfectly rational choice without that choice needing to be grounded in anything demonstrably true. For instance, an ancient Roman urban citizen with a life expectancy of 30 years could expect to spend those thirty years suffering from all sorts of illnesses and deprivations and afflictions; most martyrs were already near or past their average life expectancy of 30, so it made perfect sense for them to choose death/torture over renouncing their beliefs because the former carried with it the possibility of an eternal life free from suffering in the presence of the Christian god while the latter carried with it the possibility of a few extra years of miserable mortal existence followed by an eternity of more-than-likely miserable immortal existence in one of the pagan afterlifes (which were not known for being pleasant to ordinary mortal spirits). The cost-benefit ratio was in their favor. Yet Stark also points out that whether that choice was rational or not depended on the individual perspectives of the persecuted; some of the persecuted chose NOT to be martyrs, and for them that was an equally rational choice. I'm not doing his argument justice as there is a lot more nuance and complexity to it, but suffice to say he capably demonstrates that modern anti-religious biases result in a view of history as distorted and occluded as any pro-religious bias.

He also confronts some of the problems scholars face due to their tendency to project their own moral and social views back onto ancient civilization. For instance, abortion and contraception are seen as "civilized" and "liberating" for modern women, and so modern scholars tend to assume that they have always been so; they assume that it was only because of prudishness, misogyny, or ignorant religious oppression that women in antiquity were denied these wonderful methods of "family planning." But the reality is that in antiquity the primary methods of abortion and contraception were wildly dangerous and dependent on the will of men. Men ordered women to undergo abortions, and the contraception methods often led to infection and poisoning for the women who used them. Both the methods for ancient abortion and the methods for ancient contraception also often resulted in female sterilization. Infanticide was also common, and usually done at the command of the father (or the husband, anyway). Infanticide and abortion were advocated by ancient philosophers and went largely unpunished by the ancient legal system; they were both used in the service of an ancient form of eugenics, and husbands often ordered their wives to abandon or murder infant girls because females were seen as less valuable. Marriage was largely regarded by Imperial men as a burden best avoided unless there was some financial or social status to be gained, and many a Roman historian and satirist mocked the fact that Roman men couldn't stand to be around their wives but loved to patronize female and male prostitutes. What is more, women in Rome were required by law to remarry within two years if they were widowed, whether they wanted to or not. Meanwhile the Empire was ravaged by a series of epidemic plagues, wars, fires, floods, earthquakes and famines. All this resulted in a society in which men overwhelmingly outnumbered women, and many of the remaining women died in childbirth or trying to prevent childbirth; thus the population of the Empire was actually shrinking by the time Christianity appeared, a fact well-documented by historians ancient and modern. The Imperial government tried to circumvent this by mandating marriage and requiring at least three children per couple, but the people ignored or resisted those laws; the government actually wound up importing Northern "barbarians" and allowing them to settle the regions of the Empire that had either been depopulated or were close to collapse.

Christianity (and Judaism) however prohibited abortion and infanticide, encouraged large families, argued that women and men were ultimately equal before God, ordered men to love and value their wives and daughters, and allowed widows to remain single (thereby maintaining control of their property in their families). Christian families were therefore larger than pagan families, and more Christian women lived to start their own families and stayed fertile longer. And while Christians were reproducing naturally, they were also engaged in the conversion of non-Christians. Stark notes that women were predictably the majority of primary Christian converts (ie: those who converted under their own auspices), and that men tended to be secondary converts (ie: those who converted because others pushed them to convert). This all resulted in the natural expansion of the Empire's Christian population even as the Empire's pagan populations contracted.

Stark also notes that Judaism naturally had many of the same qualities that allowed Christianity to survive, including prohibitions against abortion and infanticide (for which it was condemned by pagan writers), and attracted a fair number of converts throughout the Empire even as Jewish communities grew in the diaspora; however the religion also had stricter conversion requirements than did Christianity, resulting in the so-called "God-fearers", and even lifelong adherents often found themselves drifting towards or embracing Hellenism instead. Stark fails to note something else, but I think it bears consideration: had Judaism's conversion requirements and relationship to Hellenistic Imperial culture been a bit less complicated, had pagans been a bit less...well...lazy, or had Christianity just never come on the scene, Judaism could easily have become the Imperial religion. Jews had larger families, and Jewish women lived longer and stayed fertile longer; the addition of more converts in a shrinking pagan world could have pushed Judaism over the top! Now THAT is an alternate-history novel waiting to happen!

In any event, I highly recommend this book, especially in concert with Stark's "Cities of God". This is one of his earlier books, and you can see the genesis of "Cities of God" and "For the Glory of God" in some of the chapters.


UPDATE 1: Finally picked up a copy at the 2011 AAR/SBL conference in San Francisco. Looking forward to this one; Stark is fantastic at laying bare the actual history without letting personal political/social biases taint his understanding.

[Arianne X · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isn’t it Ironic?


The Sociological Perspective

This is a sociological study of Christianity showing how its early spread was due to well established and empirically tested social scientific principles of human organization and interaction. As such, the emphasis is on understanding religion, not discrediting it. This is offered in response to the theory that religion is rooted in the irrational and would fade away since the latter clearly has not occurred. We are still burdened with large populations of irrational religious believers. Early converts to the deviant sect of Christianity were not based on its teachings, dogmas, doctrines, revelations, or miracles. There were no mass conversion evets about which Christians are so fond of bragging. There was a steady but slow compound growth in membership over time. Interestingly, the author calculated a very plausible annual compound growth rate for Christianity of 3.42% from 40 CE – 350 CE (311 years). This modest growth rate gets us from about 1,000 Christians in 40 CE to about 34 million in 350 CE, or 57% of the population of the Roman Empire. This also illustrates the power of an exponential function.

The Conversion Process

Religion is a social phenomenon. Most conversions are social, not ideological. Early conversions to Christianity were based on social networks and the establishment of interpersonal relationships with cult members just as they have been found to occur with coverts to modern cults. A major factor in conversion generally is that the convert develops stronger ties with the members of the cult “new brethren” than with non-members even when those non-members are family. Entry into the cult for social reasons occurs first, only after becoming a cult member does the new covert come to accept the teachings of the cult. Conversion to a religion or cult is typically not based on conversion to the cult ideology, in person or en masse. Conversion occurs through a person aligning with a social network after which it is easier to accept the ideology, any ideology, no matter how absurd. This is why outsiders to a cult or religion will marvel at the absurd beliefs of the members, but the members did not covert based on the absurd beliefs, they converted based on their social network (newfound friends, interpersonal support, new relationships, etc.) and only later took on the beliefs which was easier to do when everyone in the new network has the same beliefs. One only learns how to “testify to faith” after joining the religion/cult group. There is nothing more fortifying of beliefs learned in church than regular attendance of church with like believers. People conform to beliefs because they value their interpersonal relationships and want to maintain their standing within the group.

A Victim of His own Analysis?

It appears that Rodney Stark fell victim to his own thesis, or his personal experience is an example in support of his thesis. This book is written from a social scientific perspective, it is not a confession of faith. The author comes to the subject as a self-admitted agnostic, not as a Christian but not as an atheist either. However, sometime after the completion of this study the author started styling himself as an “Independent Christian”. My thesis is that his close proximity to the cult in studying it allowed him to form the same type of interpersonal relationships he describes in the book. I am guessing that he came into the Christian network through personal ties, the examples of Christians he met, and the new relationships he developed. Rodney Stark states that typically people do not seek faith, they encounter it and then embrace it based on their social ties. This is the same process by which he describes the growth of Christianity. Further, the author establishes that new religious movements mainly draw their converts from the population of the religiously inactive or discontented. Again, is this author’s experience? As an agnostic, “Independent Christianity” might look like a new religious movement. How ironic.

My disagreements:

In the last chapter, Rodney Stark also comes around to crediting Christianity with superior dogma and doctrine during the first three centuries of its development in the social areas of human fertility, the status of women, mutual aid, consolation, organization, and revitalization. A part of this growth story was the fact that Christians, due to different social norms and personal values, provided a superior social example and went on to outbreed non-Christians. It is well understood that social factors shape religious doctrines, but the author believes that religious doctrines shape social factors as well. Perhaps this in part accounts for his own ‘conversion’. In a generous mode of compromise, I ounce expressed this idea to a Christian by saying that a Christian is a humanist who goes to church and that a humanist is a Christian who does not go to church but for this I was dismissed and told that this is not what Christianity is about. Well at least not anymore, the Christianity to which I have been exposed is anti-humanist and anti-humanitarian with an emphasis on belief bullying while expressing the values of judgementalism and rejection. I guess my interpersonal experiences differs from the author’s.

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really worthwhile read. Stark covers a lot of territory in explaining the rise of Christianity, from epidemics to class strata. Very fine work.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book isn't worth anyone's time. Stark makes untenable assumptions about the numbers and growth rates of ancient Christianity. He clearly misundertands the context and complexity of life and religions in the ancient world. His conclusions are supersessionist and dangerous because the assumption of Christian "victory" is dangerous given the history of anti-Judaism, anti-Islamic, anti-pagan violence in antiquity, modernity and the contemporary political situation.


The following is the conclusion to a paper I wrote about this book for one of my classes:

Rodney Stark clearly demonstrates the continuing impact of these great theorists on the study of religion. His employment of a multifaceted approach to religion is to be commended. He considers the relationship between religion and society, and the ways in which the needs of individuals are met. His Concern for the roles of women and of various social classes in relation to religion is to be applauded. Despite his best intentions and considerable effort, this work is unfortunately a better example of how heavy reliance on theory without the attention to the holistic context and close study of particular societies can fail to advance our understanding of religion in general and that of particular traditions. Stark’s overall supersessionist conclusions are both dangerous and outdated. They are also inadequate. Such conclusions fail to consider the ways in which pagan traditions did influence Christianity, as is evident in the continuing battles with paganism and heresy into the Middle Ages. These conclusions also fail to consider the impact of Jewish traditions on Christianity, as well as the very basic fact that Jewish traditions did not disappear in the wake of the Imperialization of Christianity. Jewish traditions clearly continue to meet the needs of individuals and to exist in a relationship of mutual influence with the societies in which they exist. Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity does indeed demonstrate the continuing impact of Durkheim, Freud, Marx, and Weber. It also poses the challenge to scholars to aim for greater integration of these theories, greater attention to context and detail, and continued development of theoretical models and close study of societies and religions.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A purely sociological study that discusses the rise of the early church in the Roman Empire, with lots of academic references. Considers the rates/numbers at which the church grew, attraction of the privileged rather than only the poor, the role of women and infant mortality rates, the effects of Christian morality in caring for the poor and needy, and offers a risk/reward analysis of martyrdom. I found it surprisingly accessible.

[Esther | lifebyesther · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye opening. Systematic. Showed me just how little I know about church history.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent synthesis of Stark's sociological work examining the rise of Christianity in the first few hundred years of its existence. His strength is bringing sociological theory to bear in explaining how Christianity rose from a few dozen disciples to a couple of billion. At the same time, he points out that Christian doctrine was essential to its sociological success; without it, Christianity wouldn't be here, and sociology wouldn't have anything to say about it. One aspect that could do with some updating is Stark's use of rational choice theory, since it's largely been replaced/revised by Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory.

A few interesting highlights:
Christianity's care of the sick during plagues that killed staggering numbers of people led to a much higher survival rate among Christians, which in turn accelerated Christain growth. (Simple care of sick persons enormously increases survival. When a plague struck, people fled cities, leaving the dying without any care. As a result, the death rate was truly horrific.)

Conversions happen almost entirely along relationship lines, not by proselytising strangers (for example, the known rate of conversion by doorknocking is roughly 1 per 1000. Mormons and JWs know this and organise their evangelisation accordingly). Christianity, therefore, had a high number of middle- to upper-class members, because these people tend to be well connected socially; it was not a religion made up of poor masses (so much for Marx's comment that religion is the opiate of the masses).

Because Christians cared for non-Christians during plagues, conversion was high among survivors. This was due in part to their having established social connections with Christians and having lost many connections in the plagues.

The Roman empire was ethnically very diverse, but was held together by imperial might. As a result, the religious scene was chaotic and pluralistic, and somewhat resempled Japan, where people commonly adhere to more than one religion. Because of this fragmentation, however, it was also quite volatile, and ethnic disputes were not uncommon. Christianity, because it did not require people to give up their ethnicity and at the same time require all converts to love each other, shattered ethnic barriers, giving it a decided edge in the religious marketplace.

Due to abortion being commonplace in the Roman empire, and abortion being female-biased, there were more men in the empire than women. When there is a shortage of women, the tendency in many societies is to treat women as social inferiors, or as possessions; the empire was no exception. Christianity elevated the social standing of women, by requiring, among other things, that husbands love their wives. In addition, it attracted more women than men, like many religions. Together, this led to male conversions by marriage to Christian women. In addition, because the church forbade abortion and also took care of orphans and abandoned newborns, the fertility rate was high, leading to a very fast growth rate.

[Christian Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such an interesting book examining how Christianity grew in the early centuries after Christ’s death (and resurrection). Kinda really enjoyed diving into a purely academic, sociological take on this subject and how even though the author doesn’t believe in the miraculous aspects of these early conversations, there certainly were things that the Lord used to grow His church. Highly recommend to anyone interested in early church history, especially from a purely academic perspective.

[Dave Witzig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not super easy to read but gave me an understanding of the early Christian church and how it survived and then grew. Christian hospitality, serving, taking care of the unwanted, and being bold in persecution spread around Europe.

[Joel Larson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coming from an educational background in social science, I was very intrigued by the premise of this book: an agnostic professor of sociology, who happens to be a history geek, applies modern sociological metrics and rhetoric to explore how the Jesus movement grew from a deviant sect of Judaism to one of the largest world religions in the space of merely a few centuries. Stark approaches this question by looking at the dynamics which play into community growth, how group boundaries shift with time, and the discrete factors that provided an opportunity for Christianity to grow.

The chapters on the Christian response to epidemics, the role of women, social class barriers, and Christian response to suffering, were particularly interesting to me. (Comparing historical action in Roman epidemics to the general Christian response to COVID in America will get your panties in a twist for sure).

Coming from an educational background in English literature and a love for ancient history, I could have done with less shitting on classicists for not being sociologists.

[david shin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Coming from a professor at a secular institution, initially I thought it was a fairly academic and unbiased approach to early Christianity. There's an attempt to use social research methods to quantify and justify findings of early Christianity's rise among the middle class rather than the popular belief that Christianity rose among the poorest.

However, I have come to be very skeptical of the author after his subsequent releases, which are titled (and I'm not making this up), "The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success" and "Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome."

[Wes Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Rise of Christianity is an interesting look at Christianity from the viewpoint of a sociologist. Starke explains how Christianity grew looking at different aspects like the role of women, martyrs, and epidemics. Starke does a good job describing the Roman culture and comparing it to the culture of the early church. At times the book can be a big technical with sociology terms. Also for the most part Starke doesn't factor in the supernatural in his explanation of the spread of Christianity. It is an interesting book at times but would not encourage someone to read it unless they are super interested in the social factors of the rise of Christianity.

[Dan Sexton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly interesting read, which, above all else, will stick with me for challenging some of the naive and romantic conceptions I had of the Greco-Roman lifestyle. Although I was passively aware of the harsh lifestyle which the plebeian classes had to endure, I, like many I presume, was more aware of the aqueducts, the sanitation, the roads, irrigation, medicine, education, the wine, public baths and whatever else the Romans have ever done for us. In fact, as this book explains, Monty Python might have painted a picture of Roman civility which was not entirely justified. I was shocked to read about the prevalence of infanticide, and was surprised to find out that the early church was a friendlier place for women than the pagan empire.

The main purpose of this book is of course not covering daily Roman life two millennia ago, but rather a sociological analysis of early Christianity. I think it introduces a lot of interesting concepts and draws parallels with cults in the modern age. The book in and of itself is well-structured, and does a good job at compiling what once were stand-alone academic papers into something which is very legible for an audience of laymen. Nevertheless, I feel that Stark would have benefited from co-authoring this with a historian who specialised in early Christianity. There are various instances where he states he had to search for sources in a somewhat haphazard fashion, and I wouldn't consider most of his quantitative data (or the analysis thereof) robust, although I did appreciate the effort to at least include such analysis. The arithmetic too, while obviously not a true growth curve, is compelling. His application of economic concepts was clear, generally correct and concise.

The most prominent flaws in Stark's analysis to me were first and foremost centred around the incongruence of chapters 3 and 5. I feel his most convincing analysis of specific demographic conversion factors is the role of Judaism in the third chapter (note the large and significant .69 positive correlation between synagogues and Stark's Christianisation variable in table 6.2). While I understand (and don't deny) his reasoning, I feel any gender disparity when it is excessively large becomes a major drag on the growth potential of a religion if only through the effect it has on procreation. Given the way men have tended to act throughout history, I doubt, even in the context of a scarcity of women relative to men in society, many would have tolerated the christianisation of their wives, much less would their own christianisation for the purposes of love have been tolerated by their social networks (all-important to Stark's thesis). That's not to mention the major impact such a disparity would have had on traditional Christian theology which is, of course, a masculine theology. Even if pagan society was even less friendly to women. My presumption, therefore, is that the conversion of the Jewish diaspora was by far and away the most important factor in allowing the church to grow to a critical mass, beyond which it could penetrate broader Roman society.

Finally, I thought his attempt to explain martyrdom as rational choice was weak. Of course it makes sense from the perspective of the church to have some of its members give their lives as martyrs. To use the otherworldly as a traditional economic benefit versus the cost of dying, however, really doesn't serve any serious analysis. It just goes to show the traditional economic knowledge that people have differing indifference curves, but it is not a useful form of applied analysis. Instead, it reads more like a semantic addition to the endless debate on whether or not all humans are rational actors (additionally, consider his contempt for sociologists who label martyrdom, rightly or wrongly, as a form of masochism, which itself can easily be subjected to a similar "rational" cost-benefit analysis).

Nevertheless, none of these points detract from the value or validity of his thesis. I would recommend this book to anybody who would like to learn more about the early church, which in any case represents a fascinating societal transition in the most advanced, powerful and centralised empire in history up until that point. For better or worse, we all live in the shadows of that transition today. Pax et Bonum!

[Richard Subber · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rise of Christianity in the centuries after the life of Jesus relied on the work of mortal women and men.
Stark offers a patient and compelling description of how Christianity spread from Nazareth in Galilee and became a powerful force throughout the known Greco-Roman world before Emperor Constantine embraced the faith early in the 4th century AD.
This is not a “religious” book. The words “bible,” “hymn,” “communion,” “priest,” “Pope,” and “prayer” are not in the index. The Rise of Christianity acknowledges but does not dwell on the doctrinal aspects of the Christian faith in the early years.
I wouldn’t presume to summarize Stark’s account of the sociological, emotional, and political factors that enabled the rise of Christianity.
You may find it surprising and valuable to know that the new religion appealed to both the rich and the poor, that women were the majority of first converts, that women held leadership positions in the early churches, and that the Christian commitment to help one another notably enabled the Christian communities to survive the plagues that killed so many people in the early centuries (the pantheons of non-Christian gods were conspicuously unhelpful).
Stark says: “Finally, what Christianity gave to its converts was nothing less than their humanity. In this sense, virtue was its own reward.”

Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read. This is an examination of the rise of Christianity (as the title would indicate) from a social science perspective. The broad and deep investigation of the history of the early Church is absolutely outstanding, and as a bonus, the author does the best debunking of a lot of the myths about Christians killing off members of rival religions in the first few centuries I've ever read. It includes a deep examination of how the bedrock principle of Christianity - charity - led to its widespread adoption in times of plagues and natural disasters, and gives excellent references to primary sources about those events and the Christian community's response to them. This book should be required reading for anyone who has fallen prey to the prosperity gospel claptrap, seriously. I'm truly impressed that a secular author (at least he was when he started - not sure about now) wrote an objective and well researched book about the social reality of the early Church.

[Daniel Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learnt something new on almost every page of this book. I can write no higher commendation.

[Victor Falavinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ótimo livro. Embora o autor seja um sociólogo - o que me trouxe certos receios - e embora não creia pessoalmente na inerrância das Escrituras, o livro é excelente ao apresentar fatos e dados da História da Igreja, desde o Antigo Testamento até períodos modernos, e traz como bônus a desmistificação de vários mitos ateístas sobre o cristianismo.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

Question: how did a small, ragtag group of cultists who worshiped a deified Jesus became a powerful, world religion within only a few hundred years? This book provides an answer.

As a sociologist of religion, Rodney Stark approaches the question of Christianity's rise from a demographics perspective. For example, he documents how early Christianity seems to have attracted a surplus of women vs. men. He then explains that intermarriages between Christian women and Pagan men offered opportunities for conversion of Pagan men. Among his many other arguments, Stark offers that certain Christian moral practices (e.g., the prohibition of abortion and infanticide) lowered the mortality rate of Christians vs. Pagans. When he works out the math, it's striking how much effect even slight mortality rate differences can have on various populations over the course of several hundred years.

Stark's overall message is that sociological and historical methods can shed considerable light on the rise of Christianity. Great read.

[Winnie Thornton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stark isn't a believer, but his research is solid and his point is a good one. Too many Christians think their own faith simply "is", rather than understanding the historical, social and political forces that caused it to be what it is today.

[Jeremy]

Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1996. I meant to stop by Stark's office while I was at Baylor, but I never did it.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many Christian apologists argue that the dramatic spread of Christianity around the globe, from its small beginnings, is proof that God is behind the movement. Rodney Stark argues in his book, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries, that there are well-known sociological reasons, which concrete data support, for Christianity's spread.

In his book, Stark presents six main points for why Christianity thrived and continues to grow.

- Christianity offered a better way of life than paganism. It was more attractive because it provided meaning and purpose in life, whereas paganism did not.
- Christianity was more inclusive than paganism, which often excluded women and children.
- Christianity was more individualistic than paganism, which often had people working for the collective good rather than for their own individual advancement.
- Christianity was more other-worldly than paganism, which tended to be focused on this world.
- Christianity was more tolerant of diverse cultures and races than paganism, which was often ethnocentric.
- Christianity had a message of love and hope, while paganism often had messages of despair and darkness.

Each of these six points is important in understanding why Christianity was able to take root and grow so rapidly. None of them have anything to do with supernatural intervention. The sociological proposals that Stark makes are based on observable evidence and trends. Whether or not one believes that Christianity is true, The Rise of Christianity provides a compelling case for why the religion has been so successful.

Stark writes in an engaging and accessible style, making his book enjoyable to read even for those who are not well-versed in sociological jargon. He also provides copious footnotes and references for those who want to explore the topic in more depth. The Rise of Christianity is an important book for anyone interested in the history or sociology of religion. It challenges many of the assumptions that Christians hold about the spread of their faith and forces them to grapple with the uncomfortable possibility that Christianity may not be unique after all.

[Kevin Bessey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although this book is written by a sociologist, I was under the impression that "The Rise of Christianity" would have covered the first few hundred years of the Christian church from a historical perspective. Unfortunately, though there is some historical content, the majority of the book is written from a social science perspective. The book was certainly not written from a Christian point of view .

The chapters that included historical accounts were very interesting and Stark did a great job highlighting the social and ethical impacts that the early Christians made on their communities and civilizations at that time. For example, Stark highlights the multiple accounts where Christians served and took care of the sick and dying during times of plague, whereas many of the pagans and nonbelievers would flee. He also touched on the impact that Christianity had on the family unit and youth in terms of marriage between classes and young girls. Christians stood out in that regard since they treated women very different than the status quo.

Overall, even though there were some interesting points in "The Rise of Christianity", I was left unfulfilled for what I thought this book would be about. I had just finished spending six months going through the book of Acts as part of a weekly bible study at my office and I was excited to jump into a book that gave an early account and perspective for the early years of the Christian church. Sadly this book gave me a scientific perspective on how they thought the Christian church came to be from a non-biblical, mathematical and socioeconomic point-of-view.

Pros: a few chapters that touch on the impact and hardships faced by the early Christian church.
Cons: this was a book written by a professor/scientist that worked to explain away the miraculous - basically removing the faith and belief elements that make much of what the Christian church is about.
Bottom line: very bland and dry through most of the book in addition to unnecessary comments to put the focus on man rather than on Christ.

[Etienne OMNES · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rodney Stark est un sociologue spécialisé dans les religions, qui s'est attelé à faire une exposition sociologique de la montée du Christianisme.
Je dois avouer avoir eu des craintes concernant ce livre: volontairement vulgarisé, par quelqu'un qui n'est pas spécialiste de l'histoire, je craignais que ce livre soit une mauvaise apologétique de l'église primitive.

Et bien non, et ce fut une très agréable surprise. Rodney Stark explique lui-même avoir choisi la vulgarisation pour "que les historiens ne soient pas déboussolés par la méthode sociologique, et que les sociologues ne soient pas noyés sous des références historiques obscures". De fait, c'est une vulgarisation de très bonne qualité, qui ne sacrifie ni la précision, ni la clarté. Il n'a pas débordé de sa sphère de compétence, et c'est bien en sociologue qu'il décrit les mécanismes religieux et sociologiques qui ont favorisé le christianisme, montrant que par dessus la supervision surnaturelle du St Esprit, il y avait eu une préparation naturelle de l'Empire Romain à la réception de l'Evangile. Une très bonne référence, qui éclaire l'histoire de l'église primitive sous un jour nouveau, et très rarement abordé. Je suis devenu plus curieux sur ce sujet après ce livre qu'avant, ce qui est un bon signe de sa qualité^^

Je le recommande à tous, sans réserves particulières.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fine book by Stark. I much enjoyed reading this prequel to his Cities of God. Although the books cover much of the same ground, they are different enough to both warrant reading. Cities of God focuses on why and how Christianity spread where it did; this one focuses on why Christianity found popularity.

The subject is one that has been addressed numerous times. I'm reminded of Gibbons's own list of reasons, having to do with the differing culture of Christianity, but Stark really brings the arguments home from a sociological view. He focuses on such subjects as kinship networks and migration. But he also looks at exactly what appealed. Take, for example, the spread of disease. Christians were more likely to nurse one another (and others); this meant that more survived and that that caring also appealed to those people, Christian or not, who did survive. Christianity gave a better home to women in terms of how it saw women as more equal to men. Christianity gave a home to people in cities who otherwise were often lonely by providing networks previously unavailable. Add to such items as that the more often cited sacrifices of Christians—their willingness to die for the cause, their higher sense of virtue, and one begins to sense that Christianity's conquering of paganism was almost inevitable.

[John Pawlik · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book Stark attempts to account for the incredibly fast spread of early Christianity with modern sociological tools and methods. It is a very interesting read, Stark not being a Christian himself, and delves into what made the Christian faith culturally superior to the then current religious offerings in the Roman Empire. Things such as the advanced social standing Christians offered to women, the Christian response to pandemics, and the benefits of a committed body of people bent on caring for each other.

It also attempts to outline how the Christian introduction of a new set of ethics into a “casually cruel” culture.

I don’t agree with all of his methods, as he communicates religious behavior with “business” language of cost/benefit analysis, but Stark makes a strong case for at least seeing his perspective as an interesting supplement for other ways of thinking about religious motivations and behavior.

[Matthew McGill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent read! This book was nerdy in all the right ways for me. Stark combined math with sociology to describe how Christianity grew to become the dominant religion of the West. While his arguments sometimes leaned a little too heavily on human logic/wisdom (rather than attributing the growth of the church to the supernatural workings of the Spirit!!), they were solid, sound, and defensible.

My favorite chapters were: the role the Jews of the Diaspora played in Christian conversations all the way through the 4th century and into the 5th, the role women played in the early church, the Christian response to epidemics in the Greco-Roman world and the impact that had on the growth of the church, understanding the urban context in which Christianity grew, and his unpacking of martyrdom.

All in all, a GREAT read!! Gosh I love the history of the early church SO much.

[Jay Hatten · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was fascinating. It is written by a sociologist who is looking at the historical days of the early church through the lens of social structures. There were two chapters in particular that were amazing. The first was about the role that epidemics played in the growth of the church. The argument he makes is that the kindness and love of Christians toward themselves and to others during epidemics led to greater survival rates and thus more people coming to faith. I had heard about this chapter early in COVID and that is what drew me to the book initially. The second chapter of interest was suggesting that the way the church treated women in relation to how the rest of society viewed women also contributed to its rise. The remained of the book was also interesting but those two chapters in particular were great.

[Matthew Loftus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating sociological investigation into the rise of Christianity and the (somewhat persuasive) argument that Christianity became as popular as it did because it really formed people who did good for their neighbors.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating.

[Juliana Knot · Rating 5 out of 5]

TRoC is insightful and accessible without giving into the tropes of pop history. Or pop sociology in this case.

The book challenged my priors. I don’t entirely buy Stark’s case that religious conversions are rational choices, like I don’t wholesale accept rational choice theory, but he does the good and necessary work of reminding modern readers that people in the first century aren’t markedly different than they are today.