Toto

The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries by Rodney Stark

I should state first of all that I enjoyed the book and found it very valuable, and would recommend it to anyone. While I disagree with many of Stark's perspectives, I found his discussion provocative and informative, and insightful.

Stark states at the outset that he is not a New Testament scholar, nor a trained historian. He is a sociologist who specializes in "New Religious Movements" (also known as "cults" to the unsympathetic - the Unification Church, Scientology, the Mormons, etc). He wrote this book to apply his social science skills to history, but he relies on translations and secondary sources for his basic data. This is not a book that will resolve factual disputes. But it may provide insights in interpreting the data that we do have, in particular the statistics on the growth of the church.

In the current comparative religion - sociology of religion field, Stark is known to his detractors as a "cult apologist." He calls himself an agnostic and does not seem to believe the content of any of the religions that he studies, but he is very sympathetic to his research subjects and to New Religions and religion in general. His evident sympathies have gotten him access to his subjects and also monetary rewards: he has been a paid expert witness in some of the lawsuits that New Religions have filed, and he has been a paid consultant. The question has been raised as to whether this compromises his academic neutrality, the way paid consultancies from agribusiness compromise science, or consulting with drug companies might appear to compromise medical research. Stark brushes off these criticisms.

The NRMs have won most of their lawsuits against deprogrammers, and the Scientologists now own the Cult Awareness Network phone number and files. (The deprogrammers kidnapped the children of mainline religions who wanted to convert to new religions or join cults, and subjected them to counter brainwashing.) The academics like Stark who are favorable to the NRMs are not apologists for the new religious doctrines, but they do provide a cover for the New Religions to continue to recruit and grow, which is all they want – they know that intellectual arguments are not the basis of conversion.

So, when Stark turns his attention to Christianity, he does so from a perspective that apparently dismisses the truth value of Christianity, but still finds value in its history and practices. He spends some time describing what he calls the discredited trend in the sociology of religion to describe religious adherents as "brainwashed" or "deluded". One might wonder what this digression is doing in the book, until you read up on the history of the controversy over brainwashing. (See Brainwashed! Scholars of Cults Accuse Each Other of Bad Faith)

So given this point of view, what does Stark say about Christianity? He begins with the common apologist claim that Christianity's growth in its early years was miraculous. He refutes this with what he calls "simple arithmetic". He crunches the best figures he has on population in the Roman Empire, and calculates that Christianity grew at a rate of ~14% per decade, which is a very ordinary rate of growth for a successful new religion, comparable to the Mormons. There is no need to postulate miracles or the example of martyrs or mass conversions due to the Holy Spirit. (I recall a long thread that Nomad started several years ago, asking the question, wasn't there something extraordinary about the growth of Christianity? We now know that the answer is No.) This rate of growth is consistent with conversion due to social contact, which is how Stark observed conversions happening in his own research on the Moonies.

Stark assumes here that religious conversions in the first few centuries were the same sort of phenomenon as conversions are today. (If the laws of physics were the same in the first century, could the "laws" of human nature be much different?) Stark is famous for the "rational-choice" theory of religion, which treats religion as a consumer product. His own research into conversions by the Moonies, and research by other social scientists, shows that people convert for social reasons, after contact with a proselytizing member of the new religion. They convert primarily because they have loose social ties to their family or other groups and see an advantage in joining the new group; once they are a member of the new religion, they learn a theological reason for converting and may become very passionate about it, but they are not initially converted by the doctrinal appeal of the new religion. (He speaks more about these views in this article in the Atlantic Monthly.)

This assumption fits the evidence of the growth of Christianity. The early Christian church in the Roman Empire was a mutual aid society that provided a lot of advantages for surviving in an alienated and dysfunctional society. Stark argues that the tales of Christian persecution are overblown, and that any persecution of Christians was inconsistent and largely ineffective. A rational citizen of the 1st – 3rd century Roman Empire could well weigh the costs and benefits and decide to throw in his or her lot with the Christians.

In addition to being a mutual self help society, Stark argues that the early church accorded a higher status for women than the Roman pagans did, and it pursued pro-natalist policies (it opposing infanticide, abortion, which was a fairly unsanitary and sometimes fatal procedure in those days, and also birth control). It addition, its members looked after each other during plagues, giving them an edge on survival and providing a good marketing tool for recruitment.

Stark does not credit much of the story of the early church from Acts. On p. 5, Stark writes:

Of greatest interest to the history of the early church, Stark claims that the growth of Christianity occurred primarily among Diaspora Jews. He claims that the mission to the Jews actually never ended (again contradicting the narrative derived from Acts.) I believe that he explores this idea further in Acts of Faith, which I have not read yet. His evidence for this is that it makes sense. Diaspora Jews were marginal enough to be open to a new religion, more likely to be in contact with Christians. This idea explains the persistence of Jewish themes in Christianity and the use of Jewish scripture.

Stark also claims that converts to Christianity were not the proletarians pictured by Marxists, but were probably relatively upper class, relatively well educated, because that was his experience with the Moonies, and those were the sorts of people who converted to the Mormons.

On the whole this seems to be an exercise in fitting facts to the preordained theory, a theory derived from observing conversions to the Unification Church, which is a different institution - a heavily financed effort driven by politics. But it does make sense in terms of human nature.

After thinking about this book, I am concerned about some of Stark's basic assumptions and their implications. He seems to believe that religion is a good thing, almost necessary for a good society, even though he knows it makes false claims. He believes that religion needs a supernatural element to be effective, although he seems to assert this rather than prove it. He appears to favor a version of Plato's Royal Lie – that the common citizens need some supernatural reason to behave or to act for the common good. It is one thing to observe people deciding to join a strange cult, but quite another to brush away any concern over whether there are alternative ways to organize society.

Stark repeats that early Christians were acting rationally in their circumstances, and that religious people are not delusional, as many secular intellectuals imagine them to be. This is true from experience with modern religious people, but what does it really mean? People can be mentally healthy and still do stupid, evil, or self-destructive things, and intelligent people have been known to believe in weird things in general. I think of the recent study that found that Islamic suicide bombers were psychologically well adjusted (reported here:

Early Christians were no suicide bombers, although I don't see how a Christian who longs for martyrdom is practicing "rational choice" any more than a suicide bomber.

I am left with unanswered questions. In particular, why did Christianity Today print a fawning interview with Stark after his later book? Were they unaware of his stated attitudes on religion? Do they agree that Christianity is just a useful lie for organizing society?

Amaleq13

Good review, Toto.

I found the comparison of early Christianity with the Mormon church to be the most interesting aspect of Stark's book. The parallels obviously go beyond just the rate of growth. Early Christianity breaking free of Judaism seems very similar to Mormon and modern Christianity. The specifics of their beliefs are not widely known or understood and their practices are often distorted by the "parent" faith as they become more threatened by the growing competition. You even have a little of the new faith vs government laws with the polygamy angle (recently revived according to today's paper). The biggest missing piece would be persecution but you can find both modern Christians and Mormons who would claim that holds true as well.

Minus the lions, of course.

Aside from the size estimates for early Christianity, though, I didn't see a lot that I would refer to again later. I was glad I checked it out of the library rather than purchasing it. It was definitely worth reading.

Wiploc

Expert witnesses have a right to be paid. They don't have right not to testify (you can force them to testify) but they have the right to be paid if they do testify.
crc

Toto

That's true. But then how do you decide if their testimony has been influenced by which group has the most money? It's not a simple question and I don't pretend that there is a simple answer, or that Stark is automatically to be judged corrupt because he has taken money from religious groups and there are very few atheist groups or skeptical groups lining up to buy his services.

Bede

Toto,

Thanks for that. It is a very helpful review. Stark runs over his thesis in For The Glory of God in the first chapter, but it is well worth hearing another view. In the later book, I really thought Stark was a Christian as he refuses to say in the introduction and later repeats a lot of creationist guff.

Acts of God is about what happens when there isn'y a free market in religion although I expect there is quite a lot of repetition.

BTW, I have now finished For the Glory of God and have ruminated for some time. Although I agree with a lot of what Stark says and he is, as you mention, very entertaining, I fear he is also a very bad historian. This is hardly surprising if he has never had any training but disappointing to me as I wanted a water tight case for the science, witchcraft and slavery questions and he doesn't provide it.

I'm meaning to do a review myself and expect I will not be so charitable as you are.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason