Rodney Stark's The Rise Of Christianity

Review of Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity
The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark offers a sociological view of the growth of Christianity during the first four centuries A.D. The book provides a new perspective on how Christianity won the West. According to Stark, early church historians and the New Testament itself claimed that Christianity grew in number despite an unsuccessful plight to the Jewish population of Rome. Stark rejects many of conventional claims such as this one, and claims that Christianity grew rapidly because of miraculous demonstrations that drew large numbers of converts. Mr. Stark uses a quantitative approach to explain his theories on how Christians could have gained so many converts without miraculous methods.
He wants the reader to know that he is first and foremost a sociologist, and that his interest in including historical context is non-professional. In his preface, he writes, “I have always been a history buff, but for most of my career I never really considered working with historical materials myself. I was content to be a sociologist and to spend my time trying to formulate and test more rigorous theories concerning a range of topics-most of them involving the sociology of religion”. The Rise of Christianity is a sociologist’s theory on how Christianity became the leading power in the world. Stark wants his reader to know that he is not a historian, but adds historical information to give the sociological figures context. This is why he constantly reiterates that he is writing for a non-professional
He does not address any other possible reasons for making the choice to convert to a new religion such as, connecting with the theology of a religion of which one has no social connections, having social connections in a religious group that are negative, but overlooking this fact to pursue individual growth within a religion, or having equally strong connections to individuals that associate with different religions, but making a choice to convert to a religion based on personal free-will. This main proposition that people only convert when their social connections inside that religion are stronger than connections outside of that religion seems more like one reason out of many, rather than the main proposition to tie in all other information. He makes very clear that his position is that, without strong social connections to members of a new cult, or sect, potential members will not make the rational choice to convert. Within this proposition, there are certainly many underrepresented