What has the Reformation ever done for us? A lot less than you might think, as Rodney Stark shows in this enlightening and entertaining antidote to recent books about the rise of Protestantism and its legacy. ‘Rodney Stark takes no prisoners as he charges through five hundred years of history, upsetting apple carts left and right. Almost everything you thought you knew about the Reformation turns out to be a false narrative. . . In future, anyone who makes sweeping claims about the benefits of Protestantism ought to check their assumptions against Stark’s research first.’ Clifford Longley, author and journalist ‘Stark brings the insights of a distinguished sociologist of religion to bear on a range of inherited assumptions about the impact of the Reformation . . . The result makes for salutary reading in this year of commemoration and (not always justified) celebration.’ Peter Marshall, Professor of History, University of Warwick ‘Stark changed the way we think about the early Church…

The religious historian and author of God’s Battalions delivers an accessible and illuminating account of Christianity’s rise in the West. In The Triumph of Christianity, celebrated sociologist and religious historian Rodney Stark traces the extraordinary rise of Christianity through its most pivotal and controversial moments to offer fresh perspective on the history of the world’s largest religion. Stark gathers and distills decades of authoritative research into a concise and highly readable volume that explores Christianity’s most crucial episodes. Stark begins with an overview of the pre-Christian religious landscape before examining how Christianity spread among the Roman Empire’s elite—especially women—and then expanded throughout Europe. Eschewing dense chronologies, Stark delivers a fascinating and often surprising narrative, bringing readers right to the heart of Christian history’s most vital controversies and enduring lessons.

The following historical statements all appear in well-established textbooks, and have become part of our common culture. Which of them would you say are true? * The Catholic Church incited and actively colluded in nearly two millennia of anti-Semitic violence, and Pope Pius XII is still rightfully known as ‘Hitler’s Pope’. * Only recently have we become aware of ancient and remarkably enlightened Christian gospels, which narrow-minded Catholic authorities tried to suppress. * Once in power as the official Church of Rome, Christians quickly and brutally persecuted paganism out of existence. * The fall of Rome and the ascendancy of the Church precipitated Europe’s decline into a millennium of ignorance and backwardness, which lasted until the Renaissance. * Initiated by the pope, the Crusades were but the first bloody chapter in the history of unprovoked and brutal Christian colonialism. * The Spanish Inquisition tortured and murdered huge numbers of innocent people for ‘imaginary’…

An “intriguing” study of how early Christianity caught on and converted much of the world, rooted in archaeological and statistical evidence (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). How did the preaching of a peasant carpenter from Galilee spark a movement that would grow to 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, this book presents startling new 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, Rodney Stark provides hard statistical evidence on the religious life of the Roman Empire to discover surprising facts: Contrary to fictions such as The Da Vinci Code and the claims of some prominent scholars, Gnosticism was not a more sophisticated, more authentic form of Christianity but an…

An award-winning sociologist’s “fascinating and excellent” history of the origins of the great religions from the Stone Age to the Modern Age (Newsweek). In Discovering God, Rodney Stark surveys the birth and growth of religions around the world—from the prehistoric era of primal beliefs; the history of the pyramids found in Iraq, Egypt, Mexico, and Cambodia; and the great “Axial Age” of Plato, Zoroaster, Confucius, and the Buddha, to the modern Christian missions and the global spread of Islam. He argues for a free-market theory of religion and for the controversial thesis that under the best, unimpeded conditions, the true, most authentic religions will survive and thrive. Many modern biologists and psychologists claim that religion is a primitive survival mechanism that should have been discarded as humans evolved—that in modern societies, faith is a misleading crutch and an impediment to reason. Stark responds to this position, arguing that it is our capacity to understand God…

In God’s Battalions, distinguished scholar Rodney Stark puts forth a controversial argument that the Crusades were a justified war waged against Muslim terror and aggression. Stark, the author of The Rise of Christianity, reviews the history of the seven major crusades from 1095-1291 in this fascinating work of religious revisionist history.