Cities of God, Rodney Stark
Cities of God, Rodney Stark
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Cities of God
The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome

Author: Rodney Stark

Narrator: Bob Souer

Unabridged: 6 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/26/2020

Synopsis

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 facts that set conventional history on its head.

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.

About Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark is the award-winning author of How the West Won, The Victory of Reason, The Rise of Christianity, God's Battalions, and many other books. He serves as Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, where he is codirector of the Institute for Studies of Religion. The recipient of several awards for distinguished scholarship, he is past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and of the Association for the Sociology of Religion.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rafael on November 13, 2020

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......more

Goodreads review by Aaron on March 17, 2016

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 f......more

Goodreads review by Jon on October 11, 2023

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 tha......more

Goodreads review by Kendrick on January 13, 2025

"It's all about the numbers."......more

Goodreads review by Lynn on March 03, 2014

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......more

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