Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome [Hardcover]

Rodney Stark (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2006

Cities of God goes beyond an ordinary revision of history by an in-depth analysis of quantitative data. Since early Christianity was primarily an urban movement, the thirty-one cities of the empire having populations of at least 30,000 as of the year 100 serve as the basis for testing hypotheses about the early church. Cities of God demonstrates how quantitative methods resolve many debates about early church history and can lead to the discovery of unanticipated relationships. Where we have traditionally thought Christianity was spread by mass conversions due to St. Paul-s sermons and force of personality, we learn that it-s spread was, in fact, gradual and logical. Whereas many recent scholars want to argue for Gnosticism as a suppressed competing form of Christianity, Stark argues that it was, in fact, a form of paganism and died a natural death from lack of converts. For the first time, a scholar has collected the hard data that challenges the common beliefs about the earliest days of how Christianity spread to become the largest religion in the world.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Contemplating the rapid spread of early Christianity, Lucian the Martyr marveled in the fourth century that "almost the greater part of the world is now committed to this truth, even whole cities." To explain Christianity's remarkable success in capturing the cities of the Roman Empire, Stark deploys an empirical social science that exposes the flaws in previous historical theorizing. By parsing records of church construction, inscriptions on tombs, and names on imperial contract permits, Stark converts plausible conjectures into testable hypotheses about the growth of Christianity in the 31 largest Roman cities. And while some of the statistically validated hypotheses fit within conventional wisdom, others compel fresh thinking. The traditional belief that Christianity spread through mass conversion, for instance, gives way to a numerically substantiated dynamics of person-to-person conversion. And despite recent acclaim for the Gnostics as the true early Christians, the evidence links the Gnostic impulse to dying pockets of stubborn paganism, not the rising new faith. Like Stark's Victory of Reason (2005), this book will spark controversy--the kind that attracts curious readers. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Stark converts plausible conjectures into testable hypotheses about the growth of Christianity . . . this book will spark controversy. (ALA Booklist )

Pairing data with a fresh reading of scripture, this approach provides several surprises. . . . An intriguing read. (Kirkus Reviews )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne (October 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060858427
• ISBN-13: 978-0060858421
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #313,135 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Thorough Statistical Analysis of the Rise of Christianity, June 12, 2007

By 

George R Dekle "Bob Dekle" (Lake City, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome (Hardcover)

A lot of historical scholarship consists of perceiving historical phenomena and then working out plausible explanations for the phenomena. Such explanations are largely untested, but they often become accepted as "historical truth" when they are little more than "just so stories." The example from the final chapter of Schlesinger's "huge upswell" of popular democracy during the era of Andrew Jackson is a case in point. Going back and counting the votes from previous elections shows that the voter turnout in the Jackson era was actually lower than many previous elections.

It is all well and good to devise hypotheses to explain historical events, but they should not be accepted as truth unless they can be tested. Stark undertakes to test a number of historical hypotheses relating to the rise of early Christianity, and does so through statistical analysis. This entails a lot of spadework, but the results are worthwhile.

A lot of Stark's findings validate many of the hypotheses of previous scholarship, and this should lead to no controversy. A lot of his findings invalidate the hypotheses of "cutting edge" Biblical scholarship, and this should mean that Stark's book won't be profiled on prime time television.

Some of Stark's more interesting findings are: (1) Orthodox Christianity, not "Gnosticism" or some other "Lost Christianity" was the original form of the religion. (2) "Gnosticism" was a loopy, lunatic fringe blend of paganism and Christianity. (3) Orthodox Christians did not persecute paganism into oblivion. (4) Pentecost most likely did not result in 3,000 newly baptized Christians, but simply 3,000 wet Jews and pagans. (5) Paul did not invent Christianity and actually had very little to do with the spread of Christianity throughout the Empire. (6) Paul was much more successful in converting Jews to Christianity than in converting Gentiles. (7) Hellenized Jews provided large numbers of Christian converts during the first four centuries of Christianity.

Stark's writing, as always, is entertaining, educational, and thought provoking.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is Rodney Stark the most enjoyable writer of early Christianity?, February 13, 2007

By 

Jeri Nevermind "loves to read" (Idaho) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome (Hardcover)

There are a great many famous biblical scholars, but most of them write narrow, even crabbed, books on narrow, crabbed subjects.

Which is why Rodney Stark is such a breath of fresh air. He ask the big questions, then hunts down the answers using sociology and statistics, not the usual tools of the biblical scholar. In book after book, he wrote en about early Christianity in ways that challenge old stereotypes, and did it in his typically brisk, clear style.

Within the first few pages in "Cities of God" he argues that, "Only monotheism can generate the level of commitment to mobilize the rank and file in missionizing activities" (p 13). And he cites the studies showing how conversion takes place.

Against the usual argument that the power of Christianity came from its promises of eternal life, Start says that the faith spread because of the way it could "provide an antidote to life's miseries here and now. The truly revolutionary aspect of Christianity lay in moral imperatives" (p 30). A breathtaking statement.

Stark also overturns all the usual liberal dogmas about how Gnosticism represents a more authentic Christianity. As Stark tartly notes, Gnostic manuscripts to not denote social movements. On the contrary. "Gnostic writers are known to have gathered only small schools of devotees" (p 143). They were not an alternative Christianity. They were paganism's attempt to paganize Christianity.

This is a well written and well argued book that deserves a wide audience.

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another grand effort by a leading, perhaps the leading, historian of early Christianity, March 8, 2007

By 

Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome (Hardcover)

I am not a Christian, but I am interested in the history of Christianity. Rodney Stark, I've concluded, is probably the leading historian of Christianity and, best of all, he doesn't defend, proselytize. mythologize - he simply describes the history. And, surprisingly, according to Stark, the history of Christianity is a more positive force than many historians want to give it credit for.

Stark takes many contemporary historians, like the late Arthur Schlesinger, for their devotion to personal ideologies than to fact. As an example, Stark thoroughly dissects Schlesinger's misunderstanding of Andrew Jackson's popularity in a Pulitzer Prize winning book.

With that quality in mind, Stark debunks many popular, but apparently false, myths about early Christianity. Factoids: many Roman emperors appointed many pagans to political office during the ascendancy of Christianity in Rome, contrary to the myth that Christians forced paganism out of existence.

The book is rich in historical detail, some of it drawn from surprising sources: the inscriptions on ancient tombstones. The basic theme is that Christianity became an urban religion that ultimately conquered the failing Roman Empire. Another surprise: the larger cities developed Christian populations sooner then smaller cities.

Overall, for any student of history, Stark provides a valuable contribution. There is no overtly religious content in the book, so people with an aversion or animus to religion can read it comfortably.

Jerry