"The Rise of Christianity" by Rodney Stark

[p.falk]

One chapter in and .... let's say that this isn't what I was expecting. Stark proposes a 40% growth of Christianity per decade up until the middle of the 4th century. And the reason for the cut off is that by 350 he states that the number of Christians in the Roman Empire would be 33,882,008.

So, there just wouldn't be that rich of a potential convert pool to fish from.

Now, one nice thing is that he completely demolishes the notion that Christianity needed Constantine's Edict of Milan to allow its rapid growth.
He states;

So long as nothing changed in the conditions that sustained the 40-percent-a-decade growth rate, Constantine's conversion would better be seen as a response to the massive exponential wave in progress, not as its cause.

He states that Christianity's growth is not anything miraculous. He denies as being any meaningful factor instances of large group conversions. That given the mundane 40% growth rate you simply don't need those. He uses the spread of Mormonism to add credence to that rate - stating that Mormonism (at the time the book was written) experienced (experiences?) a similar percentage of growth.

He criticizes the notion that people convert to "deviant" religious beliefs because they are won over by the validity of the doctrinal statements of that belief system. By deviant he simply means novel and not enmeshed with the large society's "way".

He states that conversion is driven primarily by your attachment with someone who is already of that faith... and, where your attachment to that person is greater than attachments to others. Here he compares conversion to Christianity along with Moonies converting. Stating how the initial conversions to Moonie'ism was all close family members... spreading out and how,

The rule extends to Jesus too, since it appears that he began with his brothers and mother.

A bit of a jarring first chapter since this book was suggested a few times over.

He's not antagonistic towards Christianity but at one point he quotes Augustine, Ramsay McMullen, and Adolf Harnack all stating how important miraculous, large group conversions were needed to Christianity to spread... only to undermine it in the next paragraph with:

This is precisely why there is no substitute for arthimetic. The projections reveal that Christianity could easily have reached half the population by the middle of the fourth century without miracles or conversions en masse. The Mormons have, thus far, traced the same growth curve, and we have no knowledge of their achieving mass conversions. Moreover, the claim that mass conversions to Christianity took place as crowds spontaneously responded to evangelists assumes that doctrinal appeal lies at the heart of the conversion process - that people hear the message, find it attractive, and embrace the faith.

He finishes that with saying essentially, "no, it's because of interpersonal relationships with those who are already members... little more".

[Doom]

He is a naturalist, what do you expect? Stark also predicted that by the year 2100, the Mormon Church would have 250 million members, but the rate of growth has already significantly slowed, and indeed might even be shrinking.

[p.falk]

Thanks for the information, Doom.

To be honest, when I was making this post I was hoping that you'd reply to it.


One thing that Stark doesn't mention... maybe he get to it: is why Christianity? If it's so dang easy for a belief to spread at 40% per decade... why isn't it happening more frequently?

I just checked, the Moonies have a disputed membership number of 3 million, but again disputed and a quick look shows that many do not trust that number.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I read it. It's written by someone who doesn't know statistics well. He extrapolates off guesstimates of early Christian counts, and only a few data points at that. GIGO.

[Doom]

Thanks for the information, Doom.

To be honest, when I was making this post I was hoping that you'd reply to it.


One thing that Stark doesn't mention... maybe he get to it: is why Christianity? If it's so dang easy for a belief to spread at 40% per decade... why isn't it happening more frequently?

I just checked, the Moonies have a disputed membership number of 3 million, but again disputed and a quick look shows that many do not trust that number.

The book "Mormon America" by Richard and Jean Ostling makes an interesting observation. Every year, the Mormon Church publishes a yearbook that details the number of new baptisms performed by missionaries. In previous years, they also published the number of new ordinations to the "Aaronic" and "Melchezideck" priesthoods. This is difficult to explain, but in Mormonism, ordination to the priesthood is something like the sacrament of confirmation or a Bar Mitzvah; it is the moment that one becomes mature enough to take his place in the church. A male Mormon convert gets ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood approximately one year after baptism.

So the fact that they publish the number of baptisms but not the number of ordinations suggests that the number of ordinations is significantly lower, meaning that there is a high percentage of converts who get baptized, but don't stick around long enough to get ordained. There is probably a very high rate of defection of new converts, and probably also a lot of cradle Mormons who lose interest and fall away before getting ordained. So, the number of alleged members of the Mormon church is probably much higher than the number of people who self-describe as Mormon and are active in the Church.

[Doom]

I read it. It's written by someone who doesn't know statistics well. He extrapolates off guesstimates of early Christian counts, and only a few data points at that. GIGO.

It is generally estimated that by the time of Constantine's conversion, Christians represented approximately 5% of the population. That doesn't sound like 300 years of 40% growth every 10 years.