November 10, 2011

tothesource: It seems to me that your newest book, The Triumph of Christianity, is not so much a book of apologetics (as the reader might think from the title), but a book that seeks to explain the sociological reasons that Christianity has in fact been triumphant, has in fact become the world's largest religion. Why did you think this kind of book was needed?

Rodney Stark: I thought a book was needed that dealt with important topics usually ignored in histories of Christianity or topics I thought needed a new interpretation.

An example of the first: the Romans persecuted several pagan religions as well as the Jews for the same reason they subsequently persecuted the Christians. Primarily for generating congregations, for organizing followers into focused, separate, committed groups--the Romans feared all such groups. In fact, when Pliny the Younger asked the Emperor Trajan for permission to organize a volunteer fire department in Nicomedia following a devastating fire, the emperor told him no because all such groups eventually "turn into a political club."

An example of the second: the early Christian movement was not based on the poor and down-trodden, but, like most new religious movements, it greatly over-recruited the privileged. There even is significant evidence that Jesus came from an affluent background.

tothesource: You make some rather surprising claims. For example, Christians have always held that the Church should be both universal and unified, but you assert, to the contrary, that its best hope for universality lies in diversity, in a kind of competition among different kinds of Christians. Could you explain? And if you thesis is correct, what of the deep Christian desire for unity?

Stark: Of course Christians desire unity, but the only known mergers have been between groups that were separated by things that no longer were significant (as the Swedish and German Lutherans merged in the United States) or by groups that had no significant doctrinal differences because they no longer believed much of anything. It seems clear to me that the energy that keeps Christianity growing comes from organized disunity, from Christian groups competing for members thereby maximizing the number of people who are successfully reached. Moreover, I think the American example shows that Christian groups can enjoy an adequate sense of unity while remaining organizationally distinct.

tothesource: You make the case that much of what is taught as "history" (e.g., about the "Dark Ages," the Crusades, and the Inquisition)is actually a kind of Whig History as told by hopeful secularists, that is, a history told by those who want to believe that the world is inevitably progressing from religious infancy to secular enlightenment. First of all, how are we being misinformed about the Dark Ages, the Crusades, and the Inquisition, and second, what effect will it have on the West's self-understanding if we get the correct view?

Stark: The primary source of our misinformation about such things as the Dark Ages and the Crusades are anti-religious intellectuals, from Voltaire to Karen Armstrong, who intend to cast the church in the worst possible light. To this has been added generations of British and American historians steeped in anti-Catholicism. To now finally recognize that the Spanish Inquisition was a force for decency and moderation and that played the leading role in suppressing the witch-craze that swept over Europe (but went nowhere in Spain or Italy), is to remove a false 'crime' long blamed upon Christianity. Or to learn that the Crusaders were not a bunch of greedy western imperialists, but sincere Christians, most of whom bankrupted themselves to go, and whose motives were religious and just, is to remove another stain from Christian history.

tothesource: Let's return to the second point. You show that the notion of the alleged "Triumph of Secularism" is simply not supported by the facts. Not only is religion quite vibrant world-wide, but Christianity, the world's largest religion, is growing at an astounding rate, more rapidly than any other. If this rapid growth is primarily through religious competition among Christians, what are the boundaries, if any, to this pluralism?

Stark: I think pluralism is a good thing for Christianity, not only because competition is good for church growth, but because pluralism reflects the capacity of the Christian message to fit so many diverse cultures and conditions---to me that is the truly universal aspect of the faith. Of course there are boundaries--there is no room for notions of Jesus as an alien from outer space. But the real doctrinal excesses beyond acceptable limits of pluralism seem to me not to come from adapting the faith to new cultures, but from 'theologians' within the walls of what claim to be divinity schools---Tillich's definition of God being a prime example. One can as usefully pray to a stone idol as to a purely symbolic 'God."