Rodney Stark

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Rodney Stark (born July 8, 1934 ) is an American sociologist of religion . He was raised in a Lutheran family in Jamestown, North Dakota . He served in the United States Army and worked as a journalist before studying at the University of California, Berkeley . After teaching at the University of Washington in Seattle for 32 years , he moved to Baylor University in Waco , Texas in 2004 , where he became co-director of the Institute for Religious Studies. He is an advocate of the theory of rational decision in the sociology of religion, which he calls the "theory of religious economy", in which there is also supply and demand.

Stark-Bainbridge theory of religion

During the late 1970s and 1980s, Stark worked with William Sims Bainbridge on a theory of religion. With Bainbridge he wrote the books The Future of Religion (1985) and A Theory of Religion (1987). Today, the theory that explains religious engagement as the reciprocal relationship between rewards and compensation is seen as a preliminary stage for the explicit recourse to economic principles of religion , which Laurence R. Iannaccone and others later formulated.

Theses on the spread of Christianity

1. In the first four centuries, Christianity spread almost exclusively within individual circles of friends and acquaintances along social structures through individual conversions. Personal relationships were the secret of Christian success.

2. Most of the first Christians were not poor, but came from the wealthy middle class, which also enabled and ensured the financing of missionary work .

3. The decisive factor were the women, who then often subsequently won their husbands over to Christianity. Not only were they converted more often, but girls were also in the majority among Christian children, since girls and boys were considered equal by Christians, while pagans killed many girls, which for demographic reasons resulted in an enormous surplus of men.

4. Christianity grew statistically relatively evenly in the first four centuries, so that the search for extraordinary growth factors at certain times is superfluous.

5. Two major growth factors were the higher number of children among Christians, who opposed abortion and child abandonment - especially of girls -, which also included adoption , and their intact family structures.

6. Another essential factor was the social engagement of Christians in times of epidemics and natural disasters , which allowed more Christians to survive than pagans and convinced many pagans to convert to Christianity. Emperor Constantine the Great made Christianity the state religion because it had already spread through conversions to such an extent that he had no choice but to maintain the state unity of the Roman Empire .

7. Christianity did not grow faster after the Constantinian Revolution than before; Accordingly, the view that after the Constantinian turning point, people converted to Christianity en masse, because they hoped for material advantages in this world, is wrong.

In The Rise of Christianity, Stark put forward the thesis that Christianity had gradually spread through individual conversions through social networks of family, friends and colleagues. He compared the spread of Christianity during the Roman Empire to the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 19th and 20th centuries and concluded that sustained and continuous growth led to its enormous spread over the next 200 years have. Exponential growth marks the success of religious communities and churches, not mass conversions.

Stark believes that the Christian faith spread because women were more concerned with it than with Hellenistic religions . The commitment of the Christian communities to the conversion of people of different faiths and fickle people was weakened when Christianity was declared the state religion in the Roman Empire . This is in line with his theses on contemporary religious movements ; According to these theses, once successful faith movements are losing influence because of the free rider problem .

Theses on the theory of evolution

In 2004, Stark published an article in The American Enterprise , an online publication of the American Enterprise Institute , criticizing the alleged stifling of the debate over the theory of evolution . In "Facts, Fable and Darwin" he criticized the " Darwinian campaign" (" Darwinian Crusade ") and its "tactic of claiming", which is only one choice between Darwin and the biblical belief in letters "(" tactic of claiming that the only choice is between Darwin and Bible literalism "). He is not a creationist , but believes that - although" the theory of evolution is an insurmountable challenge to all religious claims - it must be accepted that the origin of the various species has not yet been clarified among leading biologists (" Though not a Creationist himself, he believes that though" the theory of evolution is regarded as the invincible challenge to all religious claims, it is taken for granted among the leading biological scientists that the origin of species has yet to be explained " " ). He suggested that the United States government lift the requirement that high school texts enshrine Darwin's failed attempt as an eternal truth . " ").

Personal religiosity

In the 1987 book A Theory of Religion , Stark and Bainbridge describe themselves as personally incapable of religious faith . In a 2004 interview, Stark was reluctant to speak about his own religious view, but said that he was not a man of faith, but neither was he an atheist :

Interviewer: You once wrote that you're 'not religious as that term is conventionally understood. "
" Rodney Stark: That's true, though I've never been an atheist. Atheism is an active faith; it says, 'I believe there is no God.' But I don't know what I believe. I was brought up a Lutheran in Jamestown, North Dakota . I have trouble with faith. I'm not proud of this. I don't think it makes me an intellectual. I would believe if I could, and I may be able to before it's over. I would welcome that.

" Interviewer: You once wrote that you are 'not religious in the sense that the term is commonly understood."
"Rodney Stark: That's right, although I was never an atheist. Atheism is an active belief; they say, 'I believe there is no god.' But I don't know what I think I was raised as a Lutheran in Jamestown, North Dakota . I have problems with faith. I am not proud of it. I don't think it makes me an intellectual. I would like to believe if I could, and maybe I will be able to before it is all over. I would appreciate that. "

- JKNIRP.com

In an interview in 2007, after Stark accepted a post at Baylor University , he said that his self-image has changed and that he now sees himself as an "independent Christian". In this interview, he claimed that he has always been a "cultural" ( cultural was) Christian who had considered themselves to be "strong Western civilization committed". He wrote of his previous position:

"I was never an atheist, but I probably could have been best described as an agnostic."

"I've never been an atheist, but I might have been best described as an agnostic ."

- Massimo Introvigne : Cesnur.org

God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades (German: God's Warriors. The Crusades in a new light )

Stark's book about the Orient Crusades is based on Islamophobia and has "more to do with a revanchist pamphlet than with serious historiography ," said the FAZ reviewer. "With his crude partisanship [for the Christian crusaders] and his undifferentiated, even irresponsible historical judgments, the author has put his scientific reputation at risk."

Hellmuth Vensky von der Deutschen Zeit was somewhat more objective in his assessment. He named Stark's main argument that the Crusades were a reaction to the Islamic conquest of the southern and eastern Mediterranean . But he also accused Stark of being one-sided, because he idealized the Christian warriors and largely negated their cruelty.

Other press voices such as Deutschlandfunk , ORF and WDR3 reacted far more benevolently to Stark's publication.

Fonts

Stark claims to have published 28 books and 144 articles.

Sociology of Religion

  • Christian Beliefs and anti-Semitism , with Charles Y. Glock. 1966
  • American Piety , with Charles Y. Glock. 1968
  • Police riots; Collective Violence and Law Enforcement , 1972.
  • The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult formation , with William Sims Bainbridge . 1985
  • A Theory of Religion , with William Sims Bainbridge . 1987
  • Religion, Deviance, and Social Control , with William Sims Bainbridge . 1996
  • The Churching of America 1776–1992: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy , with Roger Finke . 1992; 2nd edition under the name The Churching of America 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy . 2005
  • The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History . 1996
    • German: The rise of Christianity. New insights from a sociological point of view. Beltz Athenaeum 1997. ISBN 978-3-89547-713-3
  • Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion , with Roger Finke . 2000
  • One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism . 2001, ISBN 978-0-691-11500-9
  • For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery . 2003, ISBN 978-0-691-11436-1
  • Exploring the Religious Life . 2004, ISBN 0-8018-7844-6
  • The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success . 2005, ISBN 0-8129-7233-3 .
  • The Rise of Mormonism . 2005, ISBN 0-231-13634-X .
  • Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome , 2006.
  • Discovering God: A New Look at the Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief , Harper Collins, New York City 2007, ISBN 978-0-06-162601-2 .
  • God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades , 2009.
    • God's Warriors: The Crusades in a New Light. Haffmans & Tolkemitt, translators: Klaus Binder and Bernd Leineweber. ISBN 978-3-942989-85-5
  • The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion , 2011, ISBN 0-06-200768-8 .
  • How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity , 2014, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, ISBN 1-61017-085-7 .
  • America's Blessings: How Religion Benefits Everyone, Including Atheists , 2012, Templeton Foundation Pr, ISBN 978-1599474120 .
  • Reformation Myths: Five Centuries of Misconceptions and (Some) Misfortunes , 2017, Spck Publishing, ISBN 978-0281078271 .
  • Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History , 2017, Templeton Foundation Pr, ISBN 978-1599475363 .

General sociology

  • Sociology . 1985. An introductory college sociology text that has been through ten editions as of 2007.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stark, Rodney . In: William H. Swatos, Jr. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Religion and Society . AltaMira Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-7619-8956-1 ( hirr.hartsem.edu [accessed March 5, 2007]).
  2. ^ Alan E. Aldridge: Religion in the contemporary world: a sociological introduction . Wiley-Blackwell, 2000, ISBN 978-0-7456-2083-1 , pp. 95-97 ( books.google.com [accessed December 4, 2010]).
  3. ^ David Lehmann: Rational Choice and the Sociology of Religion . In: Bryan S. Turner (Ed.): The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion. (= Blackwell companions to sociology. ) Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester (West Sussex) / Malden MA 2010, ISBN 978-1-4051-8852-4 , chapter 8, pp. 181-200.
  4. ↑ Thomas Schirrmacher: Theses on the rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark. November 30, 2012 ( Memento of the original from September 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thomasschirrmacher.info
  5. ^ Welcome to The American Enterprise. In: AboutUs.org. Retrieved October 28, 2013 .
  6. ↑ Rodney Stark: Fact, Fable, and Darwin. In: The American Enterprise Online. American Enterprise Institute, September 2004, archived from the original on August 3, 2004 ; accessed on October 31, 2013 (English).
  7. ↑ Bryan S. Turner (Ed.): The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion . John Wiley & Sons, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4051-8852-4 , pp. 183 ( online in Google Book Search [accessed October 28, 2013]).
  8. ^ A Double Take on Early Christianity - An Interview with Rodney Stark. In: JKNIRP.com. The National Institute for the Renewal of the Priesthood, July 22, 2004, accessed October 21, 2013 .
  9. ^ Massimo Introvigne: A Christmas Conversation with Rodney Stark. In: Cesnur.org. CESNUR - Center for Studies in New Religions, December 25, 2007, accessed October 25, 2013 .
  10. ^ Borg, Avengers before Jerusalem, in: FAZ, August 2, 2013, p. 32.
  11. ↑ Hellmuth Vensky: Were the Crusades self-defense? Crusaders are considered fanatical barbarians. The picture is wrong, writes the US sociologist Rodney Stark in a book. His bold thesis: Islam provoked. Zeitonline, Hamburg May 17, 2013
  12. ↑ http://haffmans-tolkemitt.de/programm/rodney-stark-gottes-krieger/
  13. ↑ Curriculum Vitae ( Memento of the original from April 26, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.baylor.edu
personal data
SURNAME Strong, Rodney
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sociologist of religion
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1934