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, USA where he is co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion. Stark is past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. Before earning his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, he was a staff writer for several major publications. Stark’s books have been translated into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Turkish. He lives in Texas.
"God is not dead. Despite the predictions of academics and liberal
religious leaders, the world is becoming more faith-filled, not
less. . . . [Stark's] real battle, though, is with intellectual
elites of the West, who have been declaring the demise of religion
for centuries and have been advancing a secularization thesis for
decades. . . . Mr. Stark pushes back against the secularization
thesis in several ways. . . . Indeed, religious fervor has taken
hold in many countries where modernity is a settled fact." --Wall
Street Journal"Stark [is] one of the most prominent, respected and
consistently insightful sociologists of religion in the business. .
. . I enthusiastically recommend this stimulating book to religious
leaders and to those generally interested in what's going on in the
minds of people around the world. It has much to offer, not only
for understanding but also, in my judgment, for action." --Deseret
News "Stark's clear writing--he was a newspaper reporter before
going to graduate school--distinguishes him from most academics.
His argument that Christian practice wasn't as common in the Middle
Ages or in eighteenth-century America as we like to think
distinguishes him from some church-oriented historians. The
argument in his new book, The Triumph of Faith, that 'the world is
more religious than ever, ' distinguishes him from 'new atheists'
who seem ready to take a victory lap."--World "If, in fact,
religion is losing its influence--and 72 percent of respondents to
a 2014 Pew Research Center study say it is--most people say that's
not good. . . . But Rodney Stark, who holds the title of
distinguished professor of social science at Baylor University,
says in the new book The Triumph of Faith that 'The End of
Christian America'--so proclaimed by a 2009 Newsweek cover--and
religion's falling influence in the world aren't necessarily so."
--Chattanooga Times Free Press "Reports about the death of religion
in the United States are greatly exaggerated, sociologist Rodney
Stark insists. . . . In a particularly provocative section, Stark
takes issue with the much-reported rise of the 'nones' in the
United States. He cites data indicating the percentage of people
who do not attend houses of worship remains steady, and the
increase in nonaffiliated Americans appears to be drawn from that
subset of the total population. . . . Readers will benefit from
reading Stark's findings and conclusions that defy conventional
wisdom." --Baptist Standard
Praise for Rodney Stark"Mr. Stark is especially adept at
challenging received ideas." --Wall Street Journal"Stark has a
vigorous prose style and a gift for clear explanation." --New York
Times"Stark writes books that are models of popularly accessible
schol
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