Quotes by Rodney Stark

About Rodney Stark:

Rodney William Stark is an American sociologist of religion. He is Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, co-director of the university's Institute for Studies of Religion, and founding editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The more members of the clergy that are out there working to expand their congregations, the more people will go to church.

Rodney Stark

Wherever you've got a state church, you have empty churches.

Rodney Stark

A whole lot of Americans have never met a Mormon.

Rodney Stark

Most churches are run by preachers who went to seminaries, who decided to be preachers when they were 18, 19, 20 years old. These preachers never met a payroll. They don't know how the world works.

Rodney Stark

There was only one decline in church attendance, and that was in the late 1960s when the Vatican said it was not a sin to miss Mass. They said Catholics could act like Protestants, and so they did.

Rodney Stark

Those who belong to megachurches display as high a level of personal commitment as do those who attend small congregations.

Rodney Stark

Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read, and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls.

Rodney Stark

America is an unusually religious nation.

Rodney Stark

For one, thing, the media are dominated by the irreligious. So are universities.

Rodney Stark

Theology is in disrepute among most Western intellectuals. The word is taken to mean a passe form of religious thinking that embraces irrationality and dogmatism. So too, Scholasticism.

Rodney Stark

Leading Christian theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas were not what today might be called 'strict constructionists.' Rather, they celebrated reason as the means to gain greater insight into divine intentions.

Rodney Stark

Not only were science and religion compatible, they were inseparable--the rise of science was achieved by deeply religious Christian scholars.

Rodney Stark

Because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles. These were the crucial ideas that explain wh...

Rodney Stark

Slavery ended in medieval Europe only because the church extended its sacraments to all slaves and then managed to impose a ban on the enslavement of Christians (and of Jews). Within the context of medieval Europe, that prohibition was effectively a ...

Rodney Stark

That new technologies and techniques would be forthcoming was a fundamental article of Christian faith. Hence, no bishops or theologians denounced clocks or sailing ships--although both were condemned on religious grounds in various non-Western socie...

Rodney Stark

Because God is a rational being and the universe is his personal creation, it necessarily has a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting increased human comprehension. This is the key to many intellectual undertakings, among them, the rise of sci...

Rodney Stark

Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and the impoverished, Christianity offered charity as we...

Rodney Stark

The Christian image of God is that of a rational being who believes in human progress.

Rodney Stark

Theology necessitates an image of God as a conscious, rational, supernatural being of unlimited power and scope who cares about humans and imposes moral codes and responsibilities upon them, thereby generating serious intellectual questions such as: ...

Rodney Stark

The Christian image of God is that of a rational being who believes in human progress, more fully revealing himself as humans gain the capacity to better understand.

Rodney Stark

Author Bio

  • NameRodney Stark
  • DescriptionAmerican sociologist of religion
  • BornJuly 8, 1934
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Sociologist