Audiobooks by Rodney Stark

The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

Celebrated religious and social historian Rodney Stark traces the extraordinary rise of Christianity through its most pivotal and controversial moments to offer fresh perspective on the history of the world's largest religion. In The Triumph of Christianity, the author of God's Battalions and The Rise of Christianity gathers and refines decades of powerful research and discovery into one concentrated, concise, and highly accessible volume that explores Christianity's most crucial episodes. The unique format of The Triumph of Christianity allows Stark to avoid dense chronologies and difficult back stories, bringing listeners right to the heart of Christian history's most vital controversies and enduring lessons.

Rodney Stark (Author), Bob Souer (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome

How did the preaching of a peasant carpenter from Galilee spark a movement that would grow to include over two billion followers? Who listened to this 'good news,' and who ignored it? Where did Christianity spread, and how? Based on quantitative data and the latest scholarship, preeminent scholar and journalist Rodney Stark presents new and startling information about the rise of the early church, overturning many prevailing views of how Christianity grew through time to become the largest religion in the world. Drawing on both archaeological and historical evidence, Stark is able to provide hard statistical evidence on the religious life of the Roman Empire to discover the facts that set conventional history on its head. By analyzing concrete data, Stark is able to challenge the conventional wisdom about early Christianity offering the clearest picture ever of how this religion grew from its humble beginnings into the faith of more than one-third of the earth's population.

Rodney Stark (Author), Bob Souer (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success

In The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark advances a revolutionary, controversial, and long overdue idea: that Christianity and its related institutions are, in fact, directly responsible for the most significant intellectual, political, scientific, and economic breakthroughs of the past millennium. In Stark's view, what has propelled the West is not the tension between secular and nonsecular society, nor the pitting of science and the humanities against religious belief. Christian theology, Stark asserts, is the very font of reason: While the world's other great belief systems emphasized mystery, obedience, or introspection, Christianity alone embraced logic and reason as the path toward enlightenment, freedom, and progress. That is what made all the difference. In explaining the West's dominance, Stark convincingly debunks long-accepted "truths." For instance, by contending that capitalism thrived centuries before there was a Protestant work ethic-or even Protestants-he counters the notion that the Protestant work ethic was responsible for kicking capitalism into overdrive.

Rodney Stark (Author), Bob Souer (Narrator)

Audiobook

Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History

As we all know and as many of our well-established textbooks have argued for decades, the Inquisition was one of the most frightening and bloody chapters in Western history, Pope Pius XII was anti-Semitic and rightfully called "Hitler's Pope," the Dark Ages were a stunting of the progress of knowledge to be redeemed only by the secular spirit of the Enlightenment, and the religious Crusades were an early example of the rapacious Western thirst for riches and power. But what if these long-held beliefs were all wrong? In this stunning, powerful, and ultimately persuasive book, Rodney Stark, one of the most highly regarded sociologists of religion and the bestselling author of The Rise of Christianity, argues that some of our most firmly held ideas about history, ideas that paint the Catholic Church in the least positive light are, in fact, fiction. Why have we held these wrongheaded ideas so strongly and for so long? And if our beliefs are wrong, what, in fact, is the truth? In each chapter, Stark takes on a well-established anti-Catholic myth, gives a fascinating history of how each myth became the conventional wisdom, and presents a startling picture of the real truth.

Rodney Stark (Author), Paul Boehmer (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Triumph of Faith: Why the World Is More Religious than Ever

Everybody seems to take it for granted that the world is getting more secular-that faith is doomed by modernity. Scientists, secularists, and atheists applaud the change; religious believers lament it. But here's the thing: they're all wrong, and acclaimed author Rodney Stark has the numbers to prove it. The Triumph of Faith explodes the myth that people around the world are abandoning religion. In this lively, eye-opening book, Stark marshals an unprecedented body of data-surveys of more than a million people in 163 nations-to paint the full picture that both scholars and popular commentators have missed. He examines why this astonishing growth of religion is happening and what it means for our future.

Rodney Stark (Author), David Drummond (Narrator)

Audiobook

How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

Modernity developed only in the West—in Europe and North America. Nowhere else did science and democracy arise; nowhere else was slavery outlawed. Only Westerners invented chimneys, musical scores, telescopes, eyeglasses, pianos, electric lights, aspirin, and soap. The question is, why? Unfortunately, that question has become so politically incorrect that most scholars avoid it. But acclaimed author Rodney Stark provides the answers in this sweeping new look at Western civilization. How the West Won demonstrates the primacy of uniquely Western ideas—among them the belief in free will, the commitment to the pursuit of knowledge, the notion that the universe functions according to rational rules that can be discovered, and the emphasis on human freedom and secure property rights. How the West Won displays Stark's gifts for lively narrative history and making the latest scholarship accessible to all. This bold, insightful book will force you to rethink your understanding of the West and the birth of modernity—and to recognize that Western civilization really has set itself apart from other cultures.

Rodney Stark (Author), Kevin Foley (Narrator)

Audiobook

God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades

In God's Battalions, distinguished scholar Rodney Stark reviews the history of the seven major Crusades from 1095 to 1291 and puts forth a controversial argument that the Crusades were a justified war waged against Muslim terror and aggression. In God's Battalions, award-winning author Rodney Stark takes on the long-held view that the Crusades were the first round of European colonialism, conducted for land, loot, and converts by barbarian Christians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. To the contrary, Stark argues that the Crusades were the first military response to unwarranted Muslim terrorist aggression. Stark reviews the history of the seven major Crusades from 1095 to 1291, demonstrating that the Crusades were precipitated by Islamic provocations, centuries of bloody attempts to colonize the West, and sudden attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places. Although the Crusades were initiated by a plea from the pope, Stark argues that this had nothing to do with any elaborate design of the Christian world to convert all Muslims to Christianity by force of arms. Given current tensions in the Middle East and terrorist attacks around the world, Stark's views are a thought-provoking contribution to our understanding and are sure to spark debate.

Rodney Stark (Author), David Drummond (Narrator)

Audiobook