IV. Missions, Cultural Capital, and The Rise of Christianity,
Revisited
In The Rise of Christianity you wrote
about how Christianity could be explained without the need for miracles. You followed the upward curve of the
Mormon church and (concluded that) maybe the Christian church did the same
thing. Of course that doesn’t
necessarily mean that miracles didn’t happen . . .
No, of course not!
Have you changed in your thinking about that?
If miracles happened, they
happened! What I’m saying is that
no miracle was required. It was a
pretty ordinary growth rate. By
the way, I’m rewriting that book, and it’s going to be about three times as
long. That’s what I’m doing
currently.
With a different title, I assume.
Well, I think it’s going to be The
Rise of Christianity Reconsidered. And I didn’t know much
when I wrote that book, actually.[1]
When you wrote A Theory of Religion you had about
200 postulates …
Yeah, well, that’s way, way back in
history, and Acts of Faith, as far as I’m concerned, completely replaces it. Acts of Faith is a theory book that is much cleaner and I don’t try to derive everything.
I don’t think I’ve seen that book.
Well, you should. (Published in) 2000, Stark & Finke. It is my fundamental theoretical statement
on all this stuff. Of course
things have happened in these other books, but mostly it's all there ….
People who sat down and did the arithmetic thought that it's pretty
inconceivable that in the time that history provides, that you could have
converted the empire. And what I
was trying to do was put some discipline on those kinds of claims and point out
that actually, a very ordinary growth rate will do it, and you don’t have to
sit here postulating all these miracles. And, you know, somebody went into town and gave a sermon and 5,000 people
jumped up and said, "I'm for Jesus!" It didn't happen that way. At least if it did, that was a miracle because in social science we have
no knowledge of such phenomena.
When you have missionaries going into a tribe like the
Dani in New Guinea or the Lahu in Burma, you do see some pretty phenomenal
growth rates.
Sure you do, once you get a start. Those are really intense, highly
integrated communities. And if you
can get a wedge going, if you can get some people to convert, then I would
expect, because of the intensity of the networks, for the faith to spread really
rapidly.
One of the keys in many cases seems to have been what
you talk about with the "preservation of religious capital"; where people saw
Christianity as a fulfillment of their highest ideals.
Yes! That works, for sure. Yeah, one of the things on this cultural capital that people really miss
– we all see the cultural capital with Judaism. Jews can become Christians and throw away nothing. Add the New Testament they don't have
to throw away the Old Testament. OK, fine. But some of the
things that are said about Christianity as attacks – it sounds very, very pagan
– the virgin birth, the wise men, the star. (Such critics) don't notice the enormous cultural continuity
that has for pagans, who are out there to be converted! And if we accept the whole notion that
God speaks to people in a language they can understand, the whole Christ story
happens that way in many respects – including the blood sacrifice of the
crucifixion – precisely because it speaks so directly, and with such great
familiarity to this whole pagan world!
Justin Martyr picked up on the term "tutors to Christ" …
Justin Martyr says to some Roman, "I
should tell you the story of Jesus because it's a story you're familiar
with. It's like your story."
He couldn't make up his mind whether he thought the
demons had inspired that, or whether it was from God.
This is something that's greatly
overlooked. The rationale of
course, is if Christianity is so plausible, the second people heard about it
and thought about it, they said, "Yeah, right!" That's not the way life works.
[1] Reviewers
nevertheless gave it high marks, including in the Newsweek review that first alerted me to Dr. Stark’s
work.