CONCLUSION
Rodney Stark has provided us with a provocative new way to consider why
Christianity grew from a small Jewish sect to an empire-wide religion. As
a sociologist, Stark looks to social factors rather than theological, philo-
sophical, or ideological explanations for a group’s growth. He suggests that
interpersonal relations, such as those seen in care of the sick, were instru-
mental in early Christianity’s growth. Some practical considerations may
also have played a role, such as reduced mortality rates in the group, due
to basic health care (especially after major calamities such as plagues).
As scholars of early Christianity, we may applaud this insight, even as
we question some of Stark’s arguments. Stark’s theories about the attrac-
tiveness of Christianity because of its superior capacity to explain disasters
and the reduction of constraints for pagans entering Christianity during cri-
sis periods are problematical. They reveal an inadequate understanding of
Greco-Roman religion and of the ways in which persons in antiquity
thought and acted. We struggle to find evidence of the role of interper-
sonal relations in the limited data from the period in question. Our sources
(mostly Christian) want to portray the success of Christianity as part of the
inevitable plan of God, due more to divine intent than to human action. In
many texts, it is evident that early Christian writers ignore and even sup-
press the role played by social factors in the growth of Christianity (Theis-
sen 1982a, 175). We have to dig deeply and carefully to find the mundane
causes behind early Christianity’s expansion.
Stark has laid a foundation for further questions that we may address
to the ancient texts. His lack of critical engagement with ancient sources
need not deter us; in fact, it gives us impetus to explore the issue in greater
depth. Avalos (1999, 99–107) suggests that Christianity offered decentral-
ized (in every city) and, at times, mobile (itinerant) health care, which
would have been an inducement for the sick to affiliate with Christians.
R.J.S. Barrett-Lennard (1994) reviews extensive textual evidence of Chris-
tian healing from the second to fourth centuries CE, but does not examine
the social dimensions of the issue.
It seems likely that one reason for Christianity’s growth was the char-
itable activities of its members. Stark concentrates on two plagues as turn-
ing points in the history of the group (and of the Roman Empire). Less
dramatically but more realistically, Christianity in the second to fourth
centuries CElikely grew out of hundreds of opportunities to minister to
the poor and the sick. Charity in the Greco-Roman world was largely at the
discretion of individuals. Rich benefactors who sought to fulfill their role
as elite members of society and gather public acclaim performed generous