which has been applied to the early Christian movement, most notably by
Rodney Stark (1996). In essence, Stark argues, Christianity spread through
networks of family and friends. Intimate social relations (together with
several other factors that, Stark thinks, favoured Christianity over its rivals)
were more likely to influence a person’s religious affiliation than anything
else, including the solicitations of a rabid evangelist. Some aspects of Stark’s
argument are questioned in this book (see Reinhartz, chapter 9; Muir,
chapter 10; Beck, chapter 11), but Stark’s general notion of growth through
networking remains largely unscathed.
If this is true, then, for some people in antiquity, such would have
posed a problem, because their social and religious loyalties did not always
coincide. What, for example, of those who had married someone with other
loyalties? And what of those whose decision to join one group was con-
stantly undermined by nagging ties with their former life? Such cases were
common, and we shall see several examples where social and familial
bonds had a profound effect not only on what people chose to affiliate
with but also what they chose to disaffiliate from. Yet we should note, too,
that the proper recognition of the importance of social ties should not blind
us to the role of individual curiosity and inner impulse, which in some
cases may have been paramount in the changing of religious allegiance.
When we seek to understand religious affiliation, we often call on the
notion of conversion. This is understandable, since a great deal of attention
has been paid to conversion in the ancient world (notably by Nock 1933),
and even more so in the sociological study of religion in the modern world.
That the term “conversion” appropriately describes a handful of famous
examples (Paul, Justin, Augustine, the royal house of Adiabene) need not
be questioned. Yet, in some ways, the notion of conversion is tied to the
notion of mission, and may need to be used with equal caution. It may
have limited value in explaining religious loyalties for all but a handful of
examples (though there were undoubtedly others we don’t hear about),
since many people presumably either accepted the tradition into which
they were born or were persuaded by family and friends to change their alle-
giance without undergoing a dramatic volte-face.Moreover, the notion of con-
version points our attention, rightly, to those things that attracted religious
adherents. It looks at the moment of entry.
There is another side to this, however, on which the present chapter will
focus: the moment of exit. For, if many joined religious groups, some left
them. These defectors or apostates point our attention not to the attractions
of joining but to the attractions of leaving. (The term “defector” is per-
haps less theologically loaded than the term “apostasy,” and I will thus
Rivalry and Defection 53