Christians the word ‘laity’ might mean (Clarke 1984–9: IV,
141–5). The same is true for many Christian groups throughout
the Roman world which appear in the sources, particularly in lists
of bishops at councils in the third and fourth centuries, with no
prior warning of their existence (Humphries 1999: 46–53).
Numbers and variablesNone of this is to say, of course, that historians are not interested
in seeking to explain what is usually called ‘the rise of Chris-
tianity’ (Frend 1984; Stark 1996). There has been considerable
interest recently in trying to plot the growth of Christians by
various means. A major impetus for such research recently was
the publication in 1996 of The Rise of Christianityby Rodney
Stark. He freely admitted that he is no specialist in early
Christianity, or even in the history of the ancient world. He is,
rather, a sociologist who has worked on various modern religious
movements, particularly those that might be termed cults or sects.
Stark used methods developed in his previous researches and
proposed a number of models that could be tested against ancient
evidence in an effort to explain the growth of Christianity. He
applied his scrutiny to topics such as the mission to the Jews,
the reasons why Christians might volunteer to become martyrs,
and the probable numbers of Christians in the Roman empire.
Scholars working in the field broadly welcomed his approach,
albeit with some reservations. Indeed, an issue of the Journal of
Early Christian Studieswas largely devoted to assessing the value
of his work (Castelli 1998; K. Hopkins 1998; Klutz 1998).
One of Stark’s most important contributions was to specu-
late on the number of converts to Christianity in the Roman
empire (Stark 1996: 4–13, 129–45). A similar approach was being
undertaken around the same time by the Cambridge ancient histo-
rian (and trained sociologist) Keith Hopkins in an article that was
published in the Journal of Early Christian Studiesdebate on
Stark (K. Hopkins 1998). Both Stark and Hopkins noted that such
an approach was disadvantaged by the absence of quantifiable
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