intent of the first chapter is to demonstrate that this mode of growth, sus-
tained at the rate of 40 per cent per decade, will account for the numerical
“rise of Christianity.” Mass conversion need not be postulated. Adele Rein-
hartz (chapter 9) confirms for the Johannine community Stark’s paradigm
of growth through social networks, not only as a matter of fact but also as
the community’s own recognized mode of increase. Stark uses his famil-
iarity with modern movements such as the “Moonies” with great effective-
ness to establish this principle; but there is also ample evidence, whose
import is not in dispute, among the cults contemporary with early Chris-
tianity. To the student of ancient paganism, Stark’s principle of dissemina-
tion through social networks is very old news indeed.
In another way, however, this evidence from pagan antiquity would
have proved something of an embarrassment to Stark. If Mithraism, to
retain the example, was disseminated through social networks much as was
Christianity, and if Mithraism was likewise in the business of generating
collective religious goods for its members, wherein lies the difference?
Stark (1997, 203–208) offers one further distinction: a radically different
level of commitment. But that is just a deduction from the supposed char-
acteristic of non-exclusive religions: they are geared to private ends; there-
fore commitment to faith and group is neither demanded nor given. As
we have seen, however, the premise is simply false when applied to ancient
cult associations.
Is there, nevertheless, empirical evidence that cult initiates lacked
commitment to their groups? Stark offers none. Thomas Robbins is quoted
to the effect that one was “convertedto the intolerant faiths of Judaism
and Christianity while one merely adheredto the cults of Isis, Orpheus, or
Mithra” (1988, 65 = Stark 1997, 205; italics sic). But Robbins is simply
echoing the distinctions made by Nock in Conversion(1933, 7) half a cen-
tury earlier, distinctions grounded not in fact so much as in lingering
Judeo-Christian assumptions about worthy objects of commitment. These
postulated attitudinal differences are, at bottom, just the sort of unprov-
able “historical psychologisms” that Stark, as a social scientist, properly con-
demns (1997, 200).
How does one evaluate a pagan initiate’s commitment to his or her cult
group and its mystery? They were not tried in the fires of persecution, the
ultimate test. Testifying voices are mostly silent (the sole substantial excep-
tion, Lucius in The Golden Assof Apuleius, while valuable, is fiction), and few
group records have survived. Among the latter, however, is the recently
discovered Mithraic albumor membership list from Virunum, which was
the subject of chapter 8. It is worth a second look here because, unusually,
The Religious Market of the Roman Empire 239