Award-winning author Rodney Stark overturns many prevailing views about the early Christian church by revealing the true story of how it grew from a renegade rural movement into an urban revolutionary force that won over the Roman Empire.

In Cities of God, Stark demonstrates how quantitative research methods can resolve many debates about early church history. While the conventionally held belief is that Christianity was spread by mass conversions due to Saint Paul’s sermons and force of personality, we learn in Cities of God that its spread was, in fact, gradual and logical. Stark also goes against the popular theory that Gnosticism was a competing form of Christianity; he argues that it was actually a form of paganism and died a natural death from lack of converts. For the first time, hard data challenges the common beliefs about how Christianity became the largest religion in the world.

Rodney Stark is professor of Social Sciences at Baylor University. His twenty-six books on the history and sociology of religion include The Rise of Christianity, One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism, For the Glory of God, which won the 2004 award of merit for history/biography from Christianity Today, and The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success.

Stark sets out to provide an account of Christianity’s early rise through the use of data, not speculation … Pairing data with a fresh reading of scripture, this approach provides several surprises … An intriguing read.

– Kirkus Reviews