Quotes from Rodney Stark

As the distinguished medievalist Warren Hollister (1930–1997) put it in his presidential address to the Pacific Historical Association, "to my mind, anyone who believes that the era that witnessed the building of Chartres Cathedral and the invention of parliament and the university was 'dark' must be mentally retarded—or at best, deeply, deeply, ignorant.

Nevertheless, this too is a myth. The Catholic Church actually thrives on Protestant competition and is far more successful and effective when forced to confront it.

This is not to say that the Muslims were more brutal or less tolerant than were Christians or Jews, for it was a brutal and intolerant age. It is to say that efforts to portray Muslims as enlightened supporters of multiculturalism are at best ignorant.

The reason so many innovations and inventions were abandoned or even outlawed in China had to do with Confucian opposition to change on grounds that the past was greatly superior.

the truly fundamental basis for the rise of the West was an extraordinary faith in reason and progress that was firmly rooted in Christian theology, in the belief that God is the rational creator of a rational universe.

In fact, when the Egyptians would not export papyrus, parchment (made from treated animal skins) was invented in Pergamum. The word parchment derives from the Latin "Pergamena charta," or "paper of Pergamum.

Until well into the twentieth century there even were legal bans on the sale of Bibles in most nations of Latin America, which led to the widespread belief that only Protestants accepted the Bible.

To sum up: the Reformations resulted in state churches that were even more repressive of individuals than the Catholic Church ever attempted to be. The Reformations did not contribute anything to religious freedom

Women were especially drawn to Christianity because it offered them a life that was so greatly superior to the life they otherwise would have led.

In 2004 there were only 5,116.19 Why? Because they have been replaced by Latin Americans! In many Latin American nations today, native-born evangelical Protestant clergy far outnumber both foreign missionaries as well as local Catholic priests.

Liberation Theology led nowhere because it was neither a revolutionary nor a religious movement, but involved a weak, self-cancelling mixture of each.

This 'shocking realism'52 has often surprised and upset Augustine's readers. But, given the immense authority of the writer, this view shaped Christian political sensibilities ever after: Christian writers could not condemn suggestions for liberalizing the state, or even for dispensing with monarchies. Moreover, by affirming the secularity of kingship the Church made it possible to examine the basis for worldly power and the interplay of rights and rule.

It is not the poor who are joining – persons of all income levels are equally likely to join. Men are almost as likely as women to become Protestants and the unmarried are not different from the married. Young people are slightly more likely than those over 50 to convert.

Thus it was that, beginning in about the ninth century, the growing monastic estates came to resemble well-organized and stable firms that pursued complex commercial activities within a relatively free market, investing in productive activities involving a hired workforce, guided by anticipated and actual returns.

By the same token, Martin Luther's efforts to provide religious education for the German peasants and urban lower classes failed completely because the lessons were conceived by a university professor far more concerned with intricate nuances than with the ABCs of Christian belief – not with simply making people familiar with the Lord's Prayer, for example, but with revealing its subtle implications.

The need for loans often was so great and so widespread that Italian banks opened branches all across the Continent. Although many bishops, monastic orders and even the Roman hierarchy ignored the ban on usury, opposition to interest lingered. As late as the Second Lateran Council in 1139, the Church 'declared the unrepentant usurer condemned by the Old and New Testaments alike and, therefore, unworthy of ecclesiastical consolations and Christian burial'.

DURING THE SUMMER OF THE year 64, the emperor Nero sometimes lit up his garden at night by setting fire to a few fully conscious Christians who had been covered with wax and then impaled high on poles forced up their rectums. Nero also had Christians killed by wild animals in the arena, and he even crucified a few.

Europe's elites, 'the Reformation replaced loyalty to Christendom with loyalty to "nation", and it also replaced Christian identity with national identity'.

And therefore, according as any one is more anxious in demanding a reason, by so much will he be the firmer in preserving his faith.9

Lujo Brentano (1844–1931), who correctly noted that industrial capitalism originated in southern Europe long before the German Reformation and was taken north mainly by Catholic banking firms.

For there is another truth: to the extent that other cultures have failed to adopt at least major aspects of Western ways, they remain backward and impoverished.

Tawney added an additional twist by suggesting that 'nascent capitalism . . . [shaped] Calvinism's attitude to enterprise and the accumulation of wealth, not vice versa'.

Then they calculated the relationship between Protestantism and these measures of industrial capitalism. The results were zero: Catholic and Protestant nations did not differ!

Nationalism' has become a much overused term, subject to far too many and often muddled definitions.