Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark was an American sociologist of religion, born in 1934, who taught for many years at the University of Washington before becoming Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University and co-director of its Institute for Studies of Religion. He wrote more than thirty books and over one hundred forty scholarly articles across subjects including religion, prejudice, crime and ancient Rome, among them The Rise of Christianity (1996). He twice won the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, for The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation (1985, with William Sims Bainbridge) and for The Churching of America 1776-1990 (1992, with Roger Finke), both examining patterns of religious growth and decline. He died in 2022.