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    This article was downloaded by: [88.8.89.195]On: 29 October 2014, At: 02:36Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

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    Rodney Stark's One True Vision:

    retrograde historiography and the

    academic study of religionMichael P. Carroll

    a

    aDean, Faculty of Arts/Professor of Sociology , Wilfrid LaurierUniversity , Waterloo , Ontario , Canada

    Published online: 31 Jan 2012.

    To cite this article:Michael P. Carroll (2012) Rodney Stark's One True Vision: retrograde

    historiography and the academic study of religion, Religion, 42:1, 105-125, DOI:

    10.1080/0048721X.2011.640358

    To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2011.640358

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    Rodney Starks One True Vision: retrogradehistoriography and the academic study of religion

    Michael P. Carroll*

    Dean, Faculty of Arts/Professor of Sociology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario,Canada

    ABSTRACT Although Rodney Stark is best known for his work on religious

    economies, he has recently turned his attention to the social effects of monothe-ism. If we look carefully on the theoretical trajectory evident in this recent work,what wend is a social-evolutionary approach to religion that was prevalent inthe 19th century, but long ago assumed by most academics to be discredited.Furthermore, as becomes increasingly evident going through this series, the par-ticular social-evolutionary sequence that Stark constructs has been shaped by avision of Protestant triumphalism, and a privileging of evangelical Protestant-ism, that also belongs to an earlier time. While it would easy to ignore Starkswork (and the last two books in this series do seem to have been ignored in aca-demic circles), there are reasons (which include the popular appeal of his workand his treatment of Islam) for taking his work seriously.

    KEY WORDS current situation of religious studies; history of religious studies;Christianity

    For nearly half a century, Rodney Stark has been well known to anyone involvedwith the academic study of religion in the English-speaking world. Partly this is

    because his work with Charles Glock in the 1960s, which called attention to impor-tant differences between denominations that were usually lumped together in asingle Protestant category in social-science surveys, is still regarded as founda-tional (Moberg 2008). Partly as well, Stark is known for his work with JohnLoand (Loand and Stark 1965) on the rise of new religious movements, which

    argued among other things that having affective tieswith existing members(i.e., ties based on family relationship or friendship) was typically more importantthan belief in determining who joined these movements. Stark has also wonpraise, mainly from people trained in schools of theology (see for example Bell[2005]) for calling attention to the emphasis on undermining and discrediting reli-gious belief that seems latent in much existing scholarship on religion.

    But for the most part, Starks prominence results from the fact that during the1980s and 1990s he and a variety of associates used rational-choice theory todevelop the theory of religious economiesthat will be familiar to the readers ofthis journal. Although that theory, and in particular that theorys claim that

    ReligionVol. 42, No. 1, January 2012, 105125

    *Email: [email protected]

    ISSN 0048-721X print/ISSN 1096-1151 online/12/01010521 2012 Taylor & Francis

    http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2011.640358

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    religious competition and plurality leads to higher rates of religious participation,has attracted (and still attracts) much criticism, there is no denying that it has beeninuential. Randall Collins (1997) lauded the theory of religious economies as alandmark in the sociology of religion just as works by Weber and Durkheimhad been landmarks in an earlier period. In the same period, Skerkat and Ellison

    (1999) described the scholarly debate over this theory to be the single mostvisible debate in the sociology of religion, and for many sociologists, it still is(see for example Aarts et al. [2010]). Hardly surprising, then, given Starks centralityto that particular debate, and given the continuing visibility of his earlier work(s),that he was elected President of the Society for the Scientic Study of Religionin 2004.

    In that same year (2004), Stark moved from the University of Washington (wherehe had taught for decades) to Baylor University, a private Baptist University inWaco Texas, where he became co-director, with Byron Johnson, of the Institutefor Studies of Religion (ISR). At the ISR Stark has worked with a number of col-

    leagues to produce studies, utilizing contemporary survey data (mainly usingAmerican samples), which demonstrate that evangelicals are not as differentfrom other religious groups as the media suggests; that there seem to be socialadvantages to religious belief; that rational-choice theories continue to explainmuch about religion; etc (see Stark 2008 for an overview of these studies).

    Over the past decade, however, Stark has supplemented his continuing concernwith the theory of religious economies with something else. That something else isa series of books that collectively develop (though I doubt Stark would use thislabel) a social evolutionary perspective that provides an overview of differentworld religions across time and space. What I want to do in this essay is to takea close look at this recent work in order to trace out a troubling theoretical trajectorythat erodes distinctions and conceptualizations that would otherwise be seen asfoundational in the scientic study of religion. More specically, I will bearguing that in what can only be described as an instance of regressive historio-graphy, Stark has increasingly projected a distinctively evangelical version ofProtestant triumphalism onto the historical record that severely distorts thatrecord and that precludes interpretative possibilities that are otherwise quiteplausible. Finally, while it is easy to ignore Starks recent work (and certainlymany scholars have done just that), I will be arguing that there are solid reasonswhy we cannot afford the luxury of doing that. For now, though, lets start at the

    beginning.

    God stuff

    A distinctive feature of Starks more recent work is that beliefs about god havebecome increasingly central to his thinking about religion. In Stark (2001a), forexample, he argued that the sociological study of religion long ago took a wrongstep when Durkheim and the other early functionalists (including RobertsonSmith and Malinowski) dismissed gods as unimportant window-dressing, stres-sing instead that rites and rituals are the fundamental stuff of religion (p. 620).In Starks view, by contrast, at least if we are concerned with the link between reli-

    gion and the moral order (and he was), we have to make beliefs about gods centralto the theories we develop about religion. Very quickly, this emphasis upon the cen-trality of a belief in gods became an emphasis on monotheism specically. InOne

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    True God(2001b) Stark looked at the historical consequences of monotheism(thesubtitle to the book). His core claim was that the exclusive nature of the relationshipthat exists between God and believers in a monotheistic tradition lays the foun-dation for mass mobilization around a variety of issues (like missionization) in away that is far less likely in non-monotheistic religions. Since, he argues (pp. 20

    22), people prefer a god who is rational, responsive and dependable like, well,the God who appears in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions, most of hisdiscussion of mass mobilization in this book involves examples from thesetraditions.

    Stark is clear in noting that the emphasis on exclusivity in the monotheistic tra-ditions can lead to violence, and spends a signicant section of the book discussingoutbursts of collective violence against Jews in both Christian and Moslemsocieties. In his nal chapter, however, in what is clearly a nod to the theory of reli-gious economies, he goes on to argue that under culturally sanctioned conditions ofreligious pluralism, the violence that might otherwiseow from the logic of mono-

    theism can be moderated or even eliminated. And the evidence for this? The experi-ence in the United States.Previous commentators (Alles 2009; Carroll 1996; Simpson 1990) have already

    noted that Starks general theorizing about religion, especially in regard to thetheory of religious economies, has been pervaded and shaped by a distinctivelyAmerican cultural ethos. That trend continues in this more recent work. Forexample, American historians (and Americans generally) have always arguedthat one of the greatest strengths of the federalist form of government developedand instituted by the Founding Fathers was a system of checks and balancesthat divided power among different branches of government, with the result thatno one branch could dominate the other (see for example Henretta, David andDumenil [2006]; Hofstadter, Miller and Aaron [1967]) In the last chapter ofOneTrue God, Stark in effect borrows this checks and balances model from the politicalrealm and makes it one of the great strengths of the American religious system. Thushe argues that civility, that is, a tolerance for other faiths (even for other monotheis-tic faiths), will develop when power is sufciently diffused among a set of compe-titors that conict is not in anyones interest (p. 222). The fact that this structuralcondition prevails among religions in the United States but rarely elsewhere is for Stark why the US has not experienced the sort of religious-violence experi-ences in the Sudan, the Balkans, Mexico (where we are told without citation that Protestant converts still risk being murdered in the more remote villages

    [p. 257]), etc.Given Starks scholarly credentials in sociology, it is hardly surprising that One

    True Godwas well reviewed in sociological journals, and hardly surprising as wellthat most of these reviewers stressed the theoretical continuities with Starksearlier (and highly visible) work in sociology. Mirola (2002) and Johnson (2003),for example, saw many of the arguments in One True God as deriving fromrational choice theory; Ammerman (2002) saw Stark as emphasizing the impor-tance of social networks in promoting religious growth, an argument that hehad made forcefully in his earlier work on the rise of Christianity (Stark 1996).On the other hand, it should be noted that outside of Sociology (and so in areas

    where the cumulative weight of Starks sociological works likely mattered less)Stark tended to be ignored. The American Historical Review, for example, whichhad reviewed Starks work on religion in the early American republic (Finke

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    and Stark 1992) and his work on the rise of Christianity (Stark 1996), ignoredOneTrue God.

    What I want to call attention to here, however, mainly because it is so stronglyrelated to themes that would appear in subsequent books, is a section of Starkslast chapter (pp. 251256) in which he rails against the libelsthat liberal clergy,

    liberal theologians, and writers in the secular press have directed against evange-lical and fundamentalist Protestants. In particular, Stark takes issue with claimsimplying that that evangelical and fundamentalism Protestants are stupid, crazy,ignorant and dangerousand argues that competent social scientists know thatthese [claims] are lies, entirely equivalent to fantasies concerning Jewish conspira-cies or orgies in Catholic convents(p. 254). Although Stark himself mainly cites hisown work in support of this last claim, it is certainly true that since the publicationofOne True God, much evidence has been brought forward that does underminecommon stereotypes of evangelical and fundamentalism Protestant (see in particu-lar Gallagher [2003]; Greeley and Hout [2006]). What needs to be emphasized,

    however, is that in this section Stark over and over again labels the stereotypicalstatements made about fundamentalists and evangelicals to be instances of incivi-lity. In the end, in other words, the logic of his overall argument is suggesting thatnon-believers and liberal Protestants and Catholics (who, remember, are the groupswhom Stark sees as promoting these stereotypes about evangelicals and funda-mentalists) are the real threat to the system of pluralistic tolerance that makesthe US religious system so wonderful. As we shall see, this devaluation of religiousliberals, and implicit privileging of fundamentalist and evangelical Protestantism,is an important part of a message that has become increasingly central to Starkswork.

    Starks next book,For the Glory of God(2003), purports to demonstrate how Chris-tian monotheism was instrumental in giving rise to four historical processes in theWest: (1) the reforming impulse that culminated in the Reformation; (2) the rise ofmodern science; (3) witch hunts; and (4) the eventual abolition of slavery. Generally,this book too was relatively well received, mainly because Stark was seen as onceagain bringing a new perspective on old issues. One reviewer (Petersen 2005), forexample suggested:

    What is most thought provoking about the book is his reversal of Durkheims per-spective on religion For the Glory of God challenges numerous assumptionsabout how religion interacts with society. The book, and its argument, will besubject to much discussion. (p. 410)

    Another (Rios 2004) was even more effusive:

    For the Glory of Godis a deep and fascinating contribution to the sociology of reli-gion. It opens up new research paths. Starks book has the extraordinary merit notonly of shedding light on difcult and complex social issues, but also in establish-ing a powerful link between theory and data. (p. 301)

    Even an historian like Dana Robert (2004), who found Starks argument to be sim-plistic, could compliment Stark for his creativityand could recommend For TheGlory of Godbecause it injects new energy and evidence into old but signicant dis-cussion about the historical importance of religious belief.

    And yet, careful attention to the logic of Starks argument reveals that far frombeing innovative and creative, his argument is really quite old and stale.

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    Thus, very early in the book (p. 40), Stark makes a distinction that is central to theargument he builds throughout the book. This is the distinction between theChurch of Power (more or less, the institutionalized hierarchy of the Church)and the Church of Piety, by which Stark means those who were still committedto the moral vision of early Christianity. He then goes on to argue that over the

    centuries the Church of Power became increasingly corrupt. His evidence for thiscorruption consists almost entirely in a litany of anecdotes detailing the sexual mis-adventures of succession of popes (see pp. 4146). If all this seems familiar, itshould.

    Although Stark routinely emphasizes that he is a social scientist, not an apologistfor any particular religious viewpoint, his account of Christian reform is a fairlystraightforward version of what Carroll (2007: 9395) has called the DegradationNarrative that was for centuries the hallmark of Protestant historiography. Thus,in the Protestant worldview, Christianity was originally a pristine religion, verymuch centered on an interiorized religiosity and concerned with otherworldly sal-

    vation, but over time became encrusted with a number of magical and sacramentalprocesses under the inuence of a corrupt clergy. The great achievement of theReformation (in this narrative) is that it restored Christianity to its initial pristinecondition.

    Although the Degradation Narrative was initially only a Protestant view ofChristian history, it has been projected by proxy onto other traditions. NormanGirardot (2002: 8689, 318319, 590591), for example, demonstrates how this nar-rative was projected onto the study of Chinese religion in the 19th century; PhilipAlmond (1988) has shown how this same narrative shaped the academic percep-tion of Buddhism in Victorian England; and Jonathan Smith (1990) has arguedthat the impulse to construct early Christianity as a pristine, interiorized religionhad long warped and continues to warp the study of the Roman mysterycults with which early Christianity was often contrasted. What Stark has done isto resuscitate the Degradation Narrative by once again making it central to thestudy of Christianity (or at least, to his study of Christianity).

    At least up until the 1960s, the Degradation Narrative was typically paired, atleast in accounts of Christian reform written by historians, with an emphasis onProtestant triumphalism. Central to this view was the belief that the Reformationwas the culmination of reformist movements that had built up slowly but cumulat-ively over the centuries in reaction to clerical corruption and to those encrustations(the worship of Mary and the Saints, pilgrimages, etc.) that had distorted the

    message of early Christianity. In this view of things, the fact that this reformistemphasis gained more and more popular support with each passing centurymade the Reformation itself inevitable. One consequence of this old historiographi-cal emphasis on a slow but cumulative building up of reformist impulse in Euro-pean societies was a historiographical predisposition to focus on individuals andmovements who could be viewed a precursorsto the Reformation. John Foxesmassive, and inuential, Acts and Monuments (1965), originally published in1563, is likely the most well known English language example of this type of Pro-testant literature. In any event, Stark (pp. 5368) mimics Foxe (and other Protestanthistorians) by running through a list of reformers and reform movements (includ-

    ing the Cathars, the Waldensians, the Beghards and Beguines, Wyclif and theLollards, John Hus, etc.) in order to establish that indeed the Church of Pietyhad been trying to achieve a reformation for many centuries (p. 117). By

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    characterizing these groups collectively as the Church of Piety (whose deningcharacteristic, remember, is a commitment to the moral vision of early Christian-ity, p. 40), and giving them a common goal (reformation), he is homogenizingwhat otherwise would be considered a diverse group in order to strengthen thesame impression that Foxe sought to create: the building inevitability of the

    Reformation.Stark is well aware that Protestantism did not triumph in all areas of Europe, and

    he is careful (pp. 103119) to outline the conditions which facilitated or hinderedProtestant success in particular areas. The fact remains, however, that for Stark,as for those earlier generations of Protestant historians who embraced the Degra-dation Narrative and Protestant triumphalism, the Reformation was the endresult of a constantly building, and centuries old, impulse to restore a corruptedChristianity to its earlier pristine state. But Starks resuscitation of the DegradationNarrative and Protestant Triumphalism favored by earlier generations ofProtestant historians is not the only instance of historiographical regression in

    his work.

    Grand ethnography

    Starks recent work also very much resembles the sort of grand ethnography(theterm is from Connell [1997]) that was typical of 19th-century social-evolutionarytheorizing. Thus, although different 19th-century theorists posited differentevolutionary sequences, what all theorists in the grand ethnography traditionhad in common was: (1) a tendency to ransack the historical record for bits andpieces of information that could be used to describe each of the stages posited in

    the particular social evolutionary sequence they favored; and (2) an equallystrong tendency to explain away, or simply ignore material, that didnt quitet the sequence they were promoting. I am by no means the rst person tosuggest the latter. In his review of For the Glory of God, for instance, Robbins(2005) noted that Starks explicit decision to exclude the Peasants Revolt or the Ana-

    baptist movement from consideration in his discussion of Protestant successmakes for a clean and coherent sociological theory, perhaps, but renders suspecthis triumphalist tone(p. 143). But there are other instances in which Stark explainsaway evidence that does not t his version of grand ethnography, and I want todiscuss two of them briey. The rst concerns what might be called the Erasmus

    problemfor Stark.In any number of works, but in particular in Praise of Folly(1971 [1511]) and in

    Pilgrimage for Religions Sake(1997 [1526]), Erasmus was quick to condemn clericalcorruption, popular credulity and a range of practices and beliefs having to do withrelics, pilgrimages, the cult of the saints, etc. and in his discussion of Erasmus (andhumanist reformers generally) Stark (pp. 7579) concedes all this. The problem forStark, given his historiographical emphasis on Protestant triumphalism, is thatErasmus did not break with the Church. How then to deal with Erasmus andhis fellow humanists? Answer: make Erasmus a religious reformer not reallyconcerned with religion. In Starks own words (p. 76):

    However, some, perhaps most of the leading Biblical Humanists of the latefteenth and early sixteenth centuries were probably less than sincere. Theirpersonal faith often seems hollow, their criticisms of the Church and of religion

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    often seem too viciously gleeful, and many of them greatly valued form overcontent These aspects of Humanism snobbery and skepticism wereexemplied by the most famous Humanist of them all, Desiderius Erasmus(14691536).

    Not content to simply label Erasmus as insincere in his religiosity, Stark goes on

    (pp. 7678) to further denigrate Erasmus by calling attention to the fact thatalthough Erasmus had entered the Augustinian order, he requested a dispensa-tion to live in the world and to wear lay clothing; that he earned large royaltiesfrom his writings; and that he was always careful to stay on the good sideof Rome.

    At one level, the suggestion that Erasmus was skeptical and not really religious isnot new; as Cameron (1996) points out (p. 128), it was a charge that Erasmus scritics both Catholic and Lutheran leveled at him in his own time. Still,careful analysis of Erasmuss life and work by modern scholars (see for exampleHalkin [1987]) suggests that while he did seek to avoid institutional entanglements

    and was ruthless in satirizing what he considered superstitions, he was neverthe-less committed to a very individualized type of piety centered on the gure ofChrist and emphasizing interiorized prayer aimed directly to God. Indeed, Mans-elds (2010) overview of Erasmian scholarship over the course of the 20th centurysuggests that one of the hallmarks of this body of work is an increasing appreci-ation of Erasmuss individualized piety and of the t between such piety and Eras-muss dedication to reason, education and pacism.

    Nevertheless, whats most important here is not so much that Stark (once again)shows no awareness of modern scholarship on the subject hes discussing, butrather the sort of religion which Starks critique of Erasmus implicitly privileges.

    After all, Erasmus

    s own critiques

    t well with the Degradation Narrative. So:why then is it so important to Stark to dissociate Erasmus (the individual) fromthe building process of reform that Stark is describing? The answer, I suggest, isthat Erasmus never embraced the sort of high-tension, in-your-face, religion thatin his earlier writing Stark has consistently argued is the sort of faith associatedwith the highest levels of religious commitment in an unregulated religiouseconomy (see especially Finke and Stark [1992]). Erasmuss misfortune, in otherwords, is that although he clearly embraced a deeply interiorized religiosity, hewas clearly not the sort of proto-Methodist or proto-Baptist that he needed to

    be in order to twith the specic notion of reform that underlies the social evol-utionary sequence that Stark is describing. So: Erasmus has to be explained away,

    and he is.My second example involves Starks discussion of the Reformation in England

    (pp. 8792). This discussion proceeds by rst mentioning that the Lollards preparedthe way for Lutheranism; then by discussing how Protestantism entered Englandthrough mercantile links with the Continent; and then by describing the ways inwhich Crown and Parliament combined to initiate the English Reformation(p. 89). Still, when all is said and done, what does Stark see as the major cause ofthe Reformation in England? Simply: it was the great popular appeal of ProtestantReforms (p. 91) in the context of a conict between the Church and the EnglishCrown that had been intensifying for many years (p. 91). To anyone familiar

    with the historiography of the English Reformation, statements like these mustinevitably raise red ags.

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    Up until the 1980s, the prevailing view of the Reformation in England wasindeed a Protestant triumphalist view that stressed as does Stark the greatpopular appeal of Protestantism and widespread anti-clericalism. Starting inthe 1970s, and continuing into the 1980s and early 1990s, however, this viewcame increasingly to be discredited. A number of writers but notably J.J. Scar-

    isbrick (1984), Christopher Haigh (1987, 1993) and Eamon Duffy (1992) brought forward an immense amount of evidence which established fairlyconclusively that popular Catholicism in England was thriving on the eve ofthe Reformation and that earlier accounts had grossly exaggerated anti-clericalsentiment. Very quickly, this revisionist position became the dominant positionamong English historians, with the result that in the same year that Starkpublished For the Glory of God, Peter Marshall (2003) could begin his text onReformation England with:

    Since at least the mid-1970s, historians have regularly observed that the Tudormonarchs were on notably good terms with the papacy; that the English

    Church was almost uniquely fortunate in western Europe with the quality andcommitment of its bishops and clergy; and that English lay (non-clerical)people participated with enthusiasm and sacraments, and poured considerableresources into their parish churches. (p. 1)

    It is difcult to imagine an account of the English Reformation that is so much thepolar opposite of Starks. In an even more recent overview of English historiogra-phy Duffy (2006) notes that the broad outlines of the revisionist account of theReformation has been accepted and absorbed into school and university courses(p. 724) and that the focus of English historiography has shifted to confront theobvious puzzle: if Catholicism was thriving and there was little initial popular

    support for Protestantism, why did England become a Protestant nation? Duffythen goes on to review some of the better-known attempts to answer this question.Starks account of the English Reformation, in other words, was woefully out oftouch with existing scholarship and (yet again) very much a throwback to anearlier era. I should note here that Stark does cite Duffy (1992) in some of his foot-notes which means, I suggest, that Stark ransacked Duffys book for bits andpieces of evidence to support his theory while ignoring the fact that Duffyhimself felt the evidence in his book undermined the very sort of Protestant tri-umphalism that Stark is promoting. Interestingly, the one English historian men-tioned most often by name in the main body of Starks text is A.G. Dickens,

    whose major works appeared initially in the 1950s and 1960s and who in mostoverviews of the revisionist tradition is usually regarded at the last serious propo-nent of Protestant triumphalism.

    Let me be clear: theres nothing amiss in challengingprevailing accounts of anyparticular phenomena, but thats not what Stark did here. He simply and quiteuncritically presents the older Protestant triumphalist view and takes no noticeof the historical evidence amassed by revisionist scholars that attests to the vitalityof late medieval Catholicism in England notwithstanding the strong visibility ofthis revisionist scholarship in all serious discussions of the English Reformationfrom the late 1980s onward.

    In the remainder ofFor the Glory of God, Stark links Christian monotheism to anumber of other events, including the rise of modern science (modern sciencearose only in the West because only in Christianity do we encounter one God

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    who is seen to have created the universe according to immutable principles that canbe discovered); witchcraft persecutions (conict between competing versions ofmonotheism reduces tolerance of non-conforming belief); and the abolition ofslavery (only the logic of Christian monotheism creates the moral predispositionto abolish slavery).

    In theserst two books, then, Stark is advancing nothing less than the claim thatChristian monotheism is responsible for the advance of Western civilization and thesuperiority of Western society over non-Western societies.

    Progress resumed

    For the next book in this series Stark chose a title that makes the social-evolutionaryavor of his argument especially blatant: The Victory of Reason (2005). Basically,Stark devotes the bulk of this book to expanding the list of Western accomplish-ments that he sees as deriving from the logic of Christian monotheism. His subtitle

    is a good summary of what he intends to show: How Christianity led to freedom,capitalism and Western success.And what is it about Christian monotheism thatsets it apart from other monotheisms, like Islam and Judaism? Stark repeats heremuch the same argument he made in connection with the rise of modern science.Basically, according to Stark, the Christian conception of God promotes the viewthat there is always more and more to be discovered about the universe created

    by God, and over time (sometimes a long time!) this impels Christian societiestoward all the things that Stark discusses in this book (technological innovation,progress in high art, capitalism, etc.).

    Here again though, as in his previous books, although Stark has positive things

    to say about Christianity (in general) and Catholicism, the logic of his argumentprivileges Protestantism. This is easiest seen in his discussion of capitalism, asubject that takes up almost half of his text. Stark is at pains to say that unlikeWeber, he does not see Protestantism per se as having given rise to capitalism.On the contrary, he devotes an entire chapter (pp. 103127) to showing thatcapitalism arose in Catholic societies long before the Reformation. Still, in hisIntroduction, he summarizes his explanation of why capitalism emerged only inEurope this way:

    Why did things turn out differently in Europe? Because of the Christian commit-ment to rational theology something that may have played a major role in

    causing the Reformation but that surely predated Protestantism by far morethan a millennium. (p. xiii)

    In other words, and consistent with the argument made in One True God, theimpulse toward progress that is latent in the logic of Christian monotheism ledrst to the emergence of European capitalism and then (centuries later) to Protes-tantism. Phrased differently still, Starks argument privileges Protestantism

    because that argument sees Protestantism as one of the many progressive advances(like Western success; the rise of modern science, the abolition of slavery, freedom,etc.) that have emerged out of the logic of Christian monotheism. Catholicism, inthis schema, is once again just a social evolutionary way station on the road to

    Protestantism.Nor does Stark see the process of religious evolution he is describing to be at an

    end. In the nal two pages (pp. 234235) ofThe Victory of Reason, he rst wonders

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    aloud if modernization is still linked to Christianity and then gives the answer: yes,it is. The evidence? Simply: Christianity is spreading rapidly in non-Westernsocieties. While acknowledging that Christianity might be appealing for a varietyof reasons, one of them, he argues, is certainly that it is a ticket to Westernsuccess. In his own words,

    another signicant factor is its appeal to reason and the fact that it is so insepar-ably linked to the rise of Western Civilization. For many non-Europeans, becom-ing a Christian is intrinsic to becoming modern. (p. 235)

    Although he does make a passing reference to an increase in the number of RomanCatholics in Africa, most of the examples he mentions in discussing the risingpopularity of Christianity in the non-Western world involve Protestant denomina-tions and Protestant traditions.

    The fact that Stark constructs the social-evolutionary process he is describing asongoing raises a theoretical question: what is fueling that process? In other worlds,within the logic of his argument, what is it that draws out and is continuing todraw out the increasing emphasis on rationality and other good things that Starksees to be latent in the logic of Christian monotheism? Nineteenth-century theorists,in constructing their own social-evolutionary schemes, faced the same type of ques-tion. Although none of those theorists was truly monocausal, each did tend to favorone motive element over others as the driving force behind social evolution. ForSpencer, it was population growth occasioned by military conquest and/ornatural increase; for Marx and Engels, changes in the means for production; forDurkheim, increases in moral density, etc. What is it for Stark? The answer tothat question is to be found in the most problematic book in the series wereconsidering.

    Taking God as an independent variable

    Stark beginsDiscovering God(2007) with a simple sentence:Since I was very youngI have often wondered about God(p. 1). He goes on to argue that recent researchinto theorigins and cultural evolution of the worlds great religionsis remarkablyinferior because so few authors could restrain their militant atheism(p. 1). A fewpages later, after briey discussing Augustines position on Scripture, Stark intro-

    duces what will eventually become one of this books most important organizingprinciples:

    This line of thought [Augustine on Scripture] is entirely consistent with one of themost fundamental, yet remarkably neglected, of all Judeo-Christian premises, thatofDivine Accommodation, which holds thatGods revelations are always limited to thecurrent capacity of humans to comprehend. This view is of course, rmly rooted inscripture. (p. 6; emphasis in original)

    Readers can decide for themselves if the principle that Stark is enunciating is trulyas fundamental a Judeo-Christianpremise as he claims. The only point I want tomake is that this principle, though rst introduced simply as a Judeo-Christian

    belief, very quickly becomes (for Stark) nothing less than an explanatory tool forunderstanding the evolution of all religions across time and space. In his ownwords: The principle of divine accommodation provides a truly remarkable key

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    for completely reappraising the origins and history of religions(p. 7) and usingthis key to do just that is what Discovering God is all about.

    Unlike the other books in this series, which are mostly about the things broughtinto existence by the unique logic of Christianity,Discovering Godis almost entirelyabout religion itself. Thus, after the now-familiar discussion designed to establish

    that Durkheim and a host of other earlier theorists had it wrong and that godsare central to what religion is all about, Stark considers a dizzying array of casestudies, including: the religions of ancient Mesopotamia; Mayan and Aztec reli-gion; Roman religion; Hinduism; Buddhism; Taoism, Confucianism and otherChinese religions. In each case, he argues that the historical record is best under-stood using the theory of religious economies. In other words, in Starks reconstruc-tion of the historical record, these case studies establish that: (1) religiousmonopolies promote clerical laxity and low levels of popular participation; (2) reli-gious plurality leads to competition; and (3) high-tension religion sells best.

    Although I suspect that there is much in Starks discussion of non-Christian reli-

    gions that would be challenged by specialists, there is nothing inherently proble-matic in trying to show the universal applicability of what is supposedly ageneral theory. Where Starks argument does become problematic, however, is inthe last quarter of the book (p. 282 ff).

    One of the rst signs that Stark will be developing an argument that is just abitunusual, at least in social-scientic circles, appears in the discussion of miracles(pp. 284285) that forms part of his chapter on the rise of Christianity. He starts

    by noting that some scholars have used the mention of miracles in the Gospel nar-ratives as the basis for discrediting those narratives. For Stark, this is simple ignor-ance (his term) and he goes on to identify two groups here. The rst are thosemilitant atheists (Stark seems never to have met an atheist who wasnt militant)who ridicule miracles on the grounds they are violations of natural law and soimpossible. The second group are those people who see miracles as the mispercep-tion of entirely natural events. He holds little regard for either view. In his ownwords:

    Both approaches to miracles are equally absurd. To make miracles plausible, allthat is needed is to postulate the existence of a God who created the universe,nothing more. Surely a God who created the natural laws could suspend themat will So, was Lazarus raised from the dead? Perhaps, and perhaps not. Butif God exists, hecould have been. Was Mary a virgin? Shecouldhave been. Didthe resurrection occur? Itcouldhave. (p. 285, emphases in original)

    This is a truly remarkable passage. Remember that Stark is not talking here aboutwhat ordinary Christians might believe to make miracles plausible. He is talkingabout the plausibility of miracles, and for Stark what makes them plausible isthe existence of God.

    Much of what remains in this particular chapter reprises and then builds uponarguments that Stark has made in earlier publications (such as Stark [1996])about Roman religion and the rise of Christianity. Basically: Christianity ourished

    because it was a high-tension sect that did well in the relatively open religiouseconomy of the Roman Empire. Naturally, for Stark, Christianity changed whenit became the ofcial religion of the Empire and entered into a monopoly situation.The fact that he uses the heading Monopoly and Decline (rather than, say, themore neutral Monopoly and Change) at the beginning of his discussion of the

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    post-Constantine Church (p. 327) signals to the reader that his account is once morebeing shaped by the Degradation Narrative.

    In Starks account, once Christianity became the ofcial state religion, sons of thearistocracy ooded into the priesthood in order topursue luxury and ease(p. 329)rather than to promote piety. As a result, Christian fervor was allowed to wither

    (p. 329) and a substantial proportion of medieval society failed to attend church atall unless ordered to do so by their lord (p. 329). We also know that when thecommon people did show up in church they often misbehaved (p. 329). As has

    been noted before (Carroll [1996]; see also Sommerville [2002]), the measuresthat Stark has used to measure religiosity (and uses again here), namely, interior-ized fervor and regular attendance at formal church services, rests upon animplicitly Protestant notion of piety that misses much about the lived experienceof Catholicism during the medieval and modern periods.

    In the end, though, Stark like past scholars caught in the rigid grip of an old-fashioned Protestant historiography is concerned with progression towardtruth

    and so it is to the matter of religious truth, in the good old-fashionedsense of that word, to which he turns in his Conclusion. In a section headed Cri-

    teria of Divine inspirationhe rst rejects the idea that all religions are somewhattrue(p. 390). He then poses the question have all religions contributed to the dis-covery of God?(p. 390) and in the next sentence gives his answer: Assuming forthe moment that God exists, the answer must be no(p. 390). Stark then tells us:

    I suggest three criteria by which it is possible to separate faiths intothose that couldreect actual divine inspiration in that they increased our understanding of God, andthose that seem not to have been inspired. (p. 390, emphasis added)

    And what are the three criteria that we can all use to separate the religions of the

    world into those that tell us something about God and those that do not? Therstcriterion,were told, assumes that God reveals himself(p. 390). This means, forStark, that religions whose founders did not claim divine revelation lacked themeans to contribute to the discovery of God(p. 391). The second criterion is con-sistency. Here again, Stark has to be quoted to appreciate the sheer enormity ofwhat he is saying:

    It is all well and good to suppose that God limits his revelations to the prevailinglevel of human understanding, but it is not plausible to suppose that his revel-ations are utterly contradictory. Granted that variations can arise but thereshould still be substantial compatibility among any religions that are based on

    divine inspirations. (p. 391)

    In other words, starting from the premise that there really is only one God out there(up there?), then he (and this one God is always hein Starks discussion) would ofcourse be consistent in revealing his message to people in different cultures anddifferent times. And the third criterion?

    The third criterion is progressive complexity. Ordered as to when they appeared,authentic religions [emphasis added] should reveal an increasingly sophisticatedand complex understanding of God they should form a developmental or evol-utionary sequence. (p. 391)

    Of course the use of a descriptor like

    authenticin this context only reinforces whatshould now be clear: Starks analysis suggests that the God he is describing does

    exist and religions which have a direct connection with this particular God are

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    privileged. In any event, Stark expands on this third criterion by linking it to theprinciple of divine accommodation mentioned in the Introduction. Since Godreveals himself within the current limits of the human capacity to understand itfollows that over the course of history, Gods revelations should progress fromthe simple to the more complex(p. 393).

    Having introduced these three criteria, Stark goes on to quickly order all theworld religions discussed in earlier chapters. The temple religions of Sumer,Egypt, Greece, early Rome and Mesoamerica are quickly set aside, since theyhave no place within the progressive core of inspired faiths(p. 393). Judaism, Zor-oastrianism and Christianity do make the cut, though of course Christianity epit-omizes revealed religion and offers a substantially more complex and nuancedvision of God as is appropriate for a faith that fullls the Old Testament and pre-sents a more comprehensive doctrine of salvation (p. 394). And Islam? Sorry.Allah is too unpredictable and unknowable within the Islamic tradition. ForStark this is regressive, and why would God have sent a regressive message to

    Arab tribes that were in the process of converting to Judaism and Christianity

    (p. 395)? Presuming progressive complexity, then, Stark concludes that it wouldbe inappropriate to include Islam in the inspired core of faiths(p. 395).

    In the end, then, what we have in this concluding chapter is an especially clearstatement of the social-evolutionary schema that underlies all of the books in thisseries. Basically: God exists and he reveals himself to humans throughout theworld according to what they can understand. Religions can therefore beordered on an evolutionary scale depending up how truly inspired they are,with again Protestant Christianity at the apex. In the end, though, what ismost signicant about this iteration of his argument is that it allows us to seeeven more clearly the nature of the Protestant historiographical bias that hasshaped Starks work.

    Thus, for some time now both David Tracy (1981) and Andrew Greeley (2000)have argued that there is a fundamental difference between the Protestant Imagin-ation and the Catholic Imagination. In the Protestant Imagination, the emphasis ison Gods transcendence and so on: the great distance between God and humanity.Within the logic of this worldview, what becomes important is the message thatGod sends to humanity and the ways in which human beings respond to thatmessage. In the Catholic Imagination, by contrast, the emphasis is on Gods imma-nence, that is, on his presence in the world. This in turn gives rise to a predisposi-tion to think about God using metaphors drawn from daily experience as well as a

    predisposition to draw closer to God (or, more generally, to the sacred) by involve-ment in human society (since society is pervaded by the sacred). Starks emphasison a transcendent God who sends messages that progressively reveal more andmore about his intent and nature to human beings would seem to be a textbookexample of what both Tracy and Greeley take to be the worldview that proceedsfrom the Protestant Imagination.

    But theres more: Starks particular take on progressive revelation seems bor-rowed, not just from the Protestant tradition generally, but more specicallyfrom the evangelical Protestant tradition. True, given that most Christians tendto see the New Testament as a divinely inspired advance over theOld Testament,

    the notion of progressive revelation is to some extent shared by all Christians. Theevangelical tradition, however, takes this a step further. Thus central to the evange-lical narrative that developed in the 18th century was the view that God

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    periodically intervened to bring Christians closer to him. These periodic interven-tions, evangelical groups believed, had occurred at Pentecost and during the Refor-mation, and were occurring in their time (Lambert 1999: 2325). Obviously, thecontent of what God reveals at discrete point in human history is different forStark as compared to 18th-century evangelical groups. Thus, Stark sees God as

    revealing more and more about the logic of Christianity; evangelicals were moreapt to stress spiritual awakening and the new birth made possible by an outpouringof Gods grace. My point is only that there is a common emphasis on direct inter-vention from God at well-dened points in history as the force that drivespeople toward a betterversion of Christianity.

    Social science as theology

    IfDiscovering Godseems more like theology than sociology, Stark would likely notdisagree. On the last page of that book, after saying some nice things about propo-

    nents of Intelligent Design, he tells us in the last four lines of the book (p. 399):Why is the universe rational and orderly? It seems to me that the most remarkableretreatfrom reason is to cling to the belief that the principles that underlie theuniverse came out of nowhere, that everything is one big, meaningless accident.

    I am no longer sufciently arrogant or gullible to make that leap of faith. Instead,I nd it far more rational to regard the universe itself as the ultimate revelation ofGod and to agree with Kepler that in the most fundamental sense, scienceistheol-ogy and thereby serves as another method for the discovery of God.

    What Stark is clearly saying here, it seems to me, is that science has led him to thediscovery of Gods nature. The implication is that evidence has led Stark to theconclusions he has reached but that is precisely what has not happened. Onthe contrary, Starks recent work has been shaped by a number of historiographical

    biases that proceed ultimately from a distinctively evangelical Protestant world-view, and these historiographical biases have produced an account of religiousevolution that is more reasonably seen as having been imposed on the evidencethan derived from it.

    The New Triumphalism

    For the most part, Starks most recent book, The Triumph of Christianity (2011),

    recycles arguments presented in earlier books. Thus, the rst third of this latestbook draws heavily on the arguments relating to the growth of Christianity inStark (1996). One interesting difference is that this newer book has more material(pp. 4954) on the person of Jesus Christ himself. Since most of this material isderived from the Gospel accounts, Stark has added a section (pp. 5456) askingBut can the Gospels be trusted, and answering, as you might expect at thispoint, in the afrmative. In later chapters, Stark repeats his arguments linkingmonotheism to the rise of capitalism; the elimination of slavery; the rise ofmodern science, etc.

    Stark also repeats and updates his version of the Degradation Narrative. Thus,

    for example, in a section on Defective Clergy he again excoriates the medievalclergy for their corruption, although this time around he at least moves beyondthe popes by citing Ludwig Pastor (18541928) as saying it is a mistake to

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    suppose that the corruption of the clergy was worse in Rome than elsewhere there is documentary evidence of the immorality of the priests in every town inthe Italian peninsula (Stark 2011: 261). Later, in discussing the forces that led tothe Reformation, he continues to see the widespread immorality and indolenceamong the clergy at all levels(Stark 2011: 322) as central to this process. Indeed,

    so committed is Stark to the Degradation Narratives emphasis on clerical corrup-tion that he seems unaware of inconsistencies in his argument. Thus, at one point(p. 261), for example, he cites the fact that a priest in Southern Italy kept a concu-

    bine, and would not end the relationship because he was fond of his children, as anexample of clerical corruption in the Middle Ages. A bit later, however, Stark(p. 319) lists Luthers call for a married clergy as one of the many organizationalreforms that Luther championed. Allegations of clerical corruption aside, Starkalso repeats the encrustation argument that is similarly central to the DegradationNarrative. Thus, after a discussion of medieval magic, Stark (2011: 272) concludeswith: For the vast majority of medieval Europeans, their religiousbeliefs were a

    hodge-podge of pagan, Christian, and superstitious fragments; they seldom wentto church, and they placed greater faith in the magic of the Wise Ones than inthe service of the clergy. And Stark once again, in several sections, contrasts theChurch of Power with the Church of Piety and once again describes theChurch of Pietys attempts to reform the organizational Church an effort whichculminated in the Reformation.

    Towards the end of this book Stark (pp. 353367) also repeats the argument,developed most of all in Finke and Stark (1992), that religious pluralism (of thesort that emerged in the United States) promotes increased religious participationand that under conditions of such religious pluralism high-tensionreligion sells

    best. Finally, he presents statistics attesting to the rapid growth of Christianitythroughout the world (pp. 389412).

    So is there anything new in this latest book? Not really. And the underlyingreason for this, I suggest, is that within the logic of Starks cumulative argumentreligious evolution has reached its endpoint in Christianity, and in particular, inthe evangelical Christianity that his analysis privileges. Given this, the only thingleft to do is to repeat his theoretical arguments (over and over again) and to docu-ment the inevitable growth of Christianity which is exactly what this last bookdoes. And again, although Stark does provide data relating to the growth of

    both Protestantism and Catholicism, evangelical Protestantism remains the telosof the process he is describing. Consider, for example, how he explains the

    growth of Christianity. Partly, he argues (Stark 2011: 412), as he did in The Victoryof Reason, that Christianity is embraced because of its link with Western modernity.But Christianity is also embraced because of its fundamental message. And what,for Stark, is that message? In his words:

    Like Judaism and Islam, Christianity conceives of God as a transcendent, omnipo-tent, merciful being, who is somewhat mysterious, remote and awesome. Butunlike Judaism and Islam, Christianity also embraces the Son, a very humanand approachable gure adults speak of Jesus having come into their lives,children sing Jesus loves me When Christians seek to convert others, theiremphasis usually is on Jesus, which is facilitated by the fact that the Gospels

    are the story of Jesus.

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    And the fundamental message of the Gospels is that Christ died for our Sins,and hence all who accept Jesus as their Savior will enjoy everlasting life afterdeath. This is the doctrine that forms the core of the Christian appeal and givesmeaning, purpose, and duration to human life. (Stark 2011: 408)

    The emphasis here on having Jesus come into your life; on accepting Jesus as

    your personal Savior; on the Gospels all these emphases link what Stark seesas the essential appeal of Christianity, and central to its triumph, not simply to Pro-testantism but more specically to evangelical Protestantism. The casual referenceto the hymn Jesus loves me, this I know, which has always been especially popularin the Baptist tradition, only reinforces this evangelical emphasis. Basically,whereas Protestant triumphalism used to mean a historiographical tendency tosee the Reformation as inevitable, what is inevitable within the logic of Stark s the-orizing is the triumph of evangelical Protestantism.

    An aside: evolutionary thinking and religion

    It is important to point out that although Starks theory might be criticized for beinglittle more than a warmed-over version of 19th-century social-evolutionary theoriz-ing, this is not to say that evolutionary theorizing has no place in the study of reli-gion. To take an obvious example, Robert Bellah (2011) has recently developed anargument about the evolution of religion that avoids many of the difcultiesimplicit in Starks argument. Basically, Bellah surveys the emergence and develop-ment of religion from the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (roughly, the middle centu-ries of the rst millennium BCE; rf. Bellah [2011]: 266) and argues that we candiscern a developmental sequence. Although Bellah makes use of modern (biologi-cal) evolutionary theory in coming to this conclusion, he is also quite clear inacknowledging the debt he owes to the theories of cognitive development associ-ated with Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner (Bellah 2011: 117).

    Basically, Bellah argues that what is common to the earliest religions (that weknow about) is an emphasis on mimetic behavior, which usually means ritual,and on mythic narrative. He links both of these things (ritual and myth) to par-ticular intellectual capacities which emerged during a process of human evol-ution. He goes on to argue, however, that a number of developments led to theemergence of a new intellectual capacity. This wasthe ability to think analyticallyrather than narratively, to construct theories that can be criticized logically and

    empirically(Bellah 2011: 274). While this new capacity for analytic thought didnot displace the older emphasis on ritual and myth, it did re-shape earliertraditions that had been rooted in ritual and myth alone. Indeed, the last halfof Bellahs book (pp. 265597) is taken up with showing how this capacity foranalytic thought gave rise to four of the great religions of the Axial Age: the reli-gions of Ancient Israel, Ancient Greece, Ancient China and Ancient India,respectively.

    It is too soon to tell if the specics of Bellahs argument will be judged favorablyor unfavorably by knowledgeable critics. The only point I want to make is that hiswork shows how evolutionary theorizing might be used in a manner that avoids

    the difculties I have identied in Starks theorizing. Thus, for example, inBellahs formulation, the motive force driving religious evolution is not direct rev-elation from an evangelical God, but rather the emergence of new intellectual

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    capacities as the result of human evolution. Similarly, although Bellahs scheme(like Starks) does allow for an orderingof religions, the basis for this orderingis not how much a religion approximates evangelical Christianity butrather what intellectual operations have shaped that religious tradition. Finally,although Bellah stops at the Axial Age (though a second book is promised), and

    so does not consider Christianity, his discussion of the Axial Age does not privilegeJudaism over the religions of Greece, China and India, and so I see nothing inBellahs argument that would imply (as does Starks argument) a privileging ofChristianity.

    OK, but so what?

    It appears then that Rodney Stark, at this point in his long career, has embraced aretrograde historiography of religion that very signicantly blurs the line

    between religious belief and the scientic study of religious belief. Ok, but

    so what? Why, in other words, is this anything to be concerned about? Afterall, there seems little evidence that Starks latest works are having any seriousinuence on the academic study of religion. Thus, while the rst few books inhis monotheism series, notablyOne True God andFor the Glory of God, were rela-tively well reviewed and well received in academic journals (see the reviews citedearlier), academic reviews of the later books in his monotheism series are vir-tually non-existent. The scholarly community, in other words, has not paidmuch attention to these later books. Taken at face value, this suggests the oper-ation of a self-correcting process that validates our faith in the scienticmethod. Thus, while it would have been hard to ignore Starks rst few monothe-ism books given his strong association with the very visible theory of religiouseconomies, his work on monotheism became easier and easier to ignore as thereligious underpinnings of his argument became more and more blatant. Soagain: why worry?

    Actually, I think there are several reasons why we need to think carefully aboutStarks recent work and take it seriously.

    First, the struggle to separate the academic study of religion in Western societiesfrom its original religious underpinnings was hard fought and it took decades, ifnot centuries, to achieve such a separation. And even then, that struggle is not com-pletely over. Although scholars like Robert Orsi (2004) have assured us that Protes-tant Christianity is no longer the hidden norm of the academic study of religion, its

    secret telos(p. 399), it is still easy to catch sight of a distinctively Protestant world-view latent in a great many of the supposedly generic measures used by aca-demics to assess religiosity (see the discussion in Carroll [2007] for examples). Inthis context, Starks monotheism series is (dare I say it?) a stark reminder wecannot become complacent about the separation between religion and the aca-demic study of religion. If someone like Rodney Stark, who was for decadessuch a central participant in the organizations and cultural milieu associatedwith the sociological study of religion in the United States, can so easily revert toa 19th-century social-evolutionary framework whose telos is evangelical Protes-tantism then such a worldview is clearly not dead.

    Second, and related to the above, while Starks recent work may not haveattracted support in the academic community, his work has likely reached alarge popular audience. The rst two books in this series, One True God and For

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    the Glory of God, were published by Princeton University Press. While Princetondoes not share exact sales gures, a representative did say (private communication,2011) that each book sold thousands of copies, withFor the Glory of Godselling over10,000 copies not at all bad for books published by a university press. The nextthree books considered here, however, were published as trade books by

    well-known publishers (Random House in the case ofThe Victory of Reason andHarper Collins in the case of Discovering God and The Triumph of Christianity).I have not been able to obtain sales records for these books, but it seems plausibleto suggest that with the distribution networks available to these publishers, salesmight well have been good. Furthermore, sales numbers aside, positive reviewsof his work have appeared in non-academic publications. Writing in the NationalCatholic Reporter, for instance, Turner (2008) tells us:

    Discovering God is breathtaking in its scope. It illustrates not only the amazingvarieties of religious belief that have marked the journey of humankind but alsothe often contradictory variety of sociological explorations of those beliefs. (p. 18)

    Similarly, in the Library Journal Wigner (2007), again commenting on DiscoveringGod, writes:

    Written in an engaging style yet retaining scholarly integrity this work wouldserve well as an introduction to the history/sociology of religion. Recommendedto public, academic and seminary libraries. (p. 77)

    Starks work, in other words, has likely reached a large audience and has been rela-tively well received in some circles. The net effect, I suggest, is thatDiscovering God,and Starks monotheism series generally, has functioned to legitimize in the mindsof many people a retrograde approach to religion that undermines that separation

    between religion and the study of religion and that for many scholars is a necess-ary precondition for insight into religious phenomena.Third, although Starks privileging of a distinctively evangelical vision of God in

    his monotheism books does not necessarily invalidate his work on religious econ-omies, it does lend support to earlier critiques (Carroll 2004) which suggested both:(1) that the theory of religious economies rested upon a distinctively evangelicalProtestant vision of what it means to be religious; and (2) that much of the evi-dence supportive of the theory of religious economies dissipates if we conceptual-ize religiosity in non-evangelical terms. In other words, although Starksevangelical vision may only have become especially explicit in his monotheismseries, it seems likely that that vision has been shaping his work for quite sometime, and so should be taken into account when assessing his earlier and morewell-known analyses.

    Finally, there is one more reason for paying careful attention to Starks recent workand it has to do with Islam. In a book we have so far not considered, Gods Battalions:The Case for the Crusades (2009), Stark takes aim at claims that European Crusaderswere ruthless barbarians who attacked a relatively tolerant Islamic society forplunder and land, and that the Crusader kingdoms were part of a European coloni-alist impulse. On the contrary, Stark argues, the pope (Urban II) who preached theFirst Crusade was part of the Church of Piety; the Crusaders were driven by truepiety; Saladin was not the good guy he is often made out to be in romanticized

    Western accounts; the Crusader kingdoms were relatively tolerant societies com-pared to their neighbors; etc. These same arguments are repeated, in shortened

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    form, in The Triumph of Christianity (Stark 2011: 199234). There seems very little soci-ology or theoretical argument in Starks discussion of Islam, and Renick (2010: 40), incommenting on Gods Battalions, has already made the point that much of theresearch he [Stark] uses to refute the historical accounts of the past generation [of his-torians] is itself over 30 years old.Here again, in other words, just as he did in dis-

    cussing the Reformation in England, Stark reaches into the past for his scholarlymaterials and promotes a vision of history (and historical development) that haslong been discarded by most modern scholars.

    But once more: so what? Actually, Renick (2010) also provides the answer here,noting rst that news sources in the United States today are tailored to appeal toparticular audiences, so that conservative viewers tune in to Fox News for a con-rmation of their judgments and perceptions (p. 38), and then, when discussingGods Battalions, noting that Starks argument provides an account of the Crusadesperfectly tted for the Fox News audience(p. 39). Starks analysis of course dealswith the Crusades, not Muslims and Islam in the modern world. Renicks point is

    only thatGods Battalionscreates an account of the Islamicpastthat reinforces manyof the views and perceptions about Islam and Islamic societies in the present that

    are held and promoted by contemporary conservatives in the United States whosee Islam as intolerant, as a source of violence, and as opposed to Western culture.Here again, of course, there is nothing inherently inappropriate about developing aview of history at odds with most contemporary scholarship. Still, given therampant Islamophobia that pervades our society, can we really turn a blind eyewhen a former President of the Scientic Study of Religion, who for more than40 years has been a leading practitioner in the Sociology of Religion, implies thatreason and science has led him to statements of the I think it inappropriate toinclude Islam in the inspired core of faiths (Stark 2007) variety and who thengoes on to write an account of the Crusades of the sort that appears inGods Batta-lions? I think not.

    Quite the contrary, in todays climate, I believe that academics who study religionhave an obligation to look carefully at any scholarly work that devalues Islam(whether in the past or the present) in order to see if something other than evidenceis driving the argument and to lay bare what that something might be. And inStarks case, the analysis here does indeed suggest that underlying his conclusionsabout Islam is long-standing and distinctively evangelical approach to what reli-gion is all about. Generally, while the corpus of Starks work on religion includinghis work on Islam can and should be taken as an object of study for anyone inter-

    ested in the political and historiographical corollaries of an evangelical worldviewin modern America we must recognize that it is nothing more and nothing less.

    Acknowledgements

    I want to thank the three anonymous reviewers and the editor for their very con-structive comments on the original version of this article; taking their commentsinto account resulted in a better argument and a more clearly written text.

    Michael P. Carroll is Professor of Sociology and Dean of Arts at Wilfrid Laurier

    University in Waterloo, Ontario (Canada). Apart from his early work on mythand folklore, he has published seven books on popular Catholicism in different his-torical periods and cultural contexts. His most recent books includeVeiled Threats:

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    The Logic of Popular Catholicism in Italy (Johns Hopkins, 1996);Irish Pilgrimage: HolyWells and Popular Catholic Devotion(John Hopkins, 1999);The Penitente Brotherhood:Patriarchy and Hispano Catholicism in New Mexico (Johns Hopkins, 2002); andAmer-ican Catholics in the Protestant Imagination(Johns Hopkins, 2007).

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