The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

by Rodney Stark

Publisher:

HarperOne

, 2024

Overview

The religious historian and author of God’s Battalions delivers an accessible and illuminating account of Christianity’s rise in the West.

In The Triumph of Christianity, celebrated sociologist and religious historian Rodney Stark traces the extraordinary rise of Christianity through its most pivotal and controversial moments to offer fresh perspective on the history of the world’s largest religion. Stark gathers and distills decades of authoritative research into a concise and highly readable volume that explores Christianity’s most crucial episodes.

Stark begins with an overview of the pre-Christian religious landscape before examining how Christianity spread among the Roman Empire’s elite—especially women—and then expanded throughout Europe. Eschewing dense chronologies, Stark delivers a fascinating and often surprising narrative, bringing readers right to the heart of Christian history’s most vital controversies and enduring lessons.

Product Details

• Title: The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion
• Author: Rodney Stark
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Print Publication Date: 2024
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 515
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9780062098702, 9780062007681, 0062007688, 0062098705
• Resource ID: LLS:9780062098702
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T19:15:29Z

About Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark is the award-winning author of How the West Won, The Victory of Reason, The Rise of Christianity, God’s Battalions, and many other books. He serves as Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, where he is co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion. Stark is the former president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. Before earning his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, he was a staff writer for several major publications. Stark’s books have been translated into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Turkish.