Another fine book by Stark. I much enjoyed reading this prequel to his Cities of God. Although the books cover much of the same ground, they are different enough to both warrant reading. Cities of God focuses on why and how Christianity spread where it did; this one focuses on why Christianity found popularity.
The subject is one that has been addressed numerous times. I'm reminded of Gibbons's own list of reasons, having to do with the differing culture of Christianity, but Stark really brings the arguments home from a sociological view. He focuses on such subjects as kinship networks and migration. But he also looks at exactly what appealed. Take, for example, the spread of disease. Christians were more likely to nurse one another (and others); this meant that more survived and that that caring also appealed to those people, Christian or not, who did survive. Christianity gave a better home to women in terms of how it saw women as more equal to men. Christianity gave a home to people in cities who otherwise were often lonely by providing networks previously unavailable. Add to such items as that the more often cited sacrifices of Christians—their willingness to die for the cause, their higher sense of virtue, and one begins to sense that Christianity's conquering of paganism was almost inevitable.
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