Positions held After completing his PhD, Stark held appointments as a research sociologist at the Survey Research Center and at the Center for the Study of Law and Society. After teaching as Professor of Sociology and of Comparative Religion at the
University of Washington for 32 years, Stark moved to Baylor University in 2004, where he was co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion. and co-wrote the books
The Future of Religion (1985) and
A Theory of Religion (1987) with Bainbridge. Their theory, which aims to explain religious involvement in terms of rewards and compensators, is seen as a precursor of the more explicit recourse to
economic principles in the study of religion as later developed by
Laurence Iannaccone and others.
Criticism of secularization theories Stark was one of the most vocal critics of theories of
secularization. In 1999, he published an article entitled “Secularization, R.I.P.” that became both famous and controversial. He expanded his theory in subsequent works, claiming that statistical data does not support the theory of a decline of religion in modern societies. Although it is true that the forms and practices of religion change, the idea of a decline called “secularization,” Stark argued, derives from faulty quantitative analysis and ideological preconceptions.
On the growth of Christianity Stark proposed in
The Rise of Christianity that
Christianity grew through gradual individual
conversions via
social networks of family, friends and colleagues. His main contribution, by comparing documented evidence of Christianity's spread in the
Roman Empire with the history of
the LDS church in the 19th and 20th centuries, was to illustrate that a sustained and continuous growth could lead to huge growth within 200 years. This use of
exponential growth as a driver to explain the growth of the church without the need for mass conversions (deemed necessary by historians until then) has since been widely accepted. Stark suggested that Christianity grew because it treated women better than
pagan religions. He also suggested that making Christianity the state religion of the
Roman Empire weakened the faithfulness of the Christian community by bringing in people who did not really believe or had a weaker belief. This is consistent with Stark's published observations of contemporary religious movements, where once-successful faith movements gradually decline in fervor due to the
free rider problem.
Criticism of anti-Catholicism While not a Roman Catholic himself, Stark believed that
anti-Catholicism is still a dominant force in the American media and the academia. Particularly in his book
Bearing False Witness (2016), he argued that an anti-Catholic prejudice has poisoned the historical debate on the
Crusades, the
Inquisition and the relations of
Pope Pius XII with
Nazism, creating an "anti-Catholic history" that is at odds with contemporary academic research, yet is still taught in schools and promoted by mainline media.
On the theory of evolution In 2004
The American Enterprise, an online publication of the
American Enterprise Institute, published an article by Stark, "Facts, Fable and Darwin", critical of the stifling of debate on
evolution. Stark criticized the "Darwinian Crusade" and their "tactic of claiming that the only choice is between Darwin and Bible literalism." Though not a creationist himself, he believed that though "the theory of evolution is regarded as the invincible challenge to all religious claims, it is taken for granted among the leading biological scientists that the origin of species has yet to be explained." He suggested that governments "lift the requirement that high school texts enshrine Darwin's failed attempt as an eternal truth." ==Personal religious faith==