Cities of God
The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome
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Narrated by:
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Bob Souer
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By:
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Rodney Stark
About this listen
How did the preaching of a peasant carpenter from Galilee spark a movement that would grow to include over two billion followers? Who listened to this "good news," and who ignored it? Where did Christianity spread, and how? Based on quantitative data and the latest scholarship, preeminent scholar and journalist Rodney Stark presents new and startling information about the rise of the early church, overturning many prevailing views of how Christianity grew through time to become the largest religion in the world.
Drawing on both archaeological and historical evidence, Stark is able to provide hard statistical evidence on the religious life of the Roman Empire to discover the facts that set conventional history on its head.
By analyzing concrete data, Stark is able to challenge the conventional wisdom about early Christianity offering the clearest picture ever of how this religion grew from its humble beginnings into the faith of more than one-third of the earth's population.
©2006 Rodney Stark (P)2020 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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In this sweeping narrative, which takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy.
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Very heavy reading
- By Stephen on 08-07-09
By: Robert Wright
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How the West Really Lost God
- A New Theory of Secularization
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- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In this magisterial work, leading cultural critic Mary Eberstadt delivers a powerful new theory about the decline of religion in the Western world. The conventional wisdom is that the West first experienced religious decline, followed by the decline of the family. Eberstadt turns this standard account on its head. Marshalling an impressive array of research, Eberstadt shows that the reverse has also been true: the undermining of the family has further undermined Christianity itself.
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A typical reflection on the most dominant form of American Christianity.
- By Nanci White on 08-30-24
By: Mary Eberstadt
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Not the Impossible Faith
- By: Richard Carrier
- Narrated by: Richard Carrier
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Written with occasional humor and an easy style, and thoroughly referenced, with many entertaining "gotcha!" moments, Not the Impossible Faith is a must-listen for anyone interested in the origins of Christianity. Richard Carrier, PhD, is an expert in the history of the ancient world and a critic of Christian attempts to distort history in defense of their faith.
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Bloody awful audiobook...
- By Amazon Customer on 10-23-13
By: Richard Carrier
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The Next Christendom
- The Coming of Global Christianity
- By: Philip Jenkins
- Narrated by: Robert Feifar
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In this new and substantially expanded Third Edition, Philip Jenkins continues to illuminate the remarkable expansion of Christianity in the global South - in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Drawing upon the extensive new scholarship that has appeared on this topic in recent years, he asks how the new Christianity is likely to affect the poor, among whom it finds its most devoted adherents. How should we interpret the enormous success of prosperity churches across the Global South? Politically, what will be the impact of new Christian movements?
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Be aware that the audio book is an old edition
- By GANC Line on 04-20-18
By: Philip Jenkins
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Jesus
- Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium
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- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
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In this highly accessible discussion, Bart Ehrman examines the most recent textual and archaeological sources for the life of Jesus, along with the history of first-century Palestine, drawing a fascinating portrait of the man and his teachings. Ehrman shows us what historians have long known about the Gospels and the man who stands behind them. Through a careful evaluation of the New Testament (and other surviving sources, including the more recently discovered Gospels of Thomas and Peter), Ehrman proposes that Jesus can be best understood as an apocalyptic prophet.
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I must read for those whose wanting to expand their insight from a single perspective (devotional) to include historical
- By RGO on 11-25-19
By: Bart D. Ehrman
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The Faith Instinct
- How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures
- By: Nicholas Wade
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
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For at least the last fifty thousand years, and probably much longer, people have practiced religion. Yet little attention has been given, either by believers or atheists, to the question of whether this universal human behavior might have an evolutionary basis. Did religion evolve, in other words, because it helped people in early societies survive?
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If you're religious or into religion read this
- By Adam on 08-16-10
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The Chalice and the Blade
- Our History, Our Future
- By: Riane Eisler
- Narrated by: Riane Eisler
- Length: 2 hrs and 52 mins
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Riane Eisler believes that war and the "war of the sexes" are concepts neither divinely nor biologically ordained. Join the author as she reconstructs a prehistoric culture based on partnership rather than domination and traces the roots of the global shift to patriarchy. Eisler, an acclaimed scholar, futurist, and activist, also presents new scripts for living based on a more socially, economically, ecologically, personally, and spiritually balanced society. This script is in direct opposition to the tension and violence typical of what she calls the dominator model. Her vision is the partnership model, which today is struggling to reemerge. This program is an important contribution to that struggle.
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the chalice and the blade
- By Anne on 07-25-08
By: Riane Eisler
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The Story of Christianity
- A History of 2000 Years of the Christian Faith
- By: David Bentley Hart
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Story of Christianity, the distinguished theologian David Bentley Hart provides a broad picture of Christian history. Presented in 50 short chapters - each focusing on a critical facet of Christian history or theology, and each amplified by timelines, and quotations - his magisterial account does full justice to the range of Christian tradition, belief and practice - Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Evangelical, Coptic, Chaldean, Ethiopian Orthodox, and more....
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Great Brief Overview of Christianity
- By James Mikkelson on 01-26-22
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Why You Think the Way You Do
- The Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home
- By: Glenn S. Sunshine
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
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Why You Think the Way You Do traces the development of the worldviews that underpin the Western world. Professor and historian Glenn S. Sunshine demonstrates the decisive impact that the growth of Christianity had in transforming the outlook of pagan Roman culture into one that—based on biblical concepts of humanity and its relationship with God—established virtually all the positive aspects of Western civilization.
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"Christian's view of the western world"
- By Bradley on 03-21-10
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How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization
- By: Thomas E. Woods Jr.
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
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Western civilization has given us modern science, the wealth of free-market economics, the security of law, a sense of human rights and freedom, charity as a virtue, splendid art and music, philosophy grounded in reason, and innumerable other gifts we take for granted.
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Fascinating and informative
- By Michael Kellogg on 09-29-05
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Whose Bible Is It?
- A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages
- By: Jaroslav Pelikan
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences, Jaroslav Pelikan is Professor Emeritus of history at Yale University and past president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This examination of the history of the Bible reflects half a century of study and research by the author. In Whose Bible Is It?, Pelikan traces the transformation of the Bible from its earliest oral traditions to its modern forms.
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Too Verbose Not Enough "Big Picture" Bible History
- By Stephen on 07-05-11
By: Jaroslav Pelikan
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- Paul Adams
- 06-08-20
A coherent, compelling, and challenging account
Stark's work continues to build a strong case, based on quantitative data, for re-examining established myths about the rise and early history of Christianity. He shows how Christianity spread in cities and among the more affluent rather than among the rural poor; Paul's work was primarily among diaspora Hellenic Jews rather than gentiles; polytheism was not tolerant in this period nor monotheism intolerant; Constantine favored a peaceful pluralism and did not try to suppress paganism (whereas Julian was an anti-Christian repressive fanatic), etc. Church Fathers engaged the question of the similarities between Christianity and pagan myths (e.g., Isis) that anti-Christian writers like James Frazer (Golden Bough), centuries later, seized on as gotcha evidence of the former's unoriginality.
On the contrary, the commonalities showed how God gave us all the capacity to discover him. Stark explores this theme in another book, "Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief." But the difference between pagan religions or cults and Christianity are crucial. As in the case of Gnostic heresies, the non-Christian cults were ahistorical myths, unanchored in time or place, but the Judeo-Christian story was one of an historically and geographically particular people developing its relation with God over centuries, a God who progressively revealed himself "at sundry times and in divers places" as the people were ready to receive and understand (something like Star Trek's "prime directive"!).
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- Timothy Wachtstetter
- 08-23-20
Another excellent work by Stark
A little dry and academic in spots; but on the whole, an outstanding work.
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- Stephen
- 08-07-23
Excellent Book
Well thought out and well researched. Great overview of the early Christian church. I'm very pleased that I found this book.
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- Samuel Hudnet
- 02-14-23
Informative, but be ready for dry lists of info
This book is of a definite scholarly nature and parts of it can feel repetitive especially if you've read many of Rodney Stark's other works. Still, it was a great analysis on the growth of the "early" church and offered strong counterpoints to the common narrative of Christianity as an expansionist force that supplanted and suppressed the religions of the areas it spread.
As always, the best thing about Rodney Stark is just how much he pulls from the available historical sources (a huge breadth of datapoints for this one) and from them compiles the most factually accurate picture possible. As a data analyst by trade, I appreciate the immense background work Dr. Stark put into this particular work, though it was far from the most engaging of his titles that I've listened to.
Bob Souer did an admirable job narrating this (what I would consider difficult) work. I'd highly recommend the audio format if you're having trouble getting through it in print, though the one disadvantage is that you can't skim lists of information on audio (just listen at 1.5x during the more info-dense parts).
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