Christian history afresh: 11-16-11

I love good books about Christian history.

So today I'm adding this new book to that category, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion, by Rodney Stark, who co-directs the Institute for the Study of Religion at Baylor University.

It will go on my quite-reachable shelf next to Christianity: A Global History, by David Chidester; Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, by Diarmaid MacCulloch; Christianity: How a Tiny Sect from a Despised Religion Came to Dominate the Roman Empire, by Jonathan Hill; Christianity: The Illustrated History, edited by Hans J. Hillerbrand, and The Lost History of Christianity, by Philip Jenkins. (I have others, but those are the most recent.)

Just about my only complaint about Stark's new book is the title. I wish he had found another word besides "Triumph," which raises the ugly head of Christian triumphalism, an antagonistic, arrogant approach that Christians would do well to leave behind.

That aside, this book is fresh -- at times to the point of surprise -- as well as insightful and quite readable even for non-scholars.

To begin to list this book's strength, let me note that the author clearly understands that Christianity began as a sect within Judaism and that it's anachronistic to speak of a separate religion for decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Yes, Stark sometimes refers to early followers of the Jesus Movement within Judaism as Christians (I would prefer something like "Christ followers," a term that doesn't yet imply a separate religion), but by the time he does that he has set this new Jewish sect within its proper historical context. And he correctly notes the sometimes-harsh push-back first century Jewish leaders gave against members of the Jesus Movement.

Stark also makes the point -- rarely raised anywhere else -- that "the early Jesus Movement was quite a family affair." Which is to say that Jesus's immediate family -- especially his brother James and mother Mary -- played pivotal roles in the movement, as did Jesus's two grand-nephews, Zoker and James.

In other parts of the book, Stark challenges conventional wisdom about various aspects of history, suggesting, for instance, that "some widely held claims about where and why (Martin) Luther's Protestant Reformation succeeded are wrong. . ." He cites various scholars who offer this or that reason for the success of the Reformation, only to note that many of those causes "were as prevalent in areas that remained Catholic as they were in those that embraced Lutheranism."

Perhaps one of the more surprising chapters has to do with the notorious Spanish Inquisition. Stark asserts that not only wasn't it nearly as awful as its reputation but that it "was a quite temperate body that was responsible for very few deaths and saved a great many lives by opposing the witch hunts that swept through the rest of Europe." And he gripes at scholars who don't acknowledge new studies showing just that.

A final note on something I found helpful: Near the end of the book, Stark offers charts showing first the nominal membership numbers of the various world religions. As expected, it shows Christianity with roughly 2.2 billion members, Islam with just under 1.5 billion and Hinduism with just over 1 billion. But then he offers a chart that shows "active membership" in the various religions. The rankings stay the same, but Christianity drops to just under 1.3 billion while Islam slips to 858 million and Hinduism to 580 million.

As as further proof of the secularization of Judaism, membership in that tradition drops in those charts from just under 13 million to 4.6 million.

In the end, Stark draws this reasonable conclusion: "Perhaps the most essential aspect of Christianity that has facilitated its globalization is its remakrable cultural flexibility. Wherever it goes, the faith is adapted to the local culture -- made possible by its universal message."

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WATERBOARDING: A MORAL DIVIDING LINE

Perhaps, like me, you were distressed, though not surprised, that at least two Republican presidential candidates recently endorsed waterboarding, declaring this brutal technique not to be torture. Columnist Frank Bruni properly takes on such nonsense in this insightful piece. After years of work by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, you'd think that presidential candidates, of all people, would move away from Cheneyesque support of a technique that is morally indefensible. But no. In turn, I would judge the defenders of waterboarding as morally unfit for the Oval Office.

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P.S.: My latest National Catholic Reporter column now is online. To read it, click here.