For years, I’ve used Rodney Stark’s book on early Christianity in a theology class and told students that it was written by an unbeliever. It seems that’s not quite true. Stark grew up Lutheran, and has recently discovered that he’s again a Christian. In a 2007 interview with the Italian Center for Studies on New Religions ( Cesnur), he says:
“I have always been a ‘cultural’ Christian in that I have always been strongly committed to Western Civilization. Through most of my career, however, including when I wrote The Rise of Christianity , I was an admirer, but not a believer. I was never an atheist, but I probably could have been best described as an agnostic. As I continued to write about religion and continued to devote more attention Christian history, I found one day several years ago that I was a Christian. Consequently, I was willing to accept an appointment at Baylor University, the world’s largest Baptist university. They do not require faculty member to be Baptists (many are Catholic) and I am not one. I suppose ‘independent Christian’ is the best description of my current position.”
