Reconstructing the Rise of Christianity: The Role of Women Author(s): Rodney Stark Source: Sociology of Religion, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 229-244 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3711820 . Accessed: 12/11/2014 19:00 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Oxford University Press and Association for the Sociology of Religion, Inc. are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sociology of Religion. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 132.239.54.173 on Wed, 12 Nov 2014 19:00:13 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Sociologyof Religion 1995, 56:3 229-244 The 1994 Paul Hanly FurfeyLecture Reconstructingthe Rise ofChristianity: The Role ofWomen RodneyStarkt UniversityofWashington Modernand ancient historians agree that women were especially responsive tothe early ChrisS tianmovement. Italso is agreed that women were accorded considerably higher status within Chris- tiancircles than itl thesurrouring pagan societies. In thisessay I firstexplain how these two aspects ofthe early church were connected. Then I explainhow an excessof women in the Christian subculS tures,combined with a greatexcess of males in the world around thems would have resulted ina subS stantialrate of intermamage. Firully, I show how this would have maintained early Chnstianity as an opennetwork thereby able to sustain the attachments tonon-members needed for continued growth. Intermittentlyduring the past few years I have utilized social scientific theo- riesand methods toattempt toreconstruct therise of Christianity. Mygoal is to gaina fundamentalunderstanding ofhow it all came about toexplain how a tinyand obscure messianic movement from the edge of the Roman Empire dis- lodgedclassical paganism and became the dominant faith of Western Civiliza- tion.There is no single answer to why Christianity succeeded; a whole series of factorswere involved. l hope soon to complete an integratedreconstruction of at leastthe most important ofthese factors, but meanwhile I have been pubS lishingportions of the larger project as I go along(Stark 1992, l991a, l991b, 1987,1986a, 1986b). Today's 1994 Paul Hanly Furfey Lecture continues this process.In itI shallsuggest that gender holds one of the answers to howit was done thatwomen played a critical role in the rise of Christianity. However,before any useful social scientific work can proceed on the ques- tionof how it all came about, it first isnecessary toeliminate the oldest and still- dominantexplanation that the Greco-Roman world was saved by mass con- versionsinresponse topublic preaching and miracle working. From earliest days, massconversions have been central to the Christian story: Crowds have gath- ered,listened, marveled, and been saved. Thus Acts 2:41 reports that after Peter preachedto a multitude"there were added that day about three thousand souls." t Directall carresponinceto Rodney Stark, Universiry ofWashington DK40, Seattle,WA 98195. 229 This content downloaded from 132.239.54.173 on Wed, 12 Nov 2014 19:00:13 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 230 SOCIOLOGYOF RELIGION Writingin about325, Eusebius (111 37.3) tells us that "at first hearing whole multitudesina bodyeagerly embraced intheir souls piety towards the Creator of theuniverse." That massconversions built Christianity has seemedobvious. Adolf Harnack(1908:2:335-36) put it plainly:How else can we understandthe "inconceivablerapidity" ofChristian growth and "astonishing expansion" ofthe movement?Indeed, Harnack (fn.335) reminded his readers of St. Augustine's insightthat the greatest miracle of all would have been for Christianity togrow as rapidlyas it did without the aid of miracles. Inhis distinguished recent study, ChrisiiarlitingtheRoman Empire, Ramsay MacMullen (1984:29) also stressed the arithmeticalnecessity for mass conversions. Because "very large numbers are obviouslyinvolved," Christian growth could not have been limited to an indi- vidualmode of conversion, butrequires "successes enmasse." Thisis all very troublesome because modern social science lacks any theoret icalpropositions todeal with spontaneous mass conversions. Instead, conversion isexplained by social science as theresult of interaction processes within net- worksof interpersonal attachments whereby people come to accept new faiths in responseto theirsocial ties to thosewho already believe (Lofland and Stark 1965;Stark and Bainbridge 1980, 1985, 1987; Kox, Meeus, and t'Hart 1991). Thus,from the perspective ofmodern social science, the kind of mass conver- sionsdescribed by Eusebius and accepted by historians ever since would indeed bemiraculous. And if the rise of Christianity canbe explained only by resort to miracles,then social science would seem to have little to contribute. Fortunately,the"facts" justifying the miraculous assumption were wrong. Theonly reason people believed that there was an arithmetic need for mass con- versionwas because no oneever bothered to do theactual arithmetic. I have doneso in considerable detail, taking care to verify my results with the pertinent literature(Stark 1996). A briefsummary suffices here. Thereis generalagreement among scholars that Christians inthe Greco- Romanworld numbered somewhere between 5 and 7 millionin the year 300. Howthis total was reached from a tiny starting point of, say, 1,000 Christians in theyear 40 isthe arithmetic challenge. At first glance, growth ofthis magnitude mightseem a miraculousachievement. But, suppose we assume that the Chris- tianrate of growth during this period was similar to that of the Mormon rate of growthover the past century, which has been approximately 40 percent per decade(Stark 1984, 1994). If the early Christians were able to match the Mor- mongrowth rate, then their "miracle" isfully accomplished inthe time history allows.That is, from a starting point of 1,000 Christians inthe year 40, a growth rateof 40 percentper decade (or 3.4 percentper year) results in a totalof 6,299,832Christians inthe year 300. Moreover, because compounded rates re- sultin exponential growth, there is a hugenumerical increase from slightly more than1 millionChristians inthe year 250 to morethan 6 millionin 300. This givesfurther confidence inthe projections since historians have long believed thata rapidincrease in numerical growth occurred atthis time (cf. Gager 1975). The riseof Mormonism has been very carefully documented and their growthhas been based on theconventional network processes understood by socialscience, while mass conversions tothe Mormon faith of the kind described This content downloaded from 132.239.54.173 on Wed, 12 Nov 2014 19:00:13 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RECONSTRUCTINGTHE RISEOF CHRISTIANITY:THE ROLEOF WOMEN 23 1 byEusebius are unknown(Stark 1984, 1994; Stark and Bainbridge1985). Clearly,then, the rise of Christianity could easily have been accomplished inac- cordwith our current understanding ofwhy and how convetsion takes place and socialscience is sufficient unto the task at hand. So,let me now return to my primary thesis: that women were crucial to the successvf the Christian movement. WOMENAND CHRISTlANGROWTH Amidstcontemporary denunciations ofChristianity as patriarchal and sexS iSt, iteasily is forgottenthat the early church was so especiallyattractive to womenthat in 370 theEmperor Valentinian issued a writtenorder to Pope DamasusI requiring the Christian missionaries tocease calling at thehomes of paganwomen. Although some classical writers claimed that women were easy preyfor any "feareign superstition," most recognized that Christianity was unusuallyapFnealing because within the Christian subculture women enjoyed far higherstatus than did women in the Greco-Roman world at large(Fox 1987; Chadwick1967; Harnack 1908). Butif historians have long noteel this fact, they have made no serious efforts toexplain it. Whywere women accorded higher status in Christian circles than elsewhereinthe classical world? In whatfollows I shall attempt to linkthe in- creasedpower and privilege ofChristian women to a verymajor shift in sex ra- tios.I showthat an initialshift in sex ratios resulted from Christian doctrines prohibitinginfanticide and abortion and then show how the initial shift would havebeen amplified bya subsequenttendency tO over-recruit women. Along the wayI shallsummarize evidence from ancient sources as wellas frommodern archeologyand historical demography concerning the status of women in the earlychurch. Finally, l shall explore the relatively high rates of exogenous mar- riagesby Christian women and suggest how these would have generated many "secondary"cvnversions toChristianity. CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN SEX RATIOS Mengreatly ournumbered women in the Greco-Roman world. Cassius Dio (1987),writing inabout 200 C.E., attributed the declining population ofthe Empireto the extreme shortage offemales. In hisclassic work on ancientand medievalpopulations, J.C. Russell(1958) estimated that there were 131 males per100 females in the city of Rome and 140 males per 100 females inItaly, Asia