Rodney Stark

“The more members of the clergy that are out there working to expand their congregations, the more people will go to church.”

“Wherever you've got a state church, you have empty churches.”

“There was only one decline in church attendance, and that was in the late 1960s when the Vatican said it was not a sin to miss Mass. They said Catholics could act like Protestants, and so they did.”

“Because God is a rational being and the universe is his personal creation, it necessarily has a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting increased human comprehension. This is the key to many intellectual undertakings, among them, the rise of science.”

“High testosterone levels have been proven to make men more likely to commit crimes. The tendency in men toward risky behaviour keeps turning up even where socialization is different, and so does crime and delinquency.”

“Theology necessitates an image of God as a conscious, rational, supernatural being of unlimited power and scope who cares about humans and imposes moral codes and responsibilities upon them, thereby generating serious intellectual questions such as: 'Why does God allow us to sin?' 'Does the Sixth Commandment prohibit war?'”

“The great myth that many social scientists want to encourage is that there is an incompatibility between modern technology and traditional religion. This is absolute nonsense. If anything, it's the reverse.”

“Because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles. These were the crucial ideas that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and no where else.”

“Every minister knows it's harder to get the guys to church than the women. We ought to be asking why this is.”

“Theology is in disrepute among most Western intellectuals. The word is taken to mean a passe form of religious thinking that embraces irrationality and dogmatism. So too, Scholasticism.”

“It can be demonstrated that in any society there is a distribution of religious tastes and concerns.”

“Those who belong to megachurches display as high a level of personal commitment as do those who attend small congregations.”

“As the historian Edward Grant explained, 'It is indisputable that modern science emerged in the seventeenth century in Western Europe and nowhere else'. ...The crucial question is: Why?My answer to this question is as brief as it is unoriginal: Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being and the universe as his personal creation, thus having a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting human comprehension.”

“For one, thing, the media are dominated by the irreligious. So are universities.”

“Can anyone seriously imagine a society without stable families? Maybe we should raise all the kids in state orphanages.”

“That new technologies and techniques would be forthcoming was a fundamental article of Christian faith. Hence, no bishops or theologians denounced clocks or sailing ships--although both were condemned on religious grounds in various non-Western societies.”

“Not only were science and religion compatible, they were inseparable--the rise of science was achieved by deeply religious Christian scholars.”

“Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read, and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls.”

“Mormons are an extraordinarily educated and professional population. They have all these virtues: They work hard, don't skip school, have no scandals. Consequently, you find them in a lot of consequential places.”

“America is an unusually religious nation.”