By Kathryn Jean Lopez December 6, 2012 12:45 P.M.  Despite the look of things culturally and otherwise, Americans remain a religious people. That’s what Gallup president Frank Newhouse is noting this week, and it’s the subject of a new book by Rodney Stark, a Baylor University professor.  “America is an unusually religious nation,” the Stark explains [...]

Baylor professor Rodney Stark’s The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (HarperOne) provides long-term perspective. It is WORLD’s 2012 Book of the Year. This is WORLD’s fifth year of honoring a book published during the past 12 months. Our first two times we chose works that directly explained Scripture: [...]

Friday, June 1, 2012 By Jon Clifton, Partner The Gallup World Poll, now in its eighth year, achieved an important milestone in November — surveying its 160th country — Swaziland. The Gallup World Poll systematically surveys global attitudes and behaviors, and encompasses multiple years’ worth of data from most of the 160 countries it has [...]

HOUSES OF WORSHIP  May 3, 2012 In Charlotte, churches cooperate in an experiment to attract twenty-somethings By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY Charlotte, N.C. If you’ve been to church lately, you probably know how unusual it is to see a critical mass of young people in attendance. According to studies by the Barna Group, church engagement falls [...]

If nothing else comes out of President Obama’s plan to force employers, including faith-based organizations, to provide free pregnancy prevention and termination coverage for employees, let’s hope it’s the realization that government is not a benevolent, godly force, but a potential threat to both religious and personal freedom. It is highly unlikely that the Patient [...]

By Joshua Madden A&E Editor Trying to document the history of the world’s largest religion would be a difficult task for anyone, but Baylor Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences Dr. Rodney Stark decided to fit in all in a book around 500 pages long without sacrificing quality or accuracy. I’m happy to say that [...]

By Alan Caruba “By far the most important event in the entire rise of Christianity was the meeting in Jerusalem in around the year 50, when Paul was granted the authority to convert Gentiles without them also becoming observant Jews.” So wrote Rodney Stark, the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and co-director of the [...]

Nov. 28, 2011 Follow us on Twitter: @BaylorUMediaCom   Dr. Rodney Stark, Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and co-director of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, will present a lecture, “Doing History A Second Time Around,” at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 30, in Kayser Auditorium of the Hankamer School of Business on the [...]

Reading and Believing: The Press and the Future of Religion Chuck Colson, BreakPoint Thursday, September 08, 2011 The United States is often referred to as a “post-Christian” nation. In one sense, that is true: The moral and cultural assumptions shaped by Christianity that used to hold sway in American society, can no longer be taken [...]

Wall Street Journal: Why does the press trumpet bad news about church attendance? posted by Rob Kerby, Senior Editor | 11:14am Wednesday August 31, 2011 The national news media yawned over the Baylor Survey’s findings that the number of American atheists has remained steady at 4 percent since 1944, and that church membership has reached an all-time [...]