Rodney Stark is an American sociologist of religion. He grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota, in a Lutheran family. He spent time in the U.S. Army and worked as a journalist before pursuing graduate studies at The University of California, Berkeley. After teaching at the University of Washington for 32 years, Stark moved to Baylor University in 2004, where he is co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is an advocate of the application of the Rational choice theory in the sociology of religion, which he calls the theory of religious economy.
Read more about Rodney Stark: Stark-Bainbridge Theory of Religion, Stark's Views On The Growth of Christianity, Personal Religious Faith, On The Theory of Evolution, Bibliography
Famous quotes containing the word stark:
“During a walk or in a book or in the middle of an embrace, suddenly I awake to a stark amazement at everything. The bare fact of existence paralyzes me... To be alive is so incredible that all I can do is to lie still and merely breathe—like an infant on its back in a cot. It is impossible to be interested in anything in particular while overhead the sun shines or underneath my feet grows a single blade of grass.”
—W.N.P. Barbellion (1889–1919)