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:
“The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to the another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.”
—Freya Stark (b. 1893–1993)