Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark
Born	Rodney William Stark (1934-07-08)July 8, 1934 Jamestown, North Dakota, US
Died	July 21, 2022(2022-07-21) (aged 88) Woodway, Texas
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Denver University of California, Berkeley
Thesis	Police riots: collective violence and law enforcement (1971)
Academic work
Discipline	Religious studies sociology
Sub-discipline	Comparative religion sociology of religion
Institutions	University of Washington Baylor University
Notable works	The Churching of America, 1776–1990 (1990) The Rise of Christianity (1996) The Rise of Mormonism (2005)
Notable ideas	Stark–Bainbridge theory of religion
Influenced	Dana Evan Kaplan
Website	www.rodneystark.com

Rodney William Stark (July 8, 1934 – July 21, 2022)^[1] was an American sociologist of religion who was a longtime professor of sociology and of comparative religion at the University of Washington. At the time of his death he was the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, co-director of the university's Institute for Studies of Religion, and founding editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion.^[2]

Stark had written over 30 books, including The Rise of Christianity (1996), and more than 140 scholarly articles on subjects as diverse as prejudice, crime, suicide, and city life in ancient Rome.^[3] He twice won the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, for The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation (1985, with William Sims Bainbridge), and for The Churching of America 1776–1990 (1992, with Roger Finke).^[4]