The Triumph of Faith: Why the World Is More Religious than Ever

"God is not dead." —Wall Street Journal

Believe it or not, the world is more religious than ever before. Everyone seems to take it for granted that the world is getting more secular—that faith is doomed by modernity. Scientists, secularists, and atheists applaud the change; religious believers lament it.

But here's the thing: they're all wrong—and the bestselling author and influential scholar of religion Rodney Stark has the numbers to prove it.The Triumph of Faith explodes the myth that people around the world are abandoning religion. Stark marshals an unprecedented body of data—surveys of more than a million people in 163 nations—to paint the full picture that both scholars and popular commentators have missed. And he explains why the astonishing growth of religion is happening and what it means for our future.

Stark's bracing book is full of insights that defy the conventional wisdom. With vigorous prose he reveals:

•Why claims about Millennials' lack of religion are overblown and historically ignorant

•Why Islam is NOT overtaking Christianity

•How 4 out of 5 people worldwide now belong to an organized religion

•How 50 percent have attended a worship service in the past week

•Why much-ballyhooed studies from the Pew Research Center and others get the religious landscape wrong

•Why atheists remain few, anywhere—despite all the talk of the "New Atheism"

As Stark shows, secularists have been predicting the imminent demise of religion for centuries. It is their unshakable faith in secularization that may be the most "irrational" of all beliefs. As the author of How the West Won, The Victory of Reason, and many other bestselling works, Rodney Stark has a richly deserved reputation for writing page-turning, myth-busting books. He is also a groundbreaking scholar who has so reshaped the social scientific study of religion that his work has become the basis of a "new paradigm." Stark puts all those talents on full display in The Triumph of Faith.This book will change how you see both religion and the forces of secularization.

Rodney Stark is the author of How the West Won, The Victory of Reason, The Rise of Christianity, God's Battalions, and many other books. He serves as Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, where he is codirector of the Institute for Studies of Religion. A Pulitzer Prize nominee, Stark has won three Distinguished Book Awards from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. He also served as president of that organization, and of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. Before earning his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, Stark was a staff writer for several major publications.