Galen recognized, with some considerable puzzlement it seems, that Christians exhibited the virtues that he associated with the discipline of philosophy.

In the Marquette Lecture volume, I focus on the question in the title. I emphasize the social and political costs of being a Christian in the earliest centuries, and contend that many attempts to answer the question are banal. I don't attempt a full answer myself, but urge that scholars should take the question more seriously.

Early Christianity, like Roman-era philosophical traditions, laid emphasis on everyday behavior, about how to live your life.

I offer early Christianity as a case-study to show that the phenomena that we group under "religion(s)" comprise a somewhat artificial category, and that "religions" are not "all the same."

[Christians] practiced moderation and chastity in marriage, for example, and Galen was puzzled at how they were able to do so. His comments are a kind of back-handed compliment, I suppose.

Studies of the people named and described in earliest Christian texts show that, right from the earliest years, they included craftsmen, merchants, and owners of businesses. Of course, there were also slaves and poor among believers. By at least the second century, there were also believers from upper levels of Roman society.

I think that Rodney Stark puts his foot wrong on some things where he simply wasn't sufficiently current on scholarly developments.