Evangelicals are fascinated by the science of things. From the beginning, theywere participants in the gentlemanly sciences. When William Carey sought todemonstrate the extent of Christianity and the world's crying need, it was onlyto be expected that he would choose to write in the form of the‘gazetteer’ (a combined form of geographical and demographicalwork typical of the age). For evangelicals, numbers have the reassuringattributes of being rational, evidential and semiotic: they are pointers to theaction of God in the world, evidences designed to impel Christian obedience.However, as Rodney Stark has pointed out with regard to the commonplace thatearly Christianity grew at a remarkable rate, such ‘evangelical’statistics can lead one astray. ‘The “facts” justifying themiraculous assumption were wrong. The only reason people believed that there wasan arithmetic need for mass conversion was because no one ever bothered to dothe actual arithmetic.’ The picture that emerged for Stark when he didthe ‘actual arithmetic’ was in fact far more interesting: earlyChristianity emerged as a successful, urban, transformative community in andthrough which marginalised people (particularly women) enjoyed influence andauthority far beyond what was possible for them in the broader context. Thefacts were sufficiently striking without needing to appeal to a miracle. Theseare observations which can also be applied to the statistics describing globalevangelicalism.