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Title: For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery by Rodney Stark ISBN: 0-691-11436-6 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (4 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: What about Witches?
Comment: Mmmm, the whole witch hunting being stopped becuase Christians protested the abuse, etc.? That's about the dumbest thing I've ever heard! It was christianity in the first place that stared it, the whole they belive in the devil thing is just a bunch of lies. They did not stop, they are the one who started it. They had to rid the world of pagans and witches becuase half of the world was that religion before the birth of christ. If you actually read a few books by actual witch's who tell their sotry you'll see that Witches don't even belive in the devil. This is just another book to spread christian dogma. I'd give it a 0 if I could.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Debunking of Popular Myths
Comment: Stark, an influential sociologist of religion, might have chosen the title The Book of Debunkings III. Volumes one and two are his earlier The Rise of Christianity and One True God. The relentlessly contrarian, vigorously argued, and impressively documented argument is that scholars of the modern era have routinely discounted and distorted the role of religion, and of monotheism in particular, in world history. The present volume continues the argument under four headings: God's truth, God's handiwork, God's enemies, and God's justice. Belief in the unity of God's truth explains the reformations (plural) and formation of sects in Christian history. These things did not happen in classical polytheism or the "godless" spiritualities of the East for the same reason that science did not develop in those worlds. Belief in the truth that the creation is God's handiwork generated the scientific progress that began not in the eighteenth century but in medieval scholasticism. Stark's discussion of science includes a succinct and convincing critique of the dogmatic materialism propounded by prominent evolutionists. The third part, "God's enemies," treats the outbreak of witch-hunting, concentrated in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, which, contra conventional wisdom, resulted in thousands, not millions, of deaths of both men and women, and in which the Inquisition was typically a moderating influence. The belief in evil forces such as witchcraft, Stark contends, was the flip side of the unity of truth and commitment to reason, and was supported by Newton and many others revered by the Enlightenment. Witch-hunting was ended not by Enlightenment skepticism but by Christians protesting torture and other injustices entailed in the practice. Finally, "God's justice" explains why the near-universal institution of slavery was abolished under the influence of Christian morality, having been condemned by Christian thinkers and popes-sometimes with little effect upon temporal powers and slaveholders-for many centuries. (A major reason for slavery's survival in Islam, Stark says, is that Muhammad bought, sold, captured, and owned slaves.) On these and other questions, Stark's findings are sometimes so sympathetic to Catholicism that he early on makes a point of his not being a Roman Catholic. In a postscript titled "Gods, Rituals, and Social Science," Stark takes on a sociological tradition that, beginning with Durkheim, assumes that ritual rather than belief explains the influence of religion in society. Along the way, he also challenges Marxist and postmodern theorists with their sundry revisionisms that deny or relegate to epiphenomenal status the power of religion, notably of monotheism, in historical change. For the Glory of God, like the two earlier volumes, is an important book. It is immensely learned, consistently contentious, and filled with brilliant, if sometimes eccentric, insights. Its publication should create a furor, but that probably will not happen since the secularist prejudices it exposes are so deeply entrenched in the intellectual habits of modernity. Yet for those who are open to a very different interpretation of the development of Western Civilization-and the difference between the West and "the rest"-For the Glory of God is strongly recommended. This is from a First Things review.
Rating: 5
Summary: An eyeopener on the importance of God
Comment: Stark shows why Western Civilization really is God-given in important areas.
And along the way he manages to uncover how much Secular Historians and Sociologists have distorted, downplayed and dismissed the deep and fundamental positive Christian influence on History. Its astonishing to read how much nonsense and dishonesty there's been - and still are. Stark manages to tackle an enormous amounts of anti-Christian myths head on, not the least by actual checking the Historical sources.
The main point is to examine possible correlations between a belief in god/gods and sociological/cultural developments, and he succeeds admirably in this - against old theories like Durkheim and others who insisted that religion was about rituals only and that the actual content of the faith was irrelevant and silly anyway.
Stark is able to show - by using actual historical data - how the kind of God/gods one believe in - and the intensity of this belief - are significant variables in at least four areas:
When, where and what kind of reformations occur. Even if he insists (quite rightly) that any religious body which establishes a monopoly will lead to strife, that reformations are unavoidable, and never is blind to atrocities or negative aspect of neither Protestants nor Catholics, he shows in every chapter the necessity of Christianity for the modern world.
The rise of Moderne Science (Stark shows a high correlation between belief in a rational God and a rational Creation on the emergence of science from about the fourteenth century, while other beliefs had a negative effect) is a direct outcome of a Christian view of the Universe. Even if that view was not a sufficient cause, it was a neccessary cause. And there's a lot of stuff on the antireligious rhetoric about the "war between Science and Religion" - there never was any such war, however many Christians, Atheists or others who do believe there was, or is trying to set up a war these days.
Without a passionate belief in God (and Jesus) there would be no Modern Science or Abolition of Slavery. In fact the Church even hindered and stopped Witch-hunts, despite it at the same time - through some hard to avoid logic and rationality - lead to courts in the late fifteenth century to start taking up such cases when considering that Non-Christian "magic" (herbs, hexes, wise women) in fact worked, and worked even better than Christian "magic" (prayers, relics etc), in an age of religious strife which reduced former tolerance of religious noncomformity.
What Stark does here is in fact to make some kind of sense of the craze, and to show that any country with a strong, central government (like in Spain, Portugal and Italy) managed to stop almost all cases before they went to court or to executions. While perhaps three quarters of the total number of withces executed (about 30 000 of 40 000) died in the autononymous German "Borderlands" along the Rhine river.
This book will become a classic of Modern Sociology of Religion, even if of course some of his findings may and should be questioned, as with all science. And no doubt it will lead to a lot of aggressive debate (and I guess, even more distortions, downplayings and dismissals, perhaps even in this review section), as it goes so directly against Political Correct History.
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Title: The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal, Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force .... by Rodney Stark ISBN: 0060677015 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism by Rodney Stark ISBN: 0691115001 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: May, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Modern Physics and Ancient Faith by Stephen M. Barr ISBN: 0268034710 Publisher: Univ of Notre Dame Pr Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, 3) by N. T. Wright ISBN: 0800626796 Publisher: Fortress Press Pub. Date: May, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.00 |
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Title: Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 by Charles Murray ISBN: 006019247X Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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