Rodney Stark's provocative new book argues that, whether we like
it or not, people acting for the glory of God have formed our
modern culture. Continuing his project of identifying the
widespread consequences of monotheism, Stark shows that the
Christian conception of God resulted--almost inevitably and for the
same reasons--in the Protestant Reformation, the rise of modern
science, the European witch-hunts, and the Western abolition of
slavery. In the process, he explains why Christian and Islamic
images of God yielded such different cultural results, leading
Christians but not Muslims to foster science, burn "witches," and
denounce slavery.
With his usual clarity and skepticism toward the received
wisdom, Stark finds the origins of these disparate phenomena within
monotheistic religious organizations. Endemic in such organizations
are pressures to maintain religious intensity, which lead to
intense conflicts and schisms that have far-reaching social
results.
Along the way, Stark debunks many commonly accepted ideas. He
interprets the sixteenth-century flowering of science not as a
sudden revolution that burst religious barriers, but as the normal,
gradual, and direct outgrowth of medieval theology. He also shows
that the very ideas about God that sustained the rise of science
led also to intense witch-hunting by otherwise clear-headed
Europeans, including some celebrated scientists. This conception of
God likewise yielded the Christian denunciation of slavery as an
abomination--and some of the fiercest witch-hunters were devoted
participants in successful abolitionist movements on both sides of
the Atlantic.
"For the Glory of God" is an engrossing narrative that accounts
for the very different histories of the Christian and Muslim
worlds. It fundamentally changes our understanding of religion's
role in history and the forces behind much of what we point to as
secular progress.
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