For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery

In "Aristotle's Children" by Richard Rubenstein, we learned how the rediscovery of ancient wisdom, especially the writings of Aristotle, illuminated the Dark Ages despite the opposition of the Christian Church. In "For the Glory of God" Stark posits that science was born in Christian Europe because of the Christian Religion, not in spite of it. He further asserts that the rediscovery of Classical wisdom impeded rather than enhanced the growth of Science. "Aristotle's Children" argues that Islam's rejection of Aristotle led to scientific stagnation whereas the West's embracing Aristotle spurred scientific discovery. "For the Glory of God" stands for the proposition that, had the West rediscovered Aristotle too soon, Science might never have come to be. Science did not conquer Christianity, the Christian concept of God gave birth to Science. Read the book to see how this could be. Stark says a number of other things which don't square with the conventional wisdom on religion. And he supports his assertions with sound evidence and sound argumentation.

This was a fascinating book. It is my first Sociology book, and while I hear Marxism still has a strong hold among Sociology professors, Stark does not present his data and theories filtered through that lens. In fact, he is rather critical of other sociological writings covering this period and topic, which may explain the negative reviews that say he is "way out of the sociological mainstream" - and more power to Stark as far as I am concerned. "Monotheism" presents a riveting analysis of the sources of some of the odder behavior that our western civilization has produced, both our desired behaviors such as the abolition of slavery and advancement of true science as well as the embarrassing behavior of witch-hunts. He presents a well-supported theory of historical religion and its patterns that respects both religious details and religious believers (monotheist, polytheist, and atheist), which apparently sets him apart from colleagues who dismiss all things religious as irrelevant and seek the underlying economic factors for everything (which is the common Marxist pattern of analysis). This book is easy to read, not too long, and I found it very enjoyable and very worth recommending. It also serves as a good reminder of the debt we owe previous generations and institutions for the freedoms we take for granted, and makes a strong case for the importance of freedom of religion and lawful religious expression as opposed to the removal of most or all religious expression through the elevation of any one "preferred" religion - be it a flavor of Protestant Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Atheism, or any of the other variety of beliefs present in our society.

I got the book for the contents of chapter 4: "God's Justice: The Sin of Slavery", as a deliberate part of my directed self-study on the issue of the hermeneutics of slavery. After finishing the chapter i completed the rest of the book because of the author's persuasive and compelling writing and knowledge. Two important motifs stand out from the general arguments of the book. The first is the distinction of the "Church of Power" and the "Church of Piety", brought about by the unfortunate Constantinian synthesis that brought power, wealth, control and lots of conniving people into what had been a lowly, poor, unpowerful movement of aimed at righteous living, thus deforming everything it touched. This is the introduction, "Dimensions of the Supernatural". He has a well thought out, and interesting presentation of several related ideas: the level of commitment as indicative of not just what people are willing to put into an institution but what they expect to obtain from it, level of commitment as the psychological motor of reformation and sect-formation. This is the second great idea of the author's: The one true God of monotheism leads naturally to the idea of the one true faith as expressive of belief in this God, along with the level of commitment of individual's as determinative of where they lie on a continuum of interest/commitment. The more people demand of an institution that controls a monopoly on the belief system the more it either splits externally or reforms internally, depending on how the institution treats the rising commitment levels. This is chapter 1: "God's Truth: Inevitable Sects and Reformations", and apparently the author's first book, the One True God, which i ordered on the grounds of reading this one. His research and argumentation is top-notch, for instance, in the section on comparing Islamic and Western slavery(in the Americas) he notes that roughly equal numbers of Africans where taken to both areas(7 million, pg 304). But where there are millions of the descendents of these slaves throughout the Americas, there exists few to none in the Islamic crescent from the Sudan through the old Ottoman empire, to India and ending with Indonesia. Such a simple yet compelling observation, indicative of much of the reasoning in the book, straightforward, interesting, and very persuasive. I did not get what i came to read, that is an analysis of the arguments for and against slavery, but i got more than i expected, and interesting and awareness increasing book. If you are interested in getting a taste of the book before commiting to read it, i would start with the first dozen or so pages of chapter 2: "God's Handiwork: The Relgious Origins of Science." A very readable revisionist, debunking account of the rise of Western science and the relationship it had to Christian theology.

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 proba