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.
