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

Rodney Stark (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 9, 2004

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For the Glory of God challenges numerous assumptions about how religion affected the course of history. As a professor of Sociology and Comparative Religions at the University of Washington, Rodney Stark (The Rise of Christianity) has a unique ability to write like a chatty social Scientist while delving into complicated theories on religion and history. Here he shows how beliefs in God--whether it was through the filter of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam--provoked and fueled human history. Of course many readers won’t dicker with his evidence that religious fervor influenced the witch hunts. But readers may be surprised by Stark’s assertion that the persecution of witches actually had more to do with the conflicts between the world’s major religions than the oppressive beliefs of fanatical clergy or sexist men. He also asserts that the same religious leaders who were the first to persecute witches were also the first to take a stand against slavery. And, contrary to many historical theories, Stark claims that religion may have been the driving force behind the emergence of modern science. Stark’s fascinating conclusions may rile conventional historians. Indeed, Stark was dismayed to discover how many historians "dismiss the role of religion in producing ‘good’ things such as the rise of science or the end of slavery, and the corresponding efforts to blame religion for practically everything ‘bad.’" While certainly weighed in defense of religious beliefs, especially Christianity, Stark offers a respectable and intelligent argument for church leaders, theologians, and maybe a few history buffs to ponder. --Gail Hudson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

In One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism, sociologist of religion Stark examined the nature of God, the wrath of God, the kingdom of God, the grace of God and the "chosen" of God. In this follow-up volume to his ambitious magnum opus, Stark investigates the role of monotheistic religions in reformations, witch-hunts, slavery and science. Such efforts represent an attempt by monotheistic religions to preserve the idea of the One True God against corrupting influences inside and outside the religions themselves. Stark asserts that, contrary to traditional notions, no single religious reformation can be isolated in any monotheistic religion. Thus, Christianity has experienced not simply the Reformation of Luther but many and various reformations that resulted in a diversity of sectarian movements that practice the worship of the One True God in their own ways. Stark also argues that science could have evolved only out of a monotheistic culture that viewed the world as God's handiwork, and that the witch-hunts of Europe could have taken place only in a culture marred by religious conflict and motivated by the desire to displace heretical religious sects. Despite its purported general focus on monotheistic religions, however, the book devotes very little attention to Islam or Judaism, a serious omission in a study that claims to cover so much ground. In addition, Stark's turgid prose and social-scientific style mar what otherwise could have been an engaging study.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 504 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (August 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691119503
• ISBN-13: 978-0691119502
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #104,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential book., September 22, 2005

By 

David Marshall (Seattle area) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (Paperback)

If I were going to pick ten "must read" books out of the two hundred or so I have reviewed for Amazon or in print, this brilliant work would be near the top. One of the others was Stanley Jaki's Savior of Science; Stark treats Christianity and science in far more detail and more convincingly than Jaki, and three related aspects of religious history just as well. Your education is not complete, and may be defective, until you have come to terms with Stark's arguments.

Stark makes four main arguments. First, faith in God leads to quarrelsomeness (what someone referred to as the "joy of sects") and to reformations. (Brilliantly contrasting the "Church of Power" and the "Church of Piety.") Stark has some very interesting insights deriving from Adam Smith about what happens when a religion has a monopoly, and what happens when (as in the US) there is a free market of spiritual ideas in effect. But he somehow manages to spin his sociological theories without impinging on individual human choice.

Second, Stark argues that faith in God encouraged Christians to invent science. Having read other books making the same claim, I think Stark's approach to this question is one of the best. Not only does he go over the development of technology in the so-called "Dark Ages," and show how the "Enlightenment" picture of Copernican era science is a myth, he studies 52 key early scientists, and shows that more than 60 % were "devout," while only 2 were skeptics. The critic below who asks why Christianity did not produce science in Russia did not read attentively: Stark argues that faith in God was a necessary, but not sufficient, cause of the rise of science. Other factors were also involved. True, he does goes on quite a tangent (10-15 pages; but in a 400 + page book) on evolution. But even there, he finds some interesting things to say -- I didn't know the story of the debate between Huxley and Wilberforce was untrue, for example.

The third section of the book gives a detailed, and I think true, explanation of the witchhunts. "Anti-Semitic violence, persecution of heretics, and witch hunts were collateral results of conflicts between major religious forces" (ie, Islam and Christianity). I do not think this "denigrates" or "trivializes" the idea that witchhunting was an act of "social solidarity," as is claimed below; in fact Stark looks in detail at such community-level causes as well as the "big picture." (See the works of Rene Girard for fascinating insight on "scapegoating" in general, a concept that may help bridge Stark's approach and the "social solidarity" approach.) Stark also points out that the witch hunts claimed less than one in a hundred as many victims as often alleged, that it was not enlightenment figures, but inquisitors and a Jesuit, who first spoke against persecution of "witches," and that early Christians like Augustine thought belief in witches was pure superstition.

Finally, Stark shows how Christians put an end to slavery, beginning in the "Dark Ages." His discussion of this subject is more complete and detailed than any I have read. As with his treatment of science, he draws from a wide array of sources, and gives facts and figures when possible. (How much England paid to free the slaves, the percent of abolitionists who were pastors, and so on.) Along the way, Stark takes his favorite hobby-horses in the sociology of science out for a handsome trot across the landscape.

Finally, let me offer a rebuttal to recent critism. The previous reviewer complains of Stark's many errors. Unfortunately, the only example he gives (calling the Dao Dejing by the name of its author, Lao Zi) is not a mistake. I have a copy of the book on my shelf in Chinese with just that title; both titles are now used. Calling a philosophy book by the name of its author was standard in ancient China: the Zhuang Zi, Xun Zi, or Mencius.

Another critic (who may or may not have read the rest of the book) rants angrily against Stark's attempt to set the relationship between Christianity and persecution of witches in a more context. She calls it "the dumbest thing I ever heard." But contrary to what she seems to think, Stark does NOT say witches worship the devil, rather: "the concept of satanism was deduced by leading Church intellectuals." The critic also suggests we ask a modern witch. Good idea. Neo-pagan historian Jenny Gibbons has written an on-line article that admits, with embarrassment at such sensationalism in the New Age community, many of the very points Stark makes.

The "militant skeptic" below gives a fairer review, and may have caught Stark out in a minor error or two on a periferal subject. (I haven't read Libanios.) But I can find such micro-flubs in most books, even my own. In a book of this scope and detail, that is hardly reason to grade such a sweeping, and empirically tested, argument down. Stark often gets big facts I am aware of right where many or most writers get them wrong.

Contrary to what some seem to assume, this is not a text of apologetics. I recently saw Stark quoted by a skeptic, assuming he was one of their own. An honest arbitaire, like the Jesuits of Paraguay whose remarkable story Stark tells, may get it from both sides. Don't let niggling criticism dissuade you from reading this brilliant, essential, and deeply enlightening work.

author, Jesus and the Religions of Man

82 of 88 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well organized, thoughtful, interesting, systematic approach, February 7, 2004

By 

R. M. Williams "just an avid reader" (tucson, arizona USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (Hardcover)

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, <u> the One True God</u>, 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.

54 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Debunking of Popular Myths, November 22, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (Hardcover)

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.