Rating: 
Summary: Absurd Book Full of Excuses
Review: Christians persecuted Jews, witches, Albigensians, etc. all for the Glory of God; a Being whom they appear to think is as anxious for blood sacrifice as an Aztec god. If the Spanish, Portuguese, and Italians were not busy with the human sacrifice of witches it is because they were too occupied burning Jews alive at the stake. Christians also spent a lot of time persecuting Islamics (the Crusades) and each other - Catholics vs. Protestants. Christianity has a lot of good points, but one of the supreme failures is its incredible hypocrasy. They say - love your neighbor, love your enemy - then they kill him.
Rating: 
Summary: well organized, thoughtful, interesting, systematic approach
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: well organized, thoughtful, interesting, systematic approach
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant and well documented work of not only sociology b
Review: I just finished this book and I have to say its the best book I have read this year. I initially bought it to read Stark's view on religion and science. Being and avid student of the history and philosophy of science I found this section very interesting. But I also learned a great deal about areas I had a passing interest in but no real knowledge - Church history, The Inquisition, Witch Hunts and slavery. Excellent source for an interesting and well supported theory of society and religion. Also just a good read for any student of history as well. The high quality of writing and documentation of this book has prompted me to purchase and read his first book (which For the Glory of God is a sequel to) - One True God.
Rating:
Summary: What about Witches?
Review: 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:
Summary: Stark at his best
Review: Rodney Stark is at his best in this book, and that is very good indeed. Christianity takes considerable criticism for its role in the witch trials, the slave trade, and for being so-called opponents of science. This work sheds light on those issues. The treatment is something that a Christian can use to defend his religion from the standpoint of reality. While there is much in the book to make Catholics and Protestants, as well as Jews and Muslims uncomfortable, there are answers to the standard tirades that we must endure. I was tempted to this 4 stars instead of 5 because I would have liked to have seen more of the history of the Muslims and the Jews, but that is the only reason. What is there in the book is excellent.
Rating:
Summary: An eyeopener on the importance of God
Review: 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: First: 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. Second: 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 (and this is his third point) Abolition of Slavery. Stark's fourth conclusion is that the Church - contrary to a popular myth - even hindered and stopped Witch-hunts. That does not mean that the church not also was part of the reason that courts in the late fifteenth century (more than a thousand years after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire) started taking up such cases when realising 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.
Rating:
Summary: Great Debunking of Popular Myths
Review: 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:
Summary: Must reading for all science students and teachers
Review: This book is a goldmine of information that is critical to understand both science and religion. Written by University of Washington professor Rodney Stark and published by Princeton University Press, the book covers the effect of monotheism on science and society. It is a balanced discussion of both the positive and negative effects of theism in our world, a topic of critical importance in America today in view of the public school battles over religion heating up almost everywhere in America today. A few quotes will illustrate one of the topics it covers, science and religion. Stark correctly notes on page 176 that the historic "battle over evolution is not an example of how 'heroic' scientists have withstood the relentless persecution of religious 'fanatics.' Rather, from the very start it has been primarily an attack on religion by militant atheists who wrap themselves in the mantle of science in an effort to refute all religious claims concerning a Creator - an effort that has also often attempted to suppress all scientific criticism of Darwin's work" and "based on my experience ... nothing causes greater panic among many of my colleagues than any criticism of evolution" On page 177 Dr. Stark concludes that "Darwin's theory, even with all of the subsequent revisions, falls short of explaining the origin of species" He than supports these and other conclusions in the text and with almost 100 pages of notes. As a lover of fine books, I noted that his book is bound in real cloth! Unusual today. It is must reading for both critic and supporter!!!
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and easy to digest
Review: 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.
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