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    For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery
    For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery
    For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery
    Ebook759 pages13 hours

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

    By Rodney Stark

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    About this ebook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateJan 27, 2015
    ISBN9781400866809
    For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery
    Author

    Rodney Stark

    Rodney Stark is one of the leading authorities on the sociology of religion. Stark has authored more than 150 scholarly articles and 32 books in 17 different languages, including several widely used sociology textbooks and best-selling titles. William Sims Bainbridge earned his doctorate in sociology from Harvard University in 1975. Altogether he has published about 300 articles and written or edited 40 books in a variety of scientific fields.

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