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

FOR THE GLORY OF GOD

FOR THE GLORY OF GOD

HOW MONOTHEISM LED TO REFORMATIONS, SCIENCE, WITCH-HUNTS, AND THE END OF SLAVERY

Rodney Stark

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright 2003 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY
All Rights Reserved

Sixth printing, and first paperback printing, 2004
Paperback ISBN 0-691-11950-3

The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows

Stark, Rodney.
For the glory of God: how monotheism led to reformations, science, witch-hunts, and the end of slavery / Rodney Stark.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-691-11436-6 (alk. paper)
1. MonotheismHistory. 2. Reformation. 3. Religion and scienceHistory. 4. WitchcraftHistory. 5. SlaveryReligious aspectsHistory.
I. Title.
BL221 .S747 2003
291.14dc21 2002031746

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Sabon with Centaur Display

Printed on acid-free paper.

pup.princeton.edu

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6

Contents Illustrations Acknowledgments

I n the first volume of this two-volume work, I thanked a long list of colleagues whose friendship and advice I value. Here I will limit myself to several people who made important contributions to the present volume.

John A. Auping, S.J., of the Universidad IberoAmericana, Mexico, aroused my interest in abolition and Christianity when he graciously sent me a copy of his book Religion and Social Justice . Later he shared with me a rare seventeenth-century manuscript concerning the role of Catholic orders in opposing the enslavement of Indians. Then he read and carefully criticized a draft of .

Marion S. Goldman of the University of Oregon convinced me to include the theory that deviance creates social solidarity among the faulty explanations of the witch-hunts I expose in .

David Martin of the London School of Economics gave me the benefit of his immense knowledge of European religious history as well as his sociological insights.

Not only did Jeffrey Burton Russell of the University of California, Santa Barbara, make many very useful suggestions, but I was greatly reassured when my chapter on the witch-hunts passed his expert judgment with only positive comments.

Arthur Wu of the Duvall Institute has done his best to make me into a passable medievalist.

As for Brigitta van Rheinberg, editor of religion and history at Princeton University Press, when advised by both Martin and Russell that this book will be controversial and will provoke some hostile reviews, she wrote to me, Well, thats one of the reasons I look forward to publishing it! Its time that some of the standard assumptions get questioned and turned around. No author could ask for more.

Finally, this is the third time I have had the privilege to be edited by Lauren Lepow, Princetons Senior Editor, and I have run out of superlatives to describe the immense talent and care she brings to a book.

Corrales, New Mexico
April 15, 2002

FOR THE GLORY OF GOD

Inspiration . To many Christians, this sandstone formation near Colorado Springs is not only the amazing result of erosion but a monument to the beauty of Gods creation. Taoist monks have found it a very special place for meditation, and some New Age sorcerers think it marks a mystical vortex that amplifies all spells. E. O. Hopp/CORBIS.

Introduction Dimensions of the Supernatural Uncommon things must be said in common words. Coventry Patmore

J ust as many religions teach that human culture was a gift from the Gods, many social scientists propose that religion is so basic to culture that without it humanity could not have emerged from its pre- or protohuman condition. Even if one doubts that humans were actually taught by various Gods how to build fires or grow maize, and takes a more limited view of the role of religion in the evolution of culture, it is obvious that ideas about the supernatural have profoundly influenced life in advanced as well as in less sophisticated societies, and that monotheism may well have been the single most significant innovation in history.

How, when, or even where belief in One God first occurred will probably never be known, but the dramatic results can be seen in virtually every aspect of the cultures and histories of the great monotheisms. Had the Jews been polytheists, they would today be only another barely remembered people, less important but just as extinct as the Babylonians. Had Christians presented Jesus to the Greco-Roman world as another God, their faith would long since have gone the way of Mithraism. And surely Islam would never have made it out of the desert had Muhammad not removed Allah from the context of Arab paganism and proclaimed him as the only God. Having embraced monotheism and the inherent duty to missionize, these three faiths changed the world.

This is not to suggest that the three great monotheisms are essentially the same, or that they have had a similar impact on history. As will be seen, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam differ in many important ways that have produced rather different historical consequences. For one thing, Jews have seldom had the power to directly determine events. As for the two powerful monotheisms, consider that Christianity was able to stimulate the rise of science while Islam could not. On the other hand, Islam produced no witch-hunts. However, even these differences illustrate the larger truth: that religion has played a leading role in directing the course of history.

Unfortunately, in todays intellectual environment, that simple and obvious statement is widely regarded as both unfortunate and false. Proponents of this revisionist claim overcome its inherent contradiction by assigning many of the most unfortunate aspects of history to religious causes, while flatly denying even the most obvious and overwhelming evidence that religion was the basis for any of the good things that have come to pass. For example, it is argued that Christianity played no significant role in sustaining the abolitionist cause but was a major factor in justifying slavery.

Of course, most of those who sustain and repeat such historical falsifications do not mean to misleadthey, too, have been misled. Were that not so, it would have been futile to write this book. But I cling to the belief that many readers respect the authority of evidence and will honor my search for what really happened and why.

The overall purpose of this book is to show how ideas about God have shaped the history and culture of the West, and therefore of the worldincluding both good and bad consequences. My method is to closely examine four major historical episodes, each of which was sustained by people who believed they were acting for the glory of God. I use the word episode to emphasize that this is not a history of ideas. In every instance, the ideas are treated as a component of human action, of human organizations, or of social movements.

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