A review of For the Glory of God: How monotheism led to reformations, science, witch-hunts and the end of slavery.

By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography By Rodney Stark. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. ISBN0 0-691-11436-6. Cloth 2003 $45.00 496 pp. 29 halftones 12 tables. Bibliography & Index. Paper 2004 $22.95, ISBN: 0-691-11950-3m 504 pp. 30 halftones. 13 tables, Bibliography & Index

This is an important book, part of a growing number of multi-disciplinary studies responding to a vital need to reappraise the role of religion in western culture—free of political or sectarian bias. Rodney Stark, highly regarded Professor of Social Sciences at Baylor University and much published author, brings what is best called a scientific spirit to his subject. In so doing, he shatters many of the false images held before us by biased historians and philosophers.

One time spy and later poet T.S. Eliot once wrote that spies lived in a forest of mirrors. Anyone reading western history hoping to harmonize incompatible accounts of religion’s contributions to it can be pardoned if they find themselves feeling they have wandered into the same sort of puzzling place.

Spies place mirrors purposely in order to waylay and deceive one another. Have some historians likewise purposely produced false images of the influences of religion in the west? Or are they simply owners of an anti-religious, especially anti-catholic, outlook that warps what they see and what they project to their readers? Either way, Prof. Stark says too many English-speaking historians have left us with a skewed and at times utterly false image of the contributions of religion in western history. This claim of academic bias is one of many challenging ideas probed in For the Glory of God.

A turf protecting historian straight-away inclined to dismiss Prof. Stark as just an attention seeking sociologist, must also be ready to dismiss the respected historical research he cites, as well as Prof. Starks’s own research—at times reminiscent of the statistical brilliance of economist historian Fernand Braudel. The resulting explanatory power of his theories may explain why historians have complimented his work.

A puzzling thing first sparked Prof. Stark’s interest. He noticed the censorious way that many English speaking ‘liberal’ historians portrayed religion, especially the Catholic Church, in western history. Conversely, he noticed an habitual failure to give religion credit even where plainly deserved, even where it lit torches of progress and led the way, if at times unsteadily:

For example, in the abolition of slavery. One of the cornerstone questions asked is how Christianity can with logical consistency be portrayed as both powerful and regressive; and yet be the major constituent of the soil that eventually yields the admired liberal democratic society? Logically, the church’s contributions must sometimes have been good. Why recount just the bad?

Of the oft-recounted bad influences and institutions, the Spanish Inquisition is the one most reviled, still is, to the point of Monty Python caricature. Yet, as Prof. Stark writes: “apart from a few specialists, most historians still seem to assume that the Spanish Inquisition burned large numbers of heretics, witches, Marranto Jews, and other deviants in public autos-da-fe, and that to have fallen into the hands of the inquisitors was an almost certain sentence of death. All false!”

Inquisition records, apparently far better kept than studied by historians, show that trained civil lawyers, not clergy, administered most trials. Inquisition evidentiary standards were recognizably modern, with most of its sentences for offences such as witchcraft “mild in the extreme.” Special leave was required for a maximum of ten minutes torture. Leave was seldom granted; the inquisition considered testimony taken under torture unreliable.

Hyperbolized beliefs about the Spanish Inquisition among English-speaking peoples grew out of English war propaganda spread when England was at war with Spain. This already exaggerated propaganda was maintained and further inflated by anti-Catholic prejudice. Anti-Catholic historians, evidently relying on the same sources as Monty Python’s scriptwriters, conflated these mistaken beliefs with their own prejudices and gave them their academic seal of truth. In the process, students have been misled and prejudices fed for generations.

Prof. Stark criticizes the claims and methodologies of sociologists just as much as those of historians. He rejects the central concept of Emile Durkheim, early architect of sociology, that the social power of religion lies not in what people believe about the gods but in the rituals they perform in order to win their favour; beliefs count for little.

Prof. Stark exhibits the flaws in Durkheim’s concept as well as some of the far-fetched theories built on it—for instance, Marxist insistence that Christian anti-slavery activists acted unwittingly out of class-consciousness, not religious ideals.

The facts forced Prof. Stark to look elsewhere. Belief in one creator God--rational, merciful, demanding justice for the downtrodden--not ritual, molded the west’s central ideas. These ideas led, predictably, according to his interpretation of the evidence, to reformations, science, witch trials, and the abolition of slavery, in about that order. Virtually every society in the world captured and kept slaves when they could. After Rome’s decline and the church’s increase, slavery in Europe became the exception, not the rule.

It’s true that early Christians, though sometimes slaves and former slaves themselves, did not at first fight slavery. They likely lacked the means. But once empowered, Christians began early on to campaign against it. Prof. Stark notes that the Catholic Church baptized slaves at every opportunity and insisted they be treated properly. He recalls anti-slavery campaigns rarely mentioned by historians, such as those of 9th century Saint Bathilde, one in a long procession of saints, popes and inquisitions that condemned slave keeping as a grave sin. The way that anti-Catholic historians hid this history, until its recent “discovery,” troubles Prof. Stark.

Predictably, some kings, even some clergy, ignored anti-slavery papal proclamations when it suited them. Spain and Portugal often forbade their publication. Still, Prof. Stark lays out a convincing case that the papacy’s constant condemnation of slave keeping coupled with rulings insisting that enslaved peoples possessed souls and hence rights, laid critical foundations for the ending of slavery.

He acknowledges the failure of the church’s initial campaign to forbid slave keeping on pain of excommunication. After that failed to end slavery in Catholic territories, the Church negotiated far-reaching codes of slave rights with Spain and Portugal. This at least resulted in far better treatment of slaves in Catholic territories. And the continuing edict of excommunication, which was confirmed by Pope Urban VIII in 1639 and again by Pope Paul III in 1686, discouraged the expansion of slavery.

Prof. Stark sharply criticizes historians who cite the codes as proof the church condoned slavery, especially given that its moral condemnation remained unchanged. The papacy simply lacked sufficient power at that time to enforce its proclamations—Spain ruled Italy for much of the period and actually sacked Rome itself. Nonetheless, Prof. Stark concludes “Catholicism made a profound difference in the lives of slaves. [It] imparted to Brazilian and Spanish American slave societies an ethos of genuine spiritual power.” In contrast, Prof. Stark describes the miserable conditions of slaves in English and other colonies.

In Protestant and revolutionary-France colonies, slaves enjoyed no rights, toiling and dying at their owner’s pleasure. The Church of England was lax and compliant during this period and for a while did not even consider slaves eligible for baptism. But the English tide too began to turn, soon to a flood, a direct result once again of Christian activism.While both Catholics and Quakers followed principles of faith to condemn slavery as sinful, secular philosophers failed to marshal either arguments or protests against slavery. However, by 1807 evangelical activists finally persuaded parliament to outlaw the slave trade and to make war against it with the Royal Navy. It did, at the cost of many sailors’ lives, but with much good to show for it, as recounted by Prof. Stark: in fifty years the seizure of over 1600 slave ships and the release of 150,000 slaves.

Because the 1807 Act outlawed only the slave trade and not slave keeping as such, strong Christian campaigns against slavery in British territories continued. Finally, in 1834 parliament outlawed slavery itself.

Although scripture did not forbid Jews from keeping slaves, this toleration was subject to its own unique laws for their humane treatment. Scripture obligated owners to treat slaves as if they were members of their family. Abusive owners were subject to severe punishment. Slaves were entitled to days of rest, jubilee releases from bondage etc. In Islam, an anti-slavery campaign never developed, despite Koran ‘brotherhood’ passages that on their face are inconsistent with slave trading and keeping. But Mohammed kept slaves. To condemn slavery was to condemn Mohammed.

Accordingly, in Muslim countries, slavery continued, in some places to the present, e.g. Niger. Prof. Stark acknowledges that Christianity’s record on slavery is flawed. But he insists that the historical record, fairly read, shows that Christians felt compelled to act in response to what they saw as the demands of a rational, just, and merciful God. In the result, they instituted the most progressive social change in human history.

As for science, most specialist historians concede the central role Christianity played in its development—in fact, the relationship between science and religion has become a hot topic in recent years. Conscious of the many books and essays already published on this relationship, Prof. Stark elects not to re-survey well staked out ground. He chooses new sightlines on the data, rewarding the reader once again with challenges to accepted ideas.

Prof. Stark rightly observes that most would be surprised to learn that modern specialist historians, and even generalist encyclopedias, reject the description of the period between 600 and 1300 AD as the “dark ages”. English historian Thomas Buckle coined the phrase in 1859. Other historians, seeing how well shaped the phrase was for knocking around the Roman Catholic Church, used it and passed it on. They had found the church guilty on the flimsiest of pretexts of not only extinguishing the torch but also for 700 years of hiding the flints needed to relight it.

Modern historians and archaeologists reject the term ‘dark ages’ not so much because it is “pejorative”, but because it is inaccurate: the dark ages weren’t. The ‘light of progress’ had simply shifted northward away from the Mediterranean. Prof. Stark argues that this shift was “then interpreted as a cultural and intellectual decline by those who, many centuries earlier, equated civilization with the writings of a tiny group of Greco-Roman intellectuals. In a population lacking familiarity with the classical philosophers and poets, they reasoned, how could there be anything but darkness?”

Yet, as Prof. Stark points out, during the “dark ages” Europe rejected slavery and enjoyed a period of great inventiveness and technological advance “on a scale no civilization had known.” We have engineers and other more technically minded historians to thank for finally noticing these advances. Prof. Stark lists some of them: the stirrup; horse collar; horseshoes; waterwheels and mills; camshafts; mechanical clocks; compasses; and so on. These, along with many other advances, profoundly influenced productivity and markedly improved every day living conditions. For similar reasons, Prof. Stark agrees with historians who reject the terms ‘scientific revolution’ and ‘renaissance’: By the 13th century, long before the ‘renaissance’, Europe; had already seized technological leadership. Largely as a result of the perseverance of scholastic philosophers and theologians, and the related spread throughout Europe of universities, “a Christian invention”, science was already far advanced before the start of the 16 th century and the supposed start of the Renaissance. Similarly, and again contrary to common belief, the classics were widely read and debated well before the ‘Renaissance’. They became widely available thanks to monks and scholars whotranslated the classics from Greek, which was read by very few scholars, to Latin, which was read by many. Small quantities of the classics also came from Islamic sources. The term “medieval,” Prof. Stark says, should be synonymous with “precise definition and meticulous reasoning…“clarity, not muddle-headedness”. We should see science not as an extension of classical learning but of theology; the renaissance not as a break with the medieval past, but essentially as a period when “people of fashion copied classical style.”

Still, Prof. Stark acknowledges the role of individual genius, and the Renaissance-era breakthroughs fashioned by it, in science, art, and architecture. Prof. Stark is not the first to see the connection between scientific method and Christian theology. He mentions Alfred North Whitehead, 1930’s co-author with Bertrand Russell of Principia Mathematica. Whitehead also believed that science derived directly from meticulously rational medieval theology, which over centuries “impressed on the European mind…an instinctive tone of thought…the conviction that there is a secret that can be unveiled.”

Once established, science developed independently of theology. Independent should not mean the same as antagonistic. Nonetheless, a powerful myth of mortal conflict between science and religion did soon take hold in the western mind. This despite the fact, as Prof. Stark shows, religion was not hostile towards science. Nearly all of the early scientists were either conventionally or intensely religious. Similarly, a majority of scientists still report some attachment to religion. Whence then the myth of conflict between religion and science?

The evidence marshaled here suggests that we have a number of enlightenment historians, philosophers and various ideologues anxious to see themselves as the exclusive vanguards and custodians of progress to thank for what has been a destructive mythology.

Witch-trials developed within about the same period that science coalesced, starting in 1300 and ending in 1750. Since victims were so few in number for the first 150 years of that period, “the conventional dating” of the witchcraft era is 1450 to 1750, with “ferocious episodes” around the years 1500 and 1650. Leading specialist historians conclude that over a period of 450 years about 60,000 European women and men perished.

It should not be all that hard for moderns, who have witnessed the holocaust and other ideological atrocities, to comprehend that some of the same meticulous minds that laid the foundations of modern science rationalized witch-trials. Many explanations are offered for the witch-trials. Prof. Stark rigorously rejects them because the statistical and other available evidence flatly contradicts them.

For example, countries where the Catholic Church was strong saw few (usually illegal) witch trials, e.g. only five executions in Ireland. Other strongly Catholic countries also saw few executions. Correspondingly, regions remote from central authority (or otherwise lacking a stable church or state presence of some kind), and where the social fabric was also unraveling due to war or plague, saw the overwhelming majority of persecutions. Regions along the Rhine River met all the necessary social conditions for persecutions that Prof. Stark lists. Therefore, they also saw the vast majority of trials and hangings, with proportionally more men then women executed.

Local secular officials, not clerics, ignited most of the persecutions. In fact, one of the most active persecutors, Jean Bodin (1530-1596) was a “bitter enemy of the Church, secret atheist and the undisputed intellectual master of the later sixteenth century.” Prof. Stark notes that while Bodin didn’t believe in God, he did believe in demons and “advocated burnings in the slowest possible fire.” In similar vein, Prof. Stark mentions also Thomas Hobbes (1599-1679), esteemed English philosopher. While Hobbes rejected all religions as “lies”, he declared witches “justly punished.”

On the other hand, most contemporary readers will be astonished to learn that the Spanish Inquisition generally disapproved of persecutions and even sent local officialsoff to row galleons after unjustly persecuting people for witchcraft. Inquisition punishments were, as mentioned earlier, usually extremely mild: Apologizing, promising not to do it again, and attending mass at least four times a year made up a typical sentence. (Medieval Christians attended church less often than is commonly supposed.)

The persecutions ended for a number of reasons, but the spread of enlightenment philosophy, as some ‘liberal’ historians have liked to think, was definitely not among them. Theologians were the first to denounce the persecutions as irrational and unjust, with a 16 th century inquisitor theologian being one of the first. On balance, it appears that the persecutions ended because regional conflicts ended, stability took hold in Europe and people finally came to see the persecutions as an unjust aberration.

Overall, Prof. Stark’s review of religion in the west, including his sociological analysis of reformations and counter-reformations found in the book’s opening chapters, leave the reader with a clear sense that the result of an long-lasting belief in a rational, just, and compassionate Creator, coupled with the intense theological debate that belief generated, was the imprinting of an indelible belief at the core of the western (and eventually all modern) minds:

A belief in the desirability, as well as the possibility of achieving, purity, progress, and perfection. The consequences for good can be seen in such things as religious good works and scientific and technical progress, and for ill, in the development of fanatical left/right wing secular ideologies and rampant individualism.

Many self-styled enlightenment historians wrote believing that by now we would be seeing religion in the west reduced to a tiny minority of eccentrics. We have the benefit of seeing how wrong headed this expectation was. Thanks to the work of Prof. Stark and other specialists, we can now stand on a higher place to look back at the history of religion in the west, with many of the distorted images created by political and sectarian prejudices cleared away. Seeing not only the conflicts but also the progressive social changes generated by belief in one God, suggests that when it comes to future human progress, that resilience of belief gives more reasons for hope than for worry. Prof. Stark writes lucidly and energetically. A Frederick Forsyth of sociology.

- Neill Brown

Neill Brown, a trustee at St. James, Vancouver is a lawyer who lives and practices in Abbotsford. A shorter version was printed in TOPIC, the diocesan newspaper.

A letter commenting on this review is available here.