The Christian Foundations of Western Civilization

The impor­tance of Chris­tian­i­ty to the his­to­ry of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion is being increas­ing­ly over­looked, which is why I was so delight­ed to come across a rather lengthy sum­ma­ry of a new book: For the Glo­ry of God: How Monothe­ism Led to Refor­ma­tions, Sci­ence, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slav­ery by Rod­ney Stark (Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Press) [see the Ama­zon page].

Dr. Stark is a sol­id aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing with­in his field, so this book is extreme­ly cred­i­ble.

Here’s an excerpt from the sum­ma­ry: Stark does­n’t argue so much the virtues of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion as the fact (yes, fact, not the­o­ry) that you can­not under­stand West­ern civ with­out ref­er­ence to Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and the way that it fer­til­ized the soil in which those “extra­or­di­nary episodes” grew. The book focus­es on four episodes: (1) the efforts at church reform that cul­mi­nat­ed in the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion and the Catholic Counter-Ref­or­ma­tion, (2) the rise of mod­ern sci­ence, (3) the fabled witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th cen­turies, and (4) the abo­li­tion of slav­ery and the slave trade.

In each case, Stark shows that a belief in a great God who makes moral demands and who rewards and pun­ish­es in the after­life is an essen­tial com­po­nent of what hap­pened.

This is infor­ma­tion Chris­tians on cam­pus des­per­ate­ly need! Read the whole sum­ma­ry (or read a slight­ly less char­i­ta­ble review, although if you read that you should also read this unre­lat­ed review with the last para­graph of the Post review in mind).