Summary Of God By Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark starts of his novel by talking about how theology is being discredited in Western civilization, to which he thinks is an utter disgrace. Modern day scholars are claiming that religious thinking is irrational and dogmatic. Theology, which can be described as the science of faith, creates a longing for the understanding of God’s being, nature, demands, and intentions. Stark claims that only monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam can “sustain” theology because polytheistic religions, such as Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, are too inconsequential. He uses the example by explaining that there are no theologians in the East. Subsequently, it was only in the West, as opposed to the Middle East or in Asia,

He takes note of that not long after the Roman emperor Constantine grasped Christianity in 312, he started giving the church cash and benefits, making it an alluring profession for the privileged societies. The "church of devotion," kept running by committed, inadequately paid and self-denying pastorate, offered ways to the "church of power," which was far more likely block the development of trade. Ironically, it didn’t stop anything, as capitalism is only stopped by regulations and government. Woolen cloth first brought capitalism to Northern Europe. Because of how profitable these cloths were, Italian banks started setting up locations in those areas, they soon came to realize how much potential there was thanks to how disorganized the entire industry and market of all of Northern Europe. They soon expanded to Holland and England, and from sparked a huge industrial growth that allowed England to become the economic and military power that they were known for in the later half of the second

Those ideas are highly dependent on each other, and it is hard to find one without the other two. Being a Christian myself, I came into this reading knowing I would take the authors side considering he was discussing topics I wholeheartedly agreed with. To prove the thesis, how Christianity led to Capitalism, freedom, and western civilization, could take up a lot more than three hundred pages, but Stark does a decent job. In his conclusion, he brings up an extremely valid point. Stark says that the modern world only arose in areas where Christianity was the dominate religion. Neither Asia, Africa, nor the Middle East grew as much as Christian societies did. In fact, the most prosperous and wealthy nation in the history of the planet, the United States of America, was founded on Judeo-Christian values. The irony is that there are millions of people in the US that are trying to move the country as far away from those values as