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One common claim is that the Roman Catholic Church did not repudiate slavery until 1890. "Nonsense!" exclaims Stark, as he unfolds the story of Catholic opposition to slavery, beginning with the 7th-century saint Bathilde (wife of Clovis II). Subsequent thinkers such as Anselm and Aquinas made the theological case against slavery, and a series of popes in the 15th and 16th centuries issued bulls condemning the institution.

The true story is not a tale of church indifference, but of papal weakness. Although the Counter-Reformation Pope Paul III issued three condemnations, he was so weak politically that his pronouncements could not be read in Spanish territory without the king's permission. So it was that the economic engines of Spain and Portugal, and not church teaching, determined the course of slavery in the West Indies and Brazil.

The Quakers shine in Stark's account of anti-slavery movements, but the Church of England's record is severely stained.

Christian theologians had to think their way around the biblical materials on slavery to construct an argument against it. Islam's teachings of human equality (which appealed so potently to Malcolm X) should have provided the ground for a similar rejection of slavery. But the historical fact that "Muhammad bought, sold, captured, and owned slaves" effectively blocked Islam's interpreters from reasoning their way to abolition.

Data trumps Durkheim
Stark's analysis is a curious blend of social science and history. One virtue of his social scientific approach is a hunger for data: thus his eager debunking of distortions and exaggerations by religion's ideological enemies.

Social science began with a misunderstanding of religion, and Stark is fighting an uphill battle. Social science pioneer Emile Durkheim believed that religion was not about God or the gods, but was about rituals that bound the individual to society. By putting ritual above beliefs about the supernatural, Durkheim started social science on a road that led from absurdity to absurdity. "Eventually this line of analysis 'bottomed out' in such silliness as Rodney Needham's denial of the existence of any 'interior state' that might be called religious belief and S.R.F. Price's claim that religious belief is a purely Christian invention, so that when 'primitives' pray for things, they don't really mean it."

"So, then," Stark concludes, "let us finally be done with the claim that religion is all about ritual. Gods are the fundamental feature of religions." This is a sociology of religion that takes seriously what people believe. Stark knows that beliefs have consequences. They can even change the course of history. And in the book's final sentence, Stark claims that in the ways he describes, "Western civilization really was God-given."

Next month: Two moving memoirs of living with pain in the light of God's presence.

Copyright © 2003 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

For the Glory of God by Rodney Stark is this month's selection for CT's Editor's Bookshelf. Elsewhere on our site, you can:

Read an extended interview with Rodney Stark

Read an excerpt from For the Glory of God

Buy the book online

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July (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47