The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark. Book Review

 

I reviewed Rodney Stark's "The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success" at Amazon when it first came out in 2006. I think Tom Holland's book, "Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World" is more thorough, but Stark's book is an easier read and it does cover ground Holland does not cover.

 

Here's my review:

 

Christophobes don't want you to read Rodney Stark's "The Victory of Reason." Alan Wolfe's New Republic review is easily accessible online; after reading Stark's book, you really ought to read Wolfe. You will learn how desperately Christophobes twist words and realities to monger hatred. Wolfe labels Stark, "vile," "Vulgar," "anti-Semitic," "ugly," "childish," "Marxist" (!), and "untouched by the spirit of reason." Any book that gets such a hateful man so worked up has something going for it.

 

[Alan Wolfe, I learned after Googling him, is, according to his publisher, "a secular Jew who teaches at Boston College" He "has made an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary Jewish life." Wikipedia reports, "Wolfe was a member of the collective that put out the Marxist-oriented journal, Kapitalistate … Wolfe is a self-proclaimed atheist."

 

So New Republic, where Wolfe is a contributing editor, assigned a secular Jewish atheist Communist, that is a man with a clear conflict of interest, to review a book about the impact of Christianity on Western Civilization. Astounding. Back to my review.]

 

No matter how counterintuitive it may seem, "The Victory of Reason" is NOT a proselytizing tract. The same book could easily have been written by an atheist. I have no idea, after reading this book, what Stark's spiritual life looks like, and I don't care. In fact, Stark includes a lengthy quote by a, presumably, non-Christian, Chinese scholar who reiterates Stark's thesis: Christianity's influence gave rise to capitalism, science, democracy, and the preeminence of the West.

 

Stark makes no appeal anywhere in the book for the reader to become Christian. Stark makes clear that, while Christianity, in his view, was essential for the development of science, capitalism, democracy, and the Western way of life, it is NOT necessary for the continuation of any of these. Now that Christianity has gotten the ball rolling, you need not be Christian to be a scientist or capitalist or citizen in a free state.

 

Also, Stark never argues that capitalism, science, or democracy are perfect representations of Biblical values. Nowhere does Stark imply that if Jesus came back today, he'd say, "Wow, I'm so glad that the Bank of America or the US Congress or the National Academy of Sciences reflects my teaching!"

 

Outraged Christians who howl about how Stark is giving readers a false view of Christianity are *also* missing the point of this book. This is a clinical account of how a given stimulus affects a given organism, not an explication of what ideal Christianity would have to look like in order to best represent Jesus' teachings.

 

Stark is writing against a powerful grain, and he reveals awareness of that. Ever since Political Correctness gained power in academia and media, it has been popular to attribute all the failings of humanity to the West, white men, and Christianity. The reader familiar with currently powerful prose may gasp while reading Stark's book. "Wow," the reader may say to himself, "Here's a book that doesn't *apologize* for, or bash, or demonize, or denigrate Christianity! And here is a book that speaks frankly of how other traditions may have hampered the development of the people practicing them." That experience - the experience of reading a book that doesn't depict Christianity and the West as the Great Satan, and all other traditions as above reproach - will be a breath of fresh air for many a reader.

 

Especially valuable is Stark's take on the Mediterranean, Classical, Pagan World v. the Medieval, European, Christian World. When I was studying the Classical World in grad school, I was browbeaten by my professor for expressing disgust and despair at the fate of its slaves and women. I just wasn't supposed to think about the fate of average people. I was supposed to, only, be really, really impressed by the accomplishments of a few elites, from architects to playwrights to military tacticians. And, of course, I was impressed. But, all those slaves, and women . . .

 

Stark is unafraid in his exposing of the Classical, Pagan World's injustices and elitism. He grants the Classical World its marble edifices, but doesn't shrink from reminding us of its masses of oppressed. "The Dark Ages" is a misnomer, Stark reminds us. Monks, nuns, and emergent capitalists in Medieval Europe made technical advances that spread welfare across a wider population.

 

And yet, were I a juror, I would have to say that Stark did not convince me beyond a reasonable doubt. I need more data, and I can't imagine how much data would have to be adduced to conclusively prove Stark's point. He'd have to extensively compare all Christian societies with all societies of other faiths.

 

So, here's the book I'd love to read next. A debate between Stark and prominent scholars, representing Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Confucian, Buddhist, Pagan, Atheist Marxist, and other worldviews, histories, societies, systems of knowledge, and economics. What would Stark say about the current, dismal, state of much of Christian Africa, compared to more desirable lifestyles available in largely non-Christian, East Asian nations like Japan? How would Stark address the preeminence of Jewish scientists in the twentieth century? And, what about Orthodox Christian Russia, whose injustices under the czars against the peasantry spawned the evils of the Stalinist era?

 

In any case, "The Victory of Reason" is the kind of book that leaves the reader's mind in a ferment, asking perhaps ten times as many questions as the book could ever answer. That's a very good thing, and for that reason, I highly recommend it to the reader.

 

A couple of quotes from Stark's book

 

"During the past century, Western intellectuals have been more than willing to trace European imperialism to Christian origins, but they have been entirely unwilling to recognize that Christianity made any contributions (other than intolerance) to the Western capacity to dominate. Rather, the West is said to have surged ahead precisely as it overcame religious barriers to progress, especially those impeding science. Nonsense. The success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians."

 

A quote Stark attributes to a Chinese scholar studying why the West surpassed China:

 

"One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world. We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. This is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubts about this."