Author: Rodney Stark File Type: pdf Western history would be unrecognizable had it not been for people who believed in One True God. There would have been wars, but no religious wars. There would have been moral codes, but no Commandments. Had the Jews been polytheists, they would today be only another barely remembered people, less important, but just as extinct as the Babylonians. Had Christians presented Jesus to the Greco-Roman world as another God, their faith would long since have gone the way of Mithraism. And surely Islam would never have made it out of the desert had Muhammad not removed Allah from the context of Arab paganism and proclaimed him as the only God. The three great monotheisms changed everything. With his customary clarity and vigor, Rodney Stark explains how and why monotheism has such immense power both to unite and to divide. Why and how did Jews, Christians, and Muslims missionize, and when and why did their efforts falter? Why did both Christianity and Islam suddenly become less tolerant of Jews late in the eleventh century, prompting outbursts of mass murder? Why were the Jewish massacres by Christians concentrated in the cities along the Rhine River, and why did the pogroms by Muslims take place mainly in Granada? How could the Jews persist so long as a minority faith, able to withstand intense pressures to convert? Why did they sometimes assimilate? In the final chapter, Stark also examines the American experience to show that it is possible for committed monotheists to sustain norms of civility toward one another. A sweeping social history of religion, One True God shows how the great monotheisms shaped the past and created the modern world. **From Publishers Weekly Long established as a leading sociologist of American religion, Stark has in recent years extended his methodology into increasingly speculative territory. Here he follows up his inquiry into the origins of Christianity with an even more ambitious project a grand theory of the social and political effects of monotheism in every corner of the globe since the time of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. None of Starks claims is particularly novel or subtle, and many of them seem just plain wrong. People, he asserts, are more satisfied with rational, dependable, authoritative gods than with pantheons of mercurial deities therefore, Buddhism died out in India because it was too intellectual and did not offer a satisfying divinity (unlike Hinduism, which Stark declares is really monotheistic, despite much evidence to the contrary). Moreover, members of monotheistic faiths send out missionaries because they think their God is true, and all others false, a presumption that has on occasion led to violence Jews have resisted conversion over the millennia because they have found solidarity in their common oppression and strength in their monotheism and pluralism results when members of competing monotheistic faiths decide to set aside their differences to maintain public civility. As an armchair historian, Stark is unconvincing, given to sweeping generalizations and glib overstatements. As an armchair ethnographer, he is often startlingly nave. His claim, for example, that rituals are infrequent in polytheistic cultures is based on a poor understanding of ritual. As grand theories go, this is shallow stuff. 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal There are observable social consequences of monotheism, argues Stark (sociology, Univ. of Washington The Rise of Christianity). Monotheistic faith can unite people in great or terrible undertakings to convert others to faith and to struggle for justice or to unite them for crusades and bloody persecutions. It can foster group solidarity, enabling a community to endure centuries as a despised minority amid a hostile society. Is monotheism compatible with civil society? Stark argues that it can be, given plenty of options in a religious marketplace wherein no single religion gains a monopoly. In a book that is a joy to read, Stark firmly sides with the monotheists and the invisible hand of a religious free market. History plays a supporting role, enlisted only to support insights drawn from sociological analysis. Stark is heavy-handed at times, arguing that liberal ministers (who believe in a divine essence rather than a personal God) and secularists are the bad guys foes of authentic faith. Still, this is a thought-provoking and heartening book recommended for all collections. Steve Young, McHenry County Coll., Crystal Lake, IL 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author: Christine Isom-Verhaaren File Type: pdf In 1543, the Ottoman fleet appeared off the coast of France to bombard and lay siege to the city of Nice. The operation, under the command of Admiral Barbarossa, came in response to a request from Francois I of France for assistance from Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent in Frances struggle against Charles V, the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. This military alliance between mutual infidels, the Christian French King and the Muslim Sultan, aroused intense condemnation on religious grounds from the Habsburgs and their supporters as an aberration from accepted diplomacy. Memories of the Crusades were, after all, still very much alive in Europe and an alliance with the Turk seemed unthinkable to many. Allies with the Infidel places the events of 1543 and the subsequent wintering of the Ottoman fleet in Toulon in the context of the power politics of the sixteenth century. Relying on contemporary Ottoman and French sources, it presents the realpolitik of diplomacy with infidels in the early modern era. The result is essential reading for students and scholars of European history, Ottoman Studies, and of relations between the Christian and Islamic worlds.Read More