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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 1b6a0bf | This 'shocking realism'52 has often surprised and upset Augustine's readers. But, given the immense authority of the writer, this view shaped Christian political sensibilities ever after: Christian writers could not condemn suggestions for liberalizing the state, or even for dispensing with monarchies. Moreover, by affirming the secularity of kingship the Church made it possible to examine the basis for worldly power and the interplay of ri.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| e082eb6 | It all began with the French Revolution. Prior to that, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries European warfare had involved very small professional armies, fighting very circumscribed campaigns having almost no impact on civilian life. In 1643, the entire Prussian army consisted of 5,500 professional soldiers. A century later the fierce Prussian army commanded by Frederick the Great numbered only 90,000 and still triumphed in the Seve.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| c5822ec | Weber's thesis is now more than a century old and nearly all of the introductory sociology textbooks (but not mine) take it to be a settled fact that the rise of industrial capitalism took place initially in predominantly Protestant countries and that within nations having both Protestants and Catholics, the Protestants dominated the capitalist economy. Moreover, a number of sociologists have attempted to account for the modernization of va.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| a172d4f | Rachfahl noted that the Protestant Ethic thesis was contradicted by the geography of the rise of industrial capitalism. For example, Amsterdam and Antwerp developed industrial capitalism very early when both were Catholic cities, while the Protestant Scandinavian cities were very late to develop industrial capitalism. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 947b3d2 | Lujo Brentano (1844-1931), who correctly noted that industrial capitalism originated in southern Europe long before the German Reformation and was taken north mainly by Catholic banking firms. | Rodney Stark | ||
| dc787a8 | Tawney added an additional twist by suggesting that 'nascent capitalism . . . [shaped] Calvinism's attitude to enterprise and the accumulation of wealth, not vice versa'. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 38e1929 | Then they calculated the relationship between Protestantism and these measures of industrial capitalism. The results were zero: Catholic and Protestant nations did not differ! | Rodney Stark | ||
| 46f3701 | Nationalism' has become a much overused term, subject to far too many and often muddled definitions. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 95591b1 | capitalism was a very Catholic invention: it first appeared in the great monastic estates, way back in the ninth century. | Rodney Stark | ||
| b04fee9 | As suggested by this definition, not all nations are states and not all states are nations. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 4c7228a | Coins and precious metals, food, slaves, and luxury goods flowed to Rome; little came back except tax collectors and soldiers. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 8450ef4 | As for the fall of the Spanish Empire, ironically, perhaps no monarchs in history were more conscientious, honest, or hardworking than Charles V and his son Philip II. Between them they carefully built the Spanish Empire and ruled it for more than eighty years. Nearly every day they rose early and worked diligently at administering this sprawling entity. Had they been wastrels or playboys, they might have done much less damage to the econom.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 93f05c1 | As for doctrine, Luther asserted the absolute authority of Holy Scripture and that each human must discover the meaning of scripture and establish his or her own, personal relationship with God. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 12956d9 | When William the Conqueror had the Domesday Book compiled in 1086, this forerunner of the modern census reported at least 6,500 water-powered mills operating in England, or one for about every fifty families. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 4863d11 | To put it plainly, women enjoyed higher status and more autonomy among Christians than among pagans, and could expect better treatment from their husbands. Pagan Roman women were "three times as likely as Christians to have married before age 13," according to the sociologist Rodney Stark.3 Christian women also exercised far more choice in whom they wed, and were less likely to be forced into an abortion (a frequent cause of death for women.. | Vincent Carroll | ||
| 45b0b37 | By the late twelfth century Europe was so crowded with windmills that owners began to file lawsuits against one another for blocking their wind. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 3954c19 | Given these attitudes and lack of attendance, it is hardly surprising that the German masses (and most Europeans) were ignorant of even basic Christian facts. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 06f1ebf | When the Bishop of Gloucester systematically tested Church of England diocesan clergy in 1551, of 311 pastors, 171 could not repeat the Ten Commandments, and 27 did not know the author of the Lord's Prayer. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 8acd734 | Unfortunately, there is no contemporary history of Rome prior to about 200 BC, when centuries of oral traditions were first committed to writing. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 07c5d3b | No wonder that progress was so slow within the ancient empires. Anything of value--land, crops, livestock, buildings, even children--could be arbitrarily seized, and as the Chinese iron magnates learned, it often was. Worse yet, the tyrannical empires invested little of the wealth they extracted to increase production. They consumed it instead--often in various forms of display. The Egyptian pyramids, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 376a199 | Masoretic | Rodney Stark | ||
| 976d828 | But Christendom was not merely a community of warriors or even a community of the nobility. It was a civilization! Unfortunately, for generations everyone was taught that the era beginning with the fall of Rome and ending not long before the Reformations was correctly known as the 'Dark Ages'. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 8632561 | Data on children, in particular, show the auspicious results of religion on their well-being. According to sociologist John Bartkowski, professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, the children of parents who regularly attend religious services exhibit better self-control, social skills, and approaches to learning. He found that religious networks allow moms and dads to improve their parenting skills; the social support they find fr.. | Bill Donohue | ||
| 8c1f50b | the Romans knew of the watermill but made nearly no use of it, continuing to rely on muscle power to grind their flour.20 The Ottoman Empire prohibited the mechanical clock, and so did the Chinese. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 505fc01 | Plutarch (AD 46-120) estimated that Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul yielded at least a million slaves. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 0d46ef6 | By the seventh century, Christianity probably was far stronger and more sophisticated in North Africa and Asia than in Europe. | Rodney Stark | ||
| d9a6829 | When the Greeks were free they created a civilization advanced beyond anything else in the world. When Rome imposed its imperial rule all across the West, progress ceased for a millennium. The fall of Rome once again unleashed creativity and, for good and for ill, the fragmented and competing Europeans soon outdistanced the rest of the world, possessed not only of invincible military and naval might but also of superior economies and standa.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 8eef70e | The frequent claims that empty churches and low levels of religious activity in Europe today reflect a steep decline in piety are wrong--it was always thus. | Rodney Stark | ||
| a19cbdf | And therefore, according as any one is more anxious in demanding a reason, by so much will he be the firmer in preserving his faith.9 | Rodney Stark | ||
| 517c45f | For there is another truth: to the extent that other cultures have failed to adopt at least major aspects of Western ways, they remain backward and impoverished. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 64c0184 | In addition, since they were committed to reasoning about God, the Jews were quick to embrace the Greek concern for valid reasoning. What emerged was an image of God as not only eternal and immutable but also as conscious, concerned, and rational. The early Christians fully accepted this image of God. They also added and emphasized the proposition that our knowledge of God and of his creation is progressive. Faith in both reason and progres.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 1d6d26a | Most assumed this was due to the fact that church services (with the exception of occasional brief homilies) were in Latin, a language that almost no one in the pews could understand. Thus, it was believed that as the Reformations ushered in preaching in the local vernaculars, widespread public ignorance would end. But it didn't. In part, because so few people came to church. In part, because so many who came paid no attention. And, in part.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 0ae0554 | As the historian Edward Grant explained, 'It is indisputable that modern science emerged in the seventeenth century in Western Europe and nowhere else'. ... The crucial question is: Why? My answer to this question is as brief as it is unoriginal: Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being and the universe as his personal creation, thus having a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting human co.. | science world-history | Rodney Stark | |
| abbf2b8 | While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth. | Rodney Stark | ||
| d1292a4 | Encouraged by the Scholastics and embodied in the great medieval universities founded by the church, faith in the power of reason infused Western culture, stimulating the pursuit of science and the evolution of democratic theory and practice. | Rodney Stark | ||
| e5eecea | The truth is that science arose only because the doctrine of the rational creator of a rational universe made scientific inquiry plausible. Similarly, the idea of progress was inherent in Jewish conceptions of history and was central to Christian thought from very early days. | Rodney Stark | ||
| ad29d53 | faith in progress was fundamental to western Christianity. As for Orthodox Christianity in the Byzantine East, it prohibited both clocks and pipe organs from its churches.51 | Rodney Stark | ||
| 7e6a769 | Even more important, Islam holds that the universe is inherently irrational--that there is no cause and effect--because everything happens as the direct result of Allah's will at that particular time. Anything is possible. Attempts at science, then, are not only foolish but also blasphemous, in that they imply limits to Allah's power and authority.53 Therefore, Muslim scholars study law (what does Allah require?), not science. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 953de64 | The reason so many innovations and inventions were abandoned or even outlawed in China had to do with Confucian opposition to change on grounds that the past was greatly superior. | Rodney Stark | ||
| b5dc023 | If you were asked what the most churchgoing age in America was, what would you say? Would you guess the 1950s? Sometime in the 1800s? The colonial times? The answer will surprise you. Professor Rodney Stark, whom we heard from earlier, explains that in 1776, only 17 percent of Americans attended a local church. These were the days when the church steeple was the central landmark of most cities. By 1850, that number mushroomed to 34 percent .. | Glenn T Stanton | ||
| c62c941 | I]n the years that followed the persecutions, Christianity came to see itself, with great pride, as a persecuted Church. Its greatest heroes were not those who did good deeds but those who died in the most painful way. If you were willing to die an excruciating end in the arena then, whatever your previous holiness or lack thereof, you went straight to heaven: martyrdom wiped out all sins on the point of death. As well as getting there fast.. | christianity equality madness martyrdom monotheism sacrifice | Catherine Nixey | |
| c415f70 | The Mormon definition of life makes the earthly sojourn basically an educative process. Knowledge is necessary to mastery, and the way to deification is through mastery, for not only does education aid man in fulfilling present tasks, it advances him in his eternal progress. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 53fae57 | Echoing his teacher, but using many more words, St Thomas Aquinas began his analysis of just prices by posing the question 'Whether a man may lawfully sell a thing for more than it is worth'.53 He answered by first quoting Augustine that it is natural and lawful, for 'you wish to buy cheap, and sell dear'. Next, Aquinas excluded fraud from legitimate transactions. Finally, he recognized that worth is not really an objective value - 'the jus.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 89f3899 | Property is insecure. In this one phrase the whole history of Asia is contained. | Rodney Stark |