If you're like me, then you are a big fan of Orson Scott Card. If you haven't read Ender's Game that means you probably don't know Chris Chu. All kidding aside, it's a great book but that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is that Orson Scott Card has his own website, and in it he has a column titled "Uncle Orson Reviews Everything." I found it when he reviewed Serenity, and this little tidbit from his latest column intreguied me.
Aren't you tired of hearing people blame Christianity for everything that's wrong with the world?
Or maybe you have been sheltered from the vile things that are being said about Christianity. All you have to do is not read newspapers or magazines or scholarly books or journals, and stay away from classes in the no-subject-matter departments of secular universities and private conversations among Leftists who think of themselves as intellectuals.
But those of us who do partake of those vices are quite aware that Christianity is widely regarded as the source of all evil, both in the past and today.
I won't bother detailing all the charges against Christianity. I will only point out a fascinating and valuable history book called The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, by Rodney Stark.
The nice thing about that title is that by naming "capitalism" and "success" as good things, it automatically selects as its audience people who already reject most of the groups that attack Christianity. Stark is essentially preaching to the choir -- but that's kind of a shame.
Because while he definitely has an agenda, he plays straight with his sources. That is, the history he recounts actually happened.
There was nothing that happened in Europe that led to its dominance over the entire world that could not have happened in, say, China or India or the Islamic world. And yet it didn't happen in any of those places. It happened in precisely the places where, not just Christianity, but western Christianity held sway for nearly two thousand years.
He starts with helpful reminders that the so-called "dark ages" weren't dark. In fact, they -- and the following "middle ages" -- were the very time when some of the most important innovations in history took place, with often-anonymous inventors in obscure places in Christendom.
And even those that were imported from elsewhere were exploited and perfected in Europe, so that gunpowder, invented in China, became the instrument of world domination only when it got to Europe; and paper and moveable type were combined to lead to general public literacy only in Europe.
Stark is not always able to see weak spots in his own arguments. I wish he hadn't kept saying the obviously false statement that Asian languages "have no word for freedom." This is just silly. What, they leave blanks when translating Western books that use that word? And when you consider that freedom has many meanings anyway, it is laughable that none of those meanings would be expressible in the languages spoken by most people in the world. Even if he was right, it would prove nothing. It's the kind of thing that weakens a whole book.
And it's unfortunate that in order to demonstrate the superior power of "reasoning" in medieval religious discourse, he chooses as his example an obvious case of, not reason, but rationalization, as reasoning is used to justify a pre-formed conclusion (i.e., "proving" that despite the plain language of the gospels, Mary could not have had any children besides Jesus, because she had to remain "pure" throughout her life).
In other words, Stark is himself not particularly well-qualified to demonstrate the supposedly high standards of Western rationalism.
But then again, maybe he is. Maybe the point is that despite all the self-serving rationalizations and weird, unjustified beliefs that pervaded medieval Christendom (just like all other societies in all other times, including ours), Europe still emerged from the Middle Ages uniquely qualified to assume -- or take -- leadership over the whole world.
And the historical facts he points out are illuminating. This is a valuable book, if only because we need reminding sometimes that everything that makes our lives so comfortable and free today, compared to every other place and period in history, came as the result of the wisdom and foolishness and greatness and horrible mistakes of our cultural ancestors.
When hideous crimes are laid against Christianity, it's worth remembering that hideous crimes happened in the history of every region and during most periods of history. But only in the Christian West did they lead to conscience-driven public policies which, gradually and after bitter struggles (cf.: the U.S. Civil War; the British war against the slave trade), led to a world that is better for almost everyone at every level of society than anything that was known before.
So don't imagine you're reading a masterpiece -- but do read the book. If nothing else, it will prepare you to argue when some "intellectual" starts spouting the ignorant version of history that says that "everything evil in the world was caused by religion." The cheap answer, of course, is that in the 20th century, well over a hundred million people were slaughtered in the name of anti-Christian, anti-religious "philosophies" like Marxism and Nazism. But the better answer is to point out that Christianity comes out pretty well in any honest measure by any truly educated person.
Unfortunately, most of the "intellectuals" who make this argument are so woefully undereducated that they won't have a clue what you're talking about. That's what happens when you jettison the teaching of history from the public schools and turn large portions of the universities over to people who hate the very culture they were supposedly hired to transmit to the next generation.
We have created two generations now that are so ignorant of history that they can be lied to with impunity.
This book will help undo some of that ignorance. If you grew up with "social studies" instead of "history," you need this book.
