This new book by the reknowned sociologist Rodney Stark (of e.g. "The Rise of Christianity" fame) is on the Historical/Sociological consequences of Monotheism - and HIGHLY recommended.

In For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery Stark shows how much secular historians and sociologists have distorted, downplayed and dismissed the deep and fundamental positive Christian influence in history. It is astonishing to read how much nonsense and dishonesty there's been - and still is. Stark manages to tackle an enormous amount of anti-Christian myths head on, not the least by actually checking the historical sources.

The main point is to examine possible correlations between a belief in god/gods and sociological/cultural developments, and he succeeds admirably in this - against old theorists like Durkheim and others who insisted that religion (of course) was about rituals and that the actual content of the faith (of course, as the content, of course, was plain wrong, of course) was irrelevant and silly anyway.

Stark is able to show how the kind of God/gods one believe in - and the intensity of this belief - are significant variables in several areas:

1. When, where and what kind of reformations occur. Even if he insists (quite rightly) that any religious body which establishes a monopoly will lead to strife, that reformations are unavoidable, and never is blind to atrocities or negative aspect of neither Protestants nor Catholics, he shows in every chapter the necessity of Christianity for the modern world.
2. The rise of modern science (Stark shows a high correlation between belief in a rational God and a rational Creation on the emergence of science from about the fourteenth century, while other beliefs had a negative effect) is a direct outcome of a Christian view of the Universe. Even if that view was not a sufficient cause, it was a neccessary cause. And there's a lot of stuff on the antireligious rhetoric about the "war between Science and Religion" - there never was any.
3. Without a passionate belief in God (and Jesus) there would be no modern science or abolition of slavery. In fact the Church even hindered and stopped witch-hunts, even as at the same time, through some hard to avoid logic and rationality, it led courts in the late fifteenth century to start taking up such cases when considering that non-Christian "magic" (herbs, hexes, wise women) in fact worked, and worked even better than Christian "magic" (prayers, relics etc), in an age of religious strife which reduced former tolerance of religious noncomformity. What Stark does here is in fact to make some kind of sense of the craze, and to show that any country with a strong, central government (like in Spain, Portugal and Italy) managed to stop almost all cases before they went to court or to executions. While perhaps three quarters of the total number of withces executed (about 30 000 of 40 000) died in the autononymous German "Borderlands" along the Rhine river.

This book will become a classic of Modern Sociology of Religion, even if of course some of his findings may and should be questioned, as with all science. And no doubt it will lead to a lot of aggressive debate (and I guess, even more distortions, downplayings and dismissals), as it goes so directly against Political Correct History.