Victory of reason

A new book just out looks like it must go on the to-read list: The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark. Christianity as the rhyme and reason of Western Civilization is a common theme around here, and this book attempts to illustrate the connection in detail. The thesis of the book is that Christianity is “fraternally bound to reason; ” that reason and progress are Christian and biblical ideas, and those ideas are at the root of scientific development, economic prosperity, and political freedom. He paints a very different picture of the Middle Ages than the one we have grown accustomed to: that rather than the period following the Fall of Rome ushering in a “dark age,” the Christian principle of reason and progress brought about advancements that the Greeks and the Romans, because of their pagan worldviews, were unable to make. In conjunction with Max Weber’s classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, this book will make a great addition to the rhetoric stage student’s applied history studies.