Christianity matters. Primarily because it saves the soul.
This book offers residual effects thereof.
But beware: we need not embrace Christ for His effects on society--for that is not a true embrace. Rather, we love Jesus because of His sacrifice for us.
I would note that Francis Schaeffer cover much of this topic brilliantly in his book “How then shall we Live”.
Reason still requires premises upon which to operate, just as bookkeeping needs to be about money.
The successes of Christian influence are a witness of Christ. Where we go from there depends upon whether our reason embraces earthly or heavenly premises. Earthly premises would tell us to employ Christians in order to improve our country, which can backfire if we get the “wrong” Christians or ones with a lopsided worldview. Heavenly premises would tell us to keep things in perspective and always speak of the successes of Christian influence in terms of a witness. Like C. S. Lewis put it, “[God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist’s shop.”
From the title one gets the impression that the point of Christianity is capitalism.
Amazon bkmk
I read this book YEARS ago. Good book.
But one thing needs to be emphasized: the misnomer of the “Dark Ages”.
Dark compared to what? Compared to Rome. But comparing to actual Europe...they were getting out of their savage primitive level. Europeans were largely savage, let’s face it, and Rome and Christianity changed that greatly.
I challenge the assertion that Christianity is any more rationally based than other religions. It is not quite as mystical as say Buddhism or as esoteric as Daoism, for example, or eve Judaic Cabalism. But it certainly requires a suspension Reason in favor of Faith to believe in principles like the Holy Trinity, the Eternal Life, and even the Soul.
Not that that is a bad thing. Religions exist to answer questions for which there are no answers. Ultimately, ALL of them demand some element of Faith.
God doesn’t exist because I can prove He does; He either exists or He doesn’t. So the question becomes less “Does He exist?” than “Do you BELIEVE that He exists?” And that belief, that Faith, owes nothing to Reason. Nor should it.
"Ideas have consequences"(Weaver), already has been suggested.
In 2016, we should remember that the ideas of 1776 came out of a set of ideas consistent with liberty.
We tend to forget, or have never considered, that other world views existed then, as now.
Unless today's citizens rediscover the ideas of liberty existing in what Jefferson called "the American mind" of 1776, we risk going back to the "Old World" ideas which preceded the "Miracle of America."
There are those who call themselves "progressives," when, in fact, their ideas are regressive and enslaving, and as old as the history of civilization.
Would suggest to any who wish an authentic history of the ideas underlying American's founding a visit to this web site, at which Richard Frothingham's outstanding 1872 "History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States" can be read in its entirety on line.
This 600+-page early history traces the ideas which gave birth to the American founding. Throughout, Richard Frothingham, the historian, develops the idea that it is "the Christian idea of man" which allowed the philosophy underlying the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to become a reality--an idea which recognizes the individual and the Source of his/her "Creator"-endowed life, liberty and law.
Is there any wonder that the enemies of freedom, the so-called "progressives," do not promote such authentic histories of America? Their philosophy puts something called "the state," or "global interests" as being superior to individuals and requires a political elitist group to decide what role individuals are to play.
In other words, they must turn the Founders' ideas upside-down in order to achieve a common mediocrity for individuals and power for themselves.
And a major part of the success of Europeans is the ability of Jews and Christians to do business on trust with people who are not kin. In almost all if not all other cultures there is no trust outside of family and clan. A Jew or Christian has been able to make a deal with another Jew or Christian and both sides of the deal have a reasonable expectation that the other will do what he has promised to do. In Japan and Korea and Vietnam it is the Christian portion of the population that has become the business class. In Japan that Christian population was entirely sub rosa for centuries but it existed in some numbers in Nagasaki and other places and formed the business class there.
Bmk...
Just bought it on Kindle, thanks!
Stark must be ignoring Jean Calvin’s major contribution to the development of capitalism which was to correct the Church’s prohibition on earning interest on lending money. This opened the door for banking.
The Catholic Church had been prohibiting the practice but the biblical texts they had used to justify that simply prohibited lending to the needy and not taking advantage of their plight, it didn’t prohibit lending to others.
The Catholic Church had been borrowing their ideas about lending from Aristotle or Plato, who believed that ‘money was sterile’ and therefore couldn’t be expected to produce interest, a common misperception among those who don’t understand a flow and quantity of money.