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Tag Archives: Rodney Stark

Religious Insurance

27 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by memoirandremains in New Testament Background, Uncategorized

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New Testament Background, paganism, Religious Insurance, Rodney Stark

classic Greek temple

As E. R. Dodds recognized, religious life in the empire suffered from excessive pluralism, from “a bewildering mass of alternatives. There were too many cults, too many mysteries, too many philosophies of life to choose from: you could pile one religious insurance on another, yet not feel safe.”21 Moreover, since no god could effectively demand adherence (let alone exclusive commitment), individuals faced the need and the burden to assemble their own divine portfolio,22 seeking to balance potential services and to spread the risks, as Dodds noted in his reference to religious insurance. Thus, a rich benefactor in Numidia contributed to temples and shrines honoring “Jove Bazosenus…Mithra, Minerva, Mars Pater, Fortuna Redux, Hercules, Mercury, Aesculapius, and Salus.”23 Ramsay MacMullen reports a man who simultaneously served as a priest in four temples,24 while many temples served many gods simultaneously.

Stark, Rodney. Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome (p. 33). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The world is more intensely religious than ever before

10 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Culture, Thesis, Uncategorized

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Culture, religion, Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark explains:

Many intellectuals insist that a worldwide triumph of secularization is inevitable, and they applaud whatever is interpreted as a sign of religious decline. Religious believers, meanwhile, lament these same signs. The crucial point is that both sides accept the premise that the world is becoming more secular.

Well, they are both wrong.

The world is not merely as religious as it used to be. In important ways, it is much more intensely religious than ever before. Around the globe, four out of every five people claim to belong to an organized faith, and many of the rest say they attend worship services. In Latin America, Pentecostal Protestant churches have converted tens of millions, and Catholics are going to Mass in unprecedented numbers. There are more churchgoing Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else on earth, and China may soon become home of the most Christians. Meanwhile, Islam enjoys far higher levels of member commitment than it has for many centuries, and the same is true for Hinduism.

 

Tariqu al Hakim

11 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Uncategorized

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Crusades, God's Batallions, Hakim, History, Rodney Stark

The sixth Fatimid caliph in Egypt was a very strange man:

On the other hand, he ordered that all the dogs in Cairo be killed, that no grapes be grown or eaten (to prevent the making of wine), that women never leave their homes, and that shoemakers cease making women’s shoes. Hkim also outlawed chess and the eating of watercress or of any fish without scales. He suddenly required that everyone work at night and sleep during the day since these were his preferred hours. He murdered his tutor and nearly all of his viziers, large numbers of other high officials, poets, and physicians, and many of his relatives—often doing the killing himself. He cut off the hands of the female slaves in his palace. To express his opposition to public baths for women, he had the entrance to the most popular one suddenly walled up, entombing alive all who were inside. Hkim also forced all Christians to wear a four-pound cross around their necks and Jews to wear an equally heavy carving of a calf (as shame for having worshipped the Golden Calf). Finally, Hkim had his name substituted for that of Allah in mosque services.None of this changed history.

But then Hkim ordered the burning or confiscation of all Christian churches (eventually about “thirty thousand were burned or pillaged”) and the stripping and complete destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, including all traces of the carved-out tomb beneath it.

Stark, God’s Battalions

Why a knight went on pilgrimage

10 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Uncategorized

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Crusades, Pilgrimage, Rodney Stark

Stark explains an interesting aspect of medieval pilgrimage: it was wildly associated with atonement for the worst sort of crimes:

The knights and nobility of Christendom were very violent, very sinful, and very religious! As Sidney Painter (1902–1960) put it: “[T]he ordinary knight was savage, brutal, and lustful. At the same time he was, in his own way, devout.”38 Consequently, the knights and nobles were chronically in need of atonement and quite willing to accept the burdens involved to gain it; there was widespread agreement that for terrible crimes, only a pilgrimage could possibly suffice.

Rodney Stark, God’s Battalions

It is a great, fascinating read: Stark puts the Crusades into context (it is complicated). Well worth your time. One learns a great deal of the Middle Ages in a very short space.

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