To know who you are, you have to know from where you came. As philosopher Richard Weaver put it, “there is no identity without historicity.” The bad news is that Americans—and Westerners in general—are increasingly befogged and amnesic about our…
Tag archives for Rodney Stark
Why apostolic tradition matters
Within a generation of Christ’s death and resurrection, the church broke free from the orbit of Jerusalem and swerved into the path of the Gentile world and its bewildering array of pantheons, temples, astrologists, sorcerers, philosophers, and mystery cults. Some…
The wealth of (Western) nations
“Calvinism is evidently connected with the commercial vocation,” writes Luigi Barzini in The Europeans. “It is not clear to an Italian [like the author], however, whether Calvinists, driven by their stern religious code, become the best merchants, or whether merchants…
