The Reasonableness of Christianity Blog

Historical narratives and comparative civilizations analysis had been dead for decades after the history coup of the 1960s. In my reading of events, this was to cover up the obvious benefits of Christianity and capitalism that were highlighted by influential pre-coup historians like Arnold Toynbee and Carol Quigley. Fortunately, in recent years the “civilization” is starting to return to popular discourse. The postmodernist moratorium on analytical history is beginning to crack. A 2014 article is titled “The Return of Civilization - and of Arnold Toynbee?” I take the question mark to indicate that they are sure the concept of civilization is making a comeback, but Toynbee’s comeback (and that of Christianity in historical analysis) is more speculative. That is my reading of the present moment as well. In this millennium or close to it, several popular books with civilizational themes have been published and have been well-received. Examples include: Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), by ...

[Note from Stephen: I wrote a long blog post on this topic with lots of primary sources, but it was very boring. My wife Meliah re-wrote the post in a more compelling way. This post is Meliah's re-write. For the original longer post, click here .] Once upon a time, not too long ago, people wanted to study history to learn how civilizations rose and fell. They desired to know what made things work well, and what made things fail. This study naturally revealed that the Western World was unique throughout the history of humanity. One need not look long to see that the science, art, law, technology, and morality of the West was a singular occurrence. Further examination would easily reveal that Christianity and capitalism were twin goods that led to millions of people being lifted from poverty and to a human rights phenomenon that had abolished slavery, empowered women, and let freedom ring throughout the western world. This is not a popular position now though. Students are no longer ...

[Update: My wife Meliah helpfully re-wrote this content in a more compelling way here . If you want the boring version, keep reading.] In a previous post , I wrote about a once popular branch of history that was focused on historical analysis and comparative civilization study, and how the entire field was snuffed out in the 1960s.  I will here refer to this snuffing out as "the history coup,"  and I will try to provide more description of how it happened. It turns out to be a bigger deal than I thought. A main motivator of comparative civilization studies was the desire to contextualize our own society, including gaining a better understanding of common forces acting on civilizations, and how those might illuminate the potential future and fate of the West.  For example, this line of inquiry asked how civilizations in general start, grow, decline, and fall; and then the scholar asked how the West is similar and different from other civilizations, how the West become what...

I am brand new at blogging.  I often find that putting words down in writing helps me clarify my thought processes, but I am a raw beginner. Maybe there is someone out there that will be interested in what I have to say now or at some future point.  I understand that I might be mistaken in some points along the way, or that someone else might disagree with what I have to say even when I don't think I am mistaken.  I hope that this blog can become a place for people with diverse viewpoints to communicate on equal footing in a reasonable way.   In the words of Carroll Quigley, one of my favorite historians, the essence of Western Civilization (mentioned in my previous blog post ) can be summed up in the phrase "Truth unfolds in time through a communal process."  That is also what I hope this blog can become - a place for me and others to search for truth and learn from differing perspectives, though united by a faith in Christ.  Where I am wrong in my as...

What were you taught about Christianity in school?  For me (at a public high school in Wisconsin in the late 1990s) the narrative in world history and literature classes was generally dismissive and quite negative.  To exaggerate only a little, the narrative was something like this:  “Whether or not there actually was a Jesus, some people started a religion about him 2000 years ago.  Constantine decided to rally his troops around this new religion, and killed a bunch of pagans to successfully gain power in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire.  Later, when there weren't as many pagans around, Christians decided to go kill some Muslims in the Crusades.  Then with Islam in retreat, Christians decided to split into 2 groups and kill each other for 150 years. Fortunately, Christianity was proved wrong by Clarence Darrow in the Scopes monkey trial so now we can finally progress to a new brighter age of reason.” Without a solid background in history or philosophy...

We are all born with a tremendous curiosity, and a need to explore and understand the world around us - to understand how and why things work, and how we fit into it.  It is so fun to watch babies and toddlers and young children go through this process.  I suspect that my sense of curiosity was partially stunted through 16 years of formal education.  But when I was in graduate school (Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin - Madison) around 2008 I started to follow politics, having a vague sense that something different was happening and things were changing in the word. I felt my curiosity drive began to resurface, and I opened a new chapter in my intellectual life.  (Maybe it had something to do with developing and practicing critical thinking techniques in a new way as a graduate student.)  Politics then gave way to the main question that planted itself in my mind, which was "How did the world come to be the way it is now, from how it us...