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81 " The only common feature of the three successful Reformations was their rejection of papal authority; otherwise they were quite at odds. "
― Rodney Stark , Reformation Myths: Five Centuries Of Misconceptions And (Some) Misfortunes
82 " The only plausible common basis for all these events is to celebrate the rise of Protestantism. This raises an even more important matter: that so many of the achievements attributed to Protestantism are entirely mythical and some of the actual results of the rise of Protestantism were quite unfortunate. "
83 " There is an additional and compelling question that probably also will go unaddressed: what is a Protestant? In this brief Introduction I will demonstrate that the category ‘Protestant’ includes so much variation on such important matters as to be essentially meaningless, except when used very narrowly. "
84 " About all that Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans and Anabaptists agreed upon was the divinity of Jesus and the wickedness of the pope. "
85 " there is at least as much, and probably much more, variation on these matters among the Protestants of various types included in these merged ‘Protestant’ groups, than between the ‘average’ Protestants and the Catholics "
86 " Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) was among the first to express deep regrets over the rise of individualism, which he traced back to the Protestant Reformation. Tocqueville is, of course, famous for his two-volume work Democracy in America, based on his perceptive nine-month tour of the nation in 1831. He had much praise for the young republic, but he feared it suffered from excessive individualism. Among his concerns was that individualism leads to selfishness and this can result in people not working for the common good, but for each to remain ‘shut up in the solitude of his own heart’. Against this, Tocqueville urged that Americans spurn individualism and follow instead ‘habits of the heart’. "
87 " The image of medieval piety, of churches filled with devout peasants, has no historical basis. "
88 " Even if they hated going to church and knew very little of Christianity, Europeans in the era of the Reformations were not irreligious. But, as Gerald Strauss put it, they ‘practiced their own brand of religion, which was a rich compound of ancient rituals, time-bound customs, a sort of unreconstructable folk Catholicism, and a large portion of magic to help them in their daily lives for survival’. "
89 " Today, little has changed in European religious life. State churches still dominate all of Europe’s ‘Protestant’ nations, with the negative consequences that will be seen in the next chapter. Church attendance remains low everywhere. And magic is still widely embraced! "
90 " Thus it was that, beginning in about the ninth century, the growing monastic estates came to resemble well-organized and stable firms that pursued complex commercial activities within a relatively free market, investing in productive activities involving a hired workforce, guided by anticipated and actual returns. "
91 " The need for loans often was so great and so widespread that Italian banks opened branches all across the Continent. Although many bishops, monastic orders and even the Roman hierarchy ignored the ban on usury, opposition to interest lingered. As late as the Second Lateran Council in 1139, the Church ‘declared the unrepentant usurer condemned by the Old and New Testaments alike and, therefore, unworthy of ecclesiastical consolations and Christian burial’. "
92 " 39 It was the same in the other great houses. And all of this was possible because the great monasteries began to utilize a hired labour force, who not only were more productive than the monks had been,40 but also more productive than tenants required to provide periods of compulsory labour. Indeed, these tenants had long since been satisfying their labour obligations by money payments. "
93 " From the start, the German princes who supported Luther were not going to allow themselves to be exploited or commanded by religious leaders again. Henceforth, they would rule both Church and state. In this they were vigorously supported by Martin Luther, whose ‘advice to the German princes who embraced Protestantism was that they compel their subjects to submit to religious instruction and allow them to hear only authorized preachers’. "
94 " Once the Lutheran churches were secure, Luther, like most other leaders of the Reformations, believed in freedom of conscience only for those who agreed with him. "
95 " does not ensure that power will be used wisely or humanely. "
― Rodney Stark , How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity
96 " In his magisterial The Reformation, Diarmaid MacCulloch was quite correct that ‘Luther’s writing of 1543 is a blueprint for the Nazi’s Kristallnacht of 1938’, "
97 " the Reformations resulted in state churches that were even more repressive of individuals than the Catholic Church ever attempted to be. The Reformations did not contribute anything to religious freedom and tolerance; to the contrary. Finally, Martin Luther’s vicious anti-Semitism played a significant role in legitimating the Holocaust, just as William Shirer claimed. "
98 " Recalling his days as a student in Paris from about 1205 to 1210, Cardinal Jacques de Vitry wrote: “Simple fornication was held to be no sin. Everywhere, publicly, close to their brothels, prostitutes attracted the students who were walking by on the streets and squares of the city with immodest and aggressive invitations.”31 It was, of course, against regulations for students to accept such invitations. But many students flouted those and other rules, not only bedding prostitutes but also being rowdy and drinking too much.32 "
99 " Humans will tend to adopt and retain those elements of culture that appear to produce “better” results, while those that appear to be less rewarding will tend to be discarded. "
― Rodney Stark , Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief
100 " Sad to say, it is no surprise that the massacre of Antioch is barely reported in many recent Western histories of the Crusades. Steven Runciman gave it eight lines, 30 Hans Eberhard Mayer gave it one, 31 and Christopher Tyerman, who devoted several pages to lurid details of the massacre of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, dismissed the massacre of Antioch in four words.32 "
― Rodney Stark , God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades
