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    Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion
    Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion
    Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion
    Audiobook19 hours

    Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion

    Written by Susan Jacoby

    Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In this original and riveting exploration, Susan Jacoby argues that conversion-especially in the free American "religious marketplace"-is too often viewed only within the conventional and simplistic narrative of personal reinvention and divine grace. Instead, the author places conversions within a secular social context that has, at various times, included the force of a unified church and state, desire for upward economic mobility, and interreligious marriage.Moving through time, continents, and cultures, Jacoby examines conversions to authoritarian secular ideologies. She also provides portraits of individual converts, including the Catholic Church father Augustine of Hippo; the German Jewish convert to Catholicism Edith Stein, murdered at Auschwitz and canonized by the church; boxing champion Muhammad Ali, who scandalized white Americans in the 1960s by becoming a Muslim; and even politicians such as George W. Bush. Finally, Jacoby takes on the question of why the freedom to choose a religion-or to reject religion altogether-is a fundamental human rights issue that remains a breeding ground for violence in areas of the world that never experienced an Enlightenment.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateFeb 16, 2016
    ISBN9781494587543
    Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion
    Author

    Susan Jacoby

    Susan Jacoby is the author of five books, including Wild Justice, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. A contributor to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsday, and Vogue, she lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for Strange Gods

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      I was a bit disappointed with this. Jacoby focuses on the conversion of the Jews, which she says is what people are historically interested in. It also, as she tells us several times, the history of one branch of her family. I'm not marking her down for this, since I don't fault people for books they didn't write, but I already know about this in general, although certainly not in the detail, she is giving us. I think that the title suggests a broader scope -- since she basically stays within the Abrahamic religions, the deities in question were neither all that strange nor plural. I'm also interested in the conversion of the pagans, both in antiquity and later, such as the Northern Crusades. The Jews might not have been under as much pressure if the Christians hadn't been able convert the pagans, whether voluntarily or by force. The Duke of Lithuania and later King of Poland, Władysław II Jagiełło apparently converted in 1387 partly to end the attacks of the Teutonic Knights, who were determined to force the northern European pagans to convert. While the conversion mainly involved the nobility, and he did not crack down on the commoners' religious practices at first, I imagine that the Catholic hierarchy knew that once they got their foot in the door, they could crack down. The book had a lot of interesting material, and being a secularist, she was quite detailed about forced conversions, whereas the Medieval period is so often cast as of happy time of shared faith. There wouldn't have been punishments for heresy if there weren't dissenters. Jacoby talks about the Albigensian Crusade, when the Catholic set out to exterminate the practitioners of an alternate form of Christianity that was very popular in southern France. The Massacre at Béziers is where the phrase translated as, "Kill them all, for the Lord knoweth them that are His" is supposed to have been spoken. Getting rid of the heretics was too important to bother separating out the good Catholics.I found the book a bit wordy. There were times when Jacoby seemed to be going off on tangents that didn't exactly relate to conversion. Jacoby talks movingly about Mohammed Ali's conversion to Islam, and his stand against the war in Vietnam, but I don't think we really needed an accounting of his fights after he was able to return to his career (the Thrilla in Manila). Small things, but over the course of the book they added up to a fair amount of padding.As a rare secular view of conversion, it is well worth reading, especially people like to focus on the sufferings of their ancestors, not the sufferings they inflicted on others.
    • 4/5
      The author traces the history of religious conversion throughout the ages. She discusses various famous converts, and their fates, including discussions of what she terms "conversion of convenience". She makes the case that many conversions throughout history have been for convenience, because of intermarriage, political or economic advantage, or just plain under duress. The author writes in lucid, accessible prose; however, she lost a half star for the excessive use of long parenthetical commentary that could, and should, have been either in a footnote, or, in most cases, simply part of the main text and not a parentheses. Some of the parenthetical "asides" took up the bulk of the paragraph in which they were found, and this led to frustration in the reading, as I had often forgotten what I was reading was, in fact, parenthetical. Other than that, a very well done work by an author I have been pleased to read frequently. The final chapter is refreshing in its bold discussion of difficult issues without pandering to the vagaries of "religious sensitivities".
    • 4/5
      This insightful book shows how the religious beliefs of almost everybody is determined by those of their parents, their spouse, and their community. Reason plays a role in only an extremely small fraction, despite pretenses to the contrary.