In the Name of God: The Role of Religion in the Modern World

Documentary producer O’Grady (And Man Created God) presents a dazzling, lucid history of evolving, tenuous religious toleration. Starting with the Roman Empire and the beginnings of Islam, O’Grady shows how toleration was a pragmatic decision to consolidate power among diverse populations and conquered territories but collapsed when the subordinated began to threaten those in power. Tension between religious empires or nation states pervaded the Middle Ages as both Christians and Muslims fought heresy and launched holy wars against each other. Throughout the Dark Ages, O’Grady highlights how Muslims tended to be more tolerant of Jews, while Christians vacillated between relying on Jews for financing and violently massacring or expelling them, notably following the Black Death. The Reformation’s wars and the 16th-century Sunni-Shiite conflict show how both faiths fractured and struggled with toleration. After discussing the diminished and reshaped role of God in politics during the American and French Revolutions, O’Grady describes the rapid, chaos-inducing Islamic Enlightenment and modernization sparked by the French invasion of Egypt in 1798. She ends with the rise of nationalism instead of religion as a unifier, arguing that the the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust were largely a product of this realignment. This perceptive, masterly history will change how many readers think about toleration and the supposed clash between Christian and Muslim worlds. (June)