Religious reading

Being ill and largely housebound does have its consolations - I've recently been able to catch up on a lot of reading. One book I hadn't read in some time, and which I've just finished rereading, is Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas.

We moderns like to think that superstition was vanquished by the rise of scientific rationalism. In fact, as Thomas shows, the relationship between the rise of science and the decline of magic is not nearly so clear cut.

It is […] possible to connect the decline of the old magical beliefs with the growth of urban living, the rise of science, and the spread of an ideology of self help. But the connection is only approximate and a more precise sociological genealogy cannot at present be constructed.
[…]

The only identifiable social group which was consistently in the van of the campaign against certain types of magic is the clergy, but their attitude to supernatural claims in general was highly ambivalent. It does not seem possible to say whether the growing ‘rationalism’ of natural theology was a spontaneous theological development or a mere response to the pressures of natural science. It would make sense, no doubt, if one could prove that it was the urban middle classes, the shopkeepers and artisans, who took the lead in abandoning the old beliefs, but at present there seems no way of doing so.

It would indeed make sense. And furthermore, it would offer comfort to rationalists like myself who sometimes worry that by undermining the authority of established religion we run the risk of people coming to believe all kinds of dangerous nonsense.