Every month I will write about something I recommend buying and why. Still shopping for Christmas? Want to get me a commission for my birthday? Here’s the way!

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Today I am highlighting a series from a personal friend that I can honestly say is a really good resource everyone interested in “religion” writ large will find useful. This falls back into the subject of the Origins of Christianity (next will be Modern Philosophy and then Ancient Science again—and then I’ll circle back and start over!). But this is a handy reference to have on your shelf. It’s also available in electronic and audio formats (at least for volume one, other volumes to follow). And it’s a fun read!

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People living in a Christian (or any other Biblical culture, like Judaism or Islam) often swim in a sea of assumptions as to what is normal or standard worldwide, and thus miss out on a crucial piece of information: how weird these religions are, and how their history connects with the entire world history of religion. To gain that perspective there simply is no other one-stop shop as good or complete (or as up to date now) as Fitzgerald’s series Playing God (2024). Volume 1 covers the Evolution of God and the Gods of Monotheism; Volume 2, Judaism and Christianity; and Volume 3, Islam and the Eastern Religions. Extensively researched with the talent of an experienced journalist, its bibliographies alone are worth the price. But they’re also written with wit and charm.

Why this set? Because they are thorough in scope and big in picture, and well-referenced. There really isn’t anything like this anymore. There used to be things like this, way back in the 19th century, sweeping surveys of world religion and its history, but those were all poorly researched even then, and hopelessly obsolete now. There are dictionaries or encyclopedias of world religion but always curt, dry, usually fawning and shallow, and not by a single author keeping you in a single comparative frame of mind. Which is the main value of this series: it covers history as a unifying subject—with skepticism—and explaining why we are stuck with the weird religions we have today, and how deviant they are even from their own traditions.

If you want to situate Christianity in its actual context of world religious history, this is the best place to start. Likewise if you just want to philosophically explore the subject of religion altogether, without the narrow framing Christianity has tried to squeeze it into with its false narrative of uniqueness and inevitability. Indeed, even if you disagree or doubt something Fitzgerald proposes, he breadcrumbs you to the resources you need to check it out, and everything in here stands on some expert or other. He is clear on what is concrete fact and what is theory, which is what you need in a field rife with competing claims and perspectives. Besides being a good read just in themselves, this three volume set will be a valuable addition to any personal library as a reference set. It also makes good edification to just listen all the way through, if you like audiobooks to occupy you while commuting or doing chores or anything else. Volume one may be on Audible eventually, but right now it’s only on Spotify.

It’s getting excellent reviews on Amazon: as of today, over forty ratings, averaging 4.5 of 5 stars. The one (!) person who gave it two stars said nothing about it and couldn’t be verified as even having read it. While the only three star review (a verified buyer) said, “Very good consideration of the origin of the Old Testament and Monotheism. Well researched and with extensive footnotes. The reader must really come to the book with a basic understanding of the issues under discussion and an open mind.” That’s actually spot on. Everyone else gave it four (15%) or five stars (80%).

To illustrate what they and I are responding to, I decided to pick a random page to reproduce for you to get a gist of what they’re talking about, and landed on a section about the evolution of moral universalism as part of Robert Wright’s three-stage process in The Evolution of God, which Fitzgerald describes as, “first, an ethical core; second, a growing universalism; and third, an inclination toward monotheism,” or one might say henotheism (as with angelology and demonology and a pantheon of Saints, Judeo-Christian religions aren’t even really monotheists by any ancient definition of “gods”). In the tiny but I am clipping (from page 103 of volume 1) are two endnotes, to a secondary source (Wright) and a primary source (Diogenes Laertius), but the point made is this:

An ethical core can be a fine thing, but there needs to be more. Wright notes even murderous racists can be nice to members of their own race, and in that sense be ethical.⁴⁵ But in the mid-first-millennium BCE, empires grew larger—and more importantly, brought more diverse cultures together. That xenophobic brand of myopic ethical tunnel vision wasn’t going to cut it if you were an emperor like an Alexander or an Ashoka; not if your goal was to keep your empire intact. Ethics couldn’t be just for one’s own group anymore. An expanded circle of moral concern would be called for.

When the 4th century Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope was once asked where he came from, he reportedly replied, ‘I am a citizen of the world’ (actually, in Greek, kosmopolitês—a citizen of the cosmos).⁴⁶ From kosmopolitês, we get cosmopolitanism, the idea that we were all in this together, all fellow passengers in the same cosmic boat. During the Hellenistic period, this universalist outlook would be championed by Xeno and his Stoics, and would grow, in both philosophical and religious circles. An idea this radical—envisioning a community big enough to encompass all human beings, regardless of their beliefs or political affiliations—went far beyond the scope of say, Plato and Aristotle. 

Illustrating that none of this came from Christianity or even Western thought but was an inevitable evolution driven by empirical reasoning, and predated Christianity by centuries. Here and there Fitzgerald nods to developments in India and China as examples (he goes more into their religions in later volumes). If universalism arose in ancient China without even Western influence, it clearly can’t have been uniquely Western at all, much less Christian.

This whole three-volume series is like that, and in a sense expands the amazing accomplishment of Fitzgerald’s study of The Mormons, one of the most thorough and useful treatments of the history of that uniquely American religion. And anyone who wants to really dive into that weird religion, I also recommend David Persuitte’s Joseph Smith and the Origins of The Book of Mormon. Combined with Fitzgerald’s history, you almost don’t need any other book on Mormonism. But if you’ve already read Fitzgerald’s The Mormons, then you know the depth, quality, and sourcing you will find in all three volumes of Playing God.