The famous and late atheist Christopher Hitchens wrote a book in 2008 called "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." Is his subtitle true? Does religion actually poison everything? I think/hope most of us would say he's going too far to suggest religion poisons everything, but there's a growing number of people who would agree that religion (especially Christianity) poisons a lot of things.
As I made it clear in the first post of this blog series, I agree! The Church has done and continues to do far too much harm for a community of people claiming to follow Jesus. So I am not minimizing, excusing, or denying any of the harm done. Instead, what I want to do is balance the scales a bit by pointing out the dramatic good the Church has done for the world as well. With all due respect to Hitchens, it is profoundly false and unfair of him to reduce Christianity's impact on the world to "poisoning everything." Yes, there are certain things that the Church has done that Christians should grieve over, but there are also positive contributions that the Church has made that Christians can feel encouraged by. I'll focus this blog post on four of those positive contributions.
#1: Universal Human Dignity & Rights
The first positive contribution is possibly the most significant and forms the foundation for the other three, and it is the view that all humans have inherent dignity and rights. A well-known example of this way of viewing humanity is the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
All people are created equal and have unalienable rights. Does that sound "self-evident" to you? It should! I don't know anybody who in this day in age would disagree with the idea that all people have inherent worth and therefore are born with the right to life and freedom. But the key thing to understand is that this has not always been the case! In fact, outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, there was no Western civilization that believed in universal human dignity—whether it be ancient ones like the Greeks, Romans, or Spartans, or ones in the Middle Ages like the pre-Christianized Celtic or Germanic tribes.
If you stop and try to look at it with a cold survival-of-the-fittest mindset, why should we look after the poor, sick, and weak among us? From the perspective of all pre- or non-Christian Western cultures through history (like the ones just mentioned), it seemed perfectly natural and logical for those who were rich, healthy, and powerful to be treated with dignity but for those who were poor, sick, and weak to be treated as expendable. To give just one specific example, the practice of "exposure" was relatively common in ancient Roman society: if you gave birth to a baby that was deformed, disabled, a girl, or unwanted for any other reason you would just leave it out in the wilderness to die.
That all people have inherent worth is a Judeo-Christian idea. The idea began way back in Genesis 1 which declares that God created all people in His "image". All people have the divine fingerprint on them and therefore have inherent value. Fast-forwarding to the first century, Jesus catalyzes this idea and embodies how to live it. He compassionately touches lepers, values women, welcomes children, dines with outcasts, and ultimately gives his life for the wellbeing of all people, confirming once-and-for-all that everyone is valuable to God. This way of viewing and valuing humanity was powerful, new, and revolutionary, and it is the foundation for three other "inventions" of Christianity...
#2: Universal Education
In the pagan world, school was reserved for boys from wealthy families.
The first seed for change was planted when Jesus—who was first and foremost a "Rabbi" (Hebrew for the word "teacher")—allowed both the poor and women to be his disciples (students) and taught them. Likewise in the early church, the poor and women were taught the bible and theology right alongside the rich and men.
Christians in the 700s A.D., under the rule of Emperor Charlemagne, initiated schools for all economic levels, not just the rich. Admittedly the focus at this point in time was school for all boys, but we have evidence that some girls did attend these schools as well, which would have been revolutionary for that time.
In the 1500s Martin Luther and the Reformers did a major push for all people to be taught how to read so that they could read the Bible for themselves. Until then only a small fraction of society would have been literate.
It is a little-known fact that initially "Sunday school" was literally school. Because poor children in Great Britain in the 1700s were forced to work 6 days per week, a Christian named Robert Raikes created a school for them on the one day out of the week they were free: Sunday school. This allowed poor children to be educated and have hope for a better future. Only later did Sunday school morph into teaching church kids the Bible—it began as a way for poor children to receive a normal education.
#3: Hospitals
In pagan civilizations throughout history hospitals were reserved for (drumroll please...) rich people, as well as soldiers on the battlefield. For someone like me who lives in 21st-century Canada it can be difficult to imagine having no access whatsoever to healthcare, but in the ancient world most people would have little or no options available to them if they became sick or injured.
That changed in the 300s when a Christian named Basil of Caesarea (inspired by Jesus who devoted a significant portion of his ministry to loving and healing the sick) created the first genuinely public hospital. Basil's health centre included six different sections: for the poor, homeless, orphans, lepers, seniors, and the sick. From that time onward the existence of public hospitals expanded when and where Christianity expanded: whenever churches took root in an area, hospitals would begin popping up and the sick would be cared for.
#4: Charity
As audacious as it may sound, I have heard it said that Christians invented charity. In ancient pagan civilization, if you were poor and without food there was no formal organization or group for you to turn to. It was simply not a moral value in those societies to look after those who couldn't look after themselves.
Because of the high value that Jesus himself placed on the poor (e.g. "I have come to preach good news to the poor..." - Luke 4:18), from the very beginning of the Church caring for the poor was a priority for Christians. The first leaders of the Church commissioned new leaders telling them to "remember the poor" (Galatians 2:10) as they planted churches and spread the news of Jesus.
Both the degree and success of the Christians' efforts to care for the poor can be seen by the fact that in the 300s the pagan Emperor Julian took notice. Julian, one of the last pagan Emperors before Rome was thoroughly Christianized, intensely disliked Christianity and was therefore worried by its growing popularity in the Roman Empire. Julian believes Christianity is growing because they care for the poor and sick, whereas pagan institutions did not, and so he writes a letter to a pagan priest with this juicy quote:
"Why do we not observe that it is [Christians'] benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase [the Christian faith]? I believe that we ought really and truly to practice every one of these virtues."
In other words, Julian senses that Christianity is growing more popular than paganism because of their compassion, so he decides that pagan institutions should try to "beat Christians at their own game" and start caring for the poor and sick!
And the rest is history. Charity has remained a consistent value of Christianity through to the present day. Whether on the local, national, or international level, charities started by Christians are everywhere—Compassion International, Samaritan's Purse, World Vision, and the Salvation Army being just four prominent examples.
Footnotes
1. To learn more about the theme of this blog post, I'd suggest the following resources:
Podcast Episode: Undeceptions with John Dickson (Jul 18, 2021) - "Christian Revolution"
Book: Who Is This Man by John Ortberg (224 pages)
Book: Bullies and Saints by John Dickson (353 pages)
Book: Dominion by Tom Holland (624 pages)
2. To be clear, in this blog post I am NOT saying that only Christian are compassionate, that only Christians hold these values, that you need to be Christian to be a good person, or that Christians have a monopoly on schools, hospitals, and charities. Clearly there are people with different faiths or no faith that are compassionate and good, that found charities, and so on. Rather, what I am saying is:
The Christian faith and movement first gave rise to the concept of human rights, universal education, hospitals, and charities in the western world.
And therefore it is because of Christianity's deep and profound impact on Western culture that the typical person nowadays supports things like human rights and charities—even if that person isn't Christian. In other words, Christianity's impact has been so pervasive that even non-Christians unknowingly still think like Christians and value Christian values.
3. Typically only the rich could afford a proper grave and burial when they died. One of the charitable services the Church provided at that time was a grave and burial for the poor.