If Christianity had not appeared, Rome would have continued its fall and been succeeded by the warlike tribes of pagan Europe. The culture of the ancients, with their wars, human sacrifices, injustices and barbarities would have continued repetitively until today, like the incoherent histories of Asia and Africa.
It was Christianity alone that brought intellectual and spiritual hope, an end to human sacrifices, and the recognition of individual rights to the world. No other religion ever created a church that limited governments. That limitation enabled the free Christians of Europe to clear the land of great forests, to tame the wild beasts and wild tribes, to develop better methods of agriculture and manufacture, to build cities, to create cultures that were diverse but united in a single faith, to erect the largest, richest, and most polyglot civilization the world has ever known.
This book tells you the significance of Christianity to our civilization. It also tells you, if you have eyes to see, that no civilization has ever risen without a faith, and that none have ever outlasted the loss of its faith. It reminds you of the sacrifices, setbacks, and triumphs of Christians through roughly 1,600years. It points- like a tutor in print- toward your own evaluation of what you have inherited (no matter who you are), what it means to keep this civilization- and what it could mean to lose it.
No matter what the unfortunate students in our anti-Christian schools are told, this is a Christian civilization. Its marvels, spread throughout the world, could not have been conceived, let alone created, by any other civilization. Christianity, in other words, revolutionized the world.
It was Christianity alone that brought intellectual and spiritual hope, an end to human sacrifices, and the recognition of individual rights to the world. No other religion ever created a church that limited governments. That limitation enabled the free Christians of Europe to clear the land of great forests, to tame the wild beasts and wild tribes, to develop better methods of agriculture and manufacture, to build cities, to create cultures that were diverse but united in a single faith, to erect the largest, richest, and most polyglot civilization the world has ever known.
This book tells you the significance of Christianity to our civilization. It also tells you, if you have eyes to see, that no civilization has ever risen without a faith, and that none have ever outlasted the loss of its faith. It reminds you of the sacrifices, setbacks, and triumphs of Christians through roughly 1,600years. It points- like a tutor in print- toward your own evaluation of what you have inherited (no matter who you are), what it means to keep this civilization- and what it could mean to lose it.
No matter what the unfortunate students in our anti-Christian schools are told, this is a Christian civilization. Its marvels, spread throughout the world, could not have been conceived, let alone created, by any other civilization. Christianity, in other words, revolutionized the world.
- from page vi, The Great Christian Revolution