What’s So Great about Christianity

What’s So Great about Christianity is a book by Dinesh D’Souza, a former policy analyst in the Reagan White House, and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution. In addition, Dinesh D’Souza is a New York Times best-selling author and an influential US public policy influencer, representing conservative and classical liberal views.

Foreword

Daniel Hinšt, Vice President of the Centre for Public Policy and Economic Analysis (CEA), provides an overview of key messages from this book, relevant to understanding institutions and public policies behind many values of Christianity. Moreover, his recent policy analysis clearly shows that the most competitive, free, and democratic countries have predominant or at least significant Christian roots.

Daniel Hinšt is a Political Scientist who specialized in religion and politics, Max Weber’s theory on Protestantism and Capitalism, and the (classical) liberal political philosophy of John Locke and John Stuart Mill. All the mentioned testify to the predominant Christian roots of modern political and economic institutions based on individual liberty, limited government, and free market capitalism, i.e. economic freedom, despite many attempts to ignore or deny that.

In the book What’s So Great about Christianity Although D’Souza primarily describes the legacies of American Christianity, he also tries to provide an overview of the whole Western civilization. Due to a strong legacy of Yugoslav socialism in Croatia, which still captures some societal processes, there is limited knowledge of the predominantly Christian legacy of classical Western philosophy, despite often forgotten Central European cultural heritage.

Regardless of (dis)beliefs and attitudes toward religion, What’s So Great about Christianity is a book that properly addresses the growing issue of generalization, exaggeration, and superficial conclusions regarding the rather complex and pluralistic context of Western Christianity. Such patterns even produce misinformation and disinformation, affecting the values in developed societies, institutions, and public policies.

Similar to this topic, CEA’s book overviews include The Soul of Liberty of the Acton Institute.

Key messages from the book

Note: All bullets represent paraphrased sentences from the book. Subtitles and brackets are of the author of this overview to improve the substance of the topic.

Against literalism and fundamentalism

• Regarding the Scripture, both crude literalism and secular assumptions should be rejected, in favor of contextual reading; fundamentalism should not be defended, but rather the common ground of Protestant and Catholic beliefs.

Making a better world

• In Matthew 5:13-14 Christians are called to be the salt and the light of the world, to make the world a better place (which contributed to policy actions of the Enlightenment, including the Founding Fathers).

The foundation of the Western civilization

• Christianity is the foundation of Western civilization and the root of values, including many institutions and values secular people cherish; (the German philosopher) Jürgen Habermas in “A Time for Transition” said that Christianity is the foundation of conscience, liberty, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization.
• Christianity contributed to our politics, economics, laws, and the organization of society.

Christianity is the original source of secularism

• Secularism is an invention of Christianity, even if secular values have been severed from the original source; an American and Enlightenment idea of separation between government and religion was a Christian idea; in Mathew 22:21, Christ said to render Caesar what is his, and to God what is God’s.
• Ancient Romans and Greeks worshiped gods of the state, while Christians refused that and did not acknowledge the Roman emperor as a god.
• While Islamic law (Sharia) extends beyond religion to civil, family, and commercial law, Christianity inhabits two realms in Augustine’s The City of God – the heavenly city and the earthly city, and the Christian duties to each of them are not the same (which can also be seen in Martin Luther’s Two Kingdoms doctrine, based on Augustine).
• Conscience inside every person should be protected from political control since the authority belongs to God; the idea of limited government derives from the Christian notion that the ruler’s realm is limited beyond which he must not go; the kings have been replaced by democratic government, and there are some things government cannot control, like the whole private sphere; there is also a distinction between society and state (which socialists and communists do not consider since they want to limit or abolish the free society).
• However, Christian rulers used the power of the state to enforce religious orthodoxy; they confused Christendom and Christianity, by trying to establish the heavenly city on earth, which is against Christ and Augustine.

Religious tolerance and freedom of conscience

• Early modern thinkers like John Locke were practical Christians; they invented religious tolerance, not because of eliminating the influence of Christianity but because of the wrong kind of Christianity; men like Locke were disgusted with abuses in the name of Christianity; therefore, they developed freedom of religion for this Christian problem, and the idea was developed in stages, starting with religious tolerance, which means to tolerate despite believing that someone is wrong.
• The American founders, the majority of whom were devout Christians while some of them were Deists, extended the concept of tolerance to freedom of conscience; several denominations wanted to dominate, and they agreed to leave central government out of religion; the First Amendment (on freedom of religion and no establishment of religion) was passed with Christian support.

Faith as the foundation of liberty and morality

• Jefferson argued that religious faith was the foundation for the liberties as the gifts of God.
• After the Revolution, the founders continued with public prayers, promoting Christian values in schools, and appointing chaplains for the armed forces and the Congress. The founders shared George Washington’s caution against the position that morality can be maintained without religion.
• John Adams said that the Constitution was made for religious and moral people, while it is inadequate for any other government.

Separation from state, not from public and society

• Today, courts wrongly consider the separation of church and state that religion has no space in public (policy) and shaping laws; however, this (institutional) separation of realms is supplied by Christianity to promote religious freedom and moral community (not the absence of Christianity in society, or other beliefs).

Democratic power of the ordinary people, instead of concentrated political power

• Family, limited government, and rule of law derived from the Christian understanding of fallible human beings and a common man; Jesus was a carpenter’s apprentice, and his first disciples were artisans and fishermen; he talked with fallen women, children, poor and sick (people); for the first time, people began to view society from the perspective of an ordinary man (which contributed to real diversity, equality, and inclusion as the basis of democracy, before DEI was conceived).
• The idea that power should be cautiously entrusted to fallible humans is the basis of the modern liberal idea of law; people (democratically) choose the government, but the American system imposes checks and balances, and separation of power, a structure that deliberately fosters rivalries to prevent concentration of power; moreover, people who make laws in the West are subject to them and can be recalled of the people on whose behalf they are making them; Christianity enhanced social and political accountability by providing the model of servant leadership, in line with Mark 10:43 and Luke 22:27 (contrary to authoritarianism and totalitarianism).

Marriage as a free choice and commitment

• Christianity emphasized free choice as a binding one; as we have consented to marry without coercion, we should preserve marriage as a lifelong commitment.

Christian ethics contributed to capitalism

• Capitalism developed in conjunction with the Christian ethic and satisfied Christian demand for an institution channeling selfish human desires toward the betterment of society. The Bible is often quoted that money is the root of evil, but actually, it says about the love of money; this is a condemnation of human attitude toward wealth, not against wealth or commerce; while profit remains the goal, entrepreneurs are figuring out how better to serve the needs of customers (and develop a morally based capitalism, strictly distinguished from crony capitalism and/or different hybrid forms of “capitalisms” in societies without freedom and morality as necessary societal inputs for healthy institutions).
• In the work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber traces the rise of capitalism with Calvinism, while some elements of capitalism predate the Reformation, and can be found in Florence, Venice, and Genoa; therefore, capitalism grew in stages.
• When (John) Locke defended property rights, he saw humans imitating the creativity of God; even today, we consider work as a vocation or calling (Beruf); in this Christian understanding, we receive talents from God and use them (according to Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke 19:11-27 — the Parable of Talents) for the benefit of ourselves, families, and society, according to God’s will for us; therefore, prosperity and capitalism mean that things will continue to get better.

Charity our of free will, not government welfare

• The Christian view demands acting out of compassion toward those in need (out of moral responsibility based on free will, not government coercion through excessive social welfare and socialism).
• It was the Christian spirit of (voluntary) communal charity and mutual love; Christians built the first hospitals, open to everyone; many hospitals have Christian names, like St. Luke’s, St. John’s, Lutheran, and Methodist hospitals.
• Even the Red Cross bears the original Christian influence (especially its founder Henry Dunant), and the YMCA (Young Men Christian Association).

The roots of individualism

• In Christianity, there is no salvation through tribe, city, or family (like in ethnic nationalism or different collectivist patterns); it is an individual matter, and God has a calling for everyone.
• Moreover, during the Reformation, Martin Luther emphasized the individualism of the Christian journey; we are judged as individuals, and we relate to God as individuals; even the religious truth is worked out through individual prayer and study (and this is not anymore a culture habit of Protestants only).

Anti-slavery, equality, and representative democracy, not the ancient concept

• The Christian idea of equality of human beings was a force behind democracy and ending slavery. Christians believe that God places value on each human life and that he loves each person equally.
• Although we are often told about democracy tracing back to Rome and Greece, the American Founders were not so sure; in fact, Alexander Hamilton found it ridiculous to seek models in Rome and Greece, where human life had little value; instead, Americans have a representative democracy and full citizenship.
• Christianity did not contest patriarchy but elevated the status of women, which was low in ancient Rome and Greece, and in the Muslim world.
• Slavery was widely practiced in the ancient world, from Rome, Greece, India, and China to most cultures and medieval feudalism and Christendom; slavery pre-dated Christianity, while (many) Christians were the first group in history to start the anti-slavery movement in 18^th century Britain (despite the resistance from some other Christians), where (the leading figure) William Wilberforce was driven by Christian convictions, and slavery was outlawed in Britain in 1883. Afterward, England took the lead in restricting the slave trade abroad.
• As a Christian revival, the First Great Awakening in the mid-18^th century, created the moral foundation of the American Revolution; the leading figures were Oxford-educated clergyman George Whitefield who led the Methodist movement, and the Yale-educated Congregational (Puritan) minister Jonathan Edwards, president of Princeton (and the leading figure of the American Enlightenment). Historian Paul Johnson wrote that the American Revolution is inconceivable without the religious background (certainly Christian).
• The Second Great Awakening from the early 19^th century left in its wake the movement for women’s suffrage and the abolitionist movement; it was a religious fervor of (many people and churches, especially Mainline Protestant ones, that advocated such policies).
• In the 20^th century, pastor Martin Luther King appealed to the Declaration of Independence (as the foundation of equality for all people).

The universality of human rights (although not everywhere)

• The legal doctrine in the Declaration of Human Rights in the UN Charter asserts freedom of conscience, the will of people, and other rights of all people. Yet this universalism is based on Christianity, on the premise that all human lives have equal worth. As Paul wrote in Galatians 3:28, there is neither Greek nor Jew, male or female, but all are one in Jesus Christ. This combines Christian individualism and Christian universalism.

Democracy with individual freedom, not just with political rights

• For the ancients, freedom was a right to participate in law-making. Greek democracy was a direct democracy in which citizens could vote on the actions of the polis. This was freedom through political and civic involvement, while there was no other freedom. No importance was given to the independence of the individual (there was no liberal democracy, but democracy without individual freedom), including the right to choose religious affiliation. There was hardly anything not regulated by laws, and the individual was a slave in private relations.
• (In contrast to that), we inherit the modern concept of freedom from Christianity, which emphasizes that God freely created us in His image and granted us the freedom to live without interference from others as long as we extend the same freedom to others. John Stuart Mill’s doctrine of liberty is a direct inheritance of Christianity and the product of the Enlightenment. Therefore, where else did the Enlightenment thinkers get the notion of human freedom, equality, and that all human life has dignity and value?
• Before religion there was animism, based on the idea that every river, stone, and tree was populated by spirits.

The Just War Doctrine

• The “just war” doctrine that you should not deliberately kill civilians, that you should not attack, and that retaliation should be proportionate, is a product of Christianity, rooted in Augustine, further developed by Aquinas, and expressed by John Locke and Hugo Grotius (who were all Christians).

Claims about religion and war

• Regarding the role of Christians in the Crusades, before the rise of Islam, the Middle East was predominantly Christian, with Jews and Zoroastrians as well. Inspired by Islam’s call to Jihad, armies conquered Jerusalem and the entire Middle East, and then pushed to Africa, Asia, and Europe. In the 11^th century, Christians attempted to defend the Christian heartland against Islam; these efforts are called Crusades, without which Western civilization might have been completely overrun by the forces of Islam.
• The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not at its core a religious one but rather a dispute over land and self-determination. Ethnic rivalry is the source of tension in the Balkans, not religion. The Thirty Year’s War, which involved the Holy Roman Empire and the Protestant states in Germany, was mainly fueled by political contests for power, while religious motives were present initially.

Christianity and science

• Aquinas’s argument is based on causation – every effect has a cause, and the first one is in God.
• Christianity led to the idea of an ordered cosmos, based on the universe following laws embodying the rationality of God as the Creator.
• In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God (John 1). The term Word is logos, meaning thought or rationality. The universe operates lawfully in line with divine reason.
• In Christianity human reason is derived from divine intelligence that created the universe.
• Medieval Europe saw the founding of the universities, affiliated with the church and independently governed, which played a crucial role in modern science, classical knowledge, and both secular and theological curriculum (which were combined, instead of removing the theological component). Moreover, many of America’s earliest universities and colleges began as Christian institutions (with a strong Christian education) – Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth (and many others).
• Churches began to build schools.
• Francis Bacon, a devoutly religious man, the founder of the scientific method (and author of The New Atlantis), argued about man’s God-given power of discovery and the divine mandate to establish dominion over creation.
• In the 16^th century the Reformation introduced the notion that knowledge is not the providence of ecclesiastic institutions, but man should decide for himself. The priesthood of the individual believer rejected the papal hierarchy and had implications for all institutional hierarchies. Although they didn’t know it, early Protestants were introducing new theological concepts that enhanced the scientific culture of Europe.
• Many leading scientists were Christians, some were Protestant, and some were Catholic, including Newton, Leibnitz, Kelvin, Mendel, Pascal, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Dalton, Faraday, Lavoisier, Priestley, Ampere, and Planck. A good number of them were clergymen. Newton viewed discoveries as the creative genius of God’s work in nature.
• The Catholic church apologized for its treatment of Galileo.
• The geocentric universe was a classical idea, and Christians accepted it although the Bible does not say that sun revolves around the earth.
• While the Bible says that time is finite, Hinduism and Buddhism posit endless time cycles stretching into the indefinite past; also, there are multiple world systems in Buddhism, which are in a constant state of coming and passing away.

Literalism and evolution

• Many secular writers think that the Christian position about the universe is literal regarding six calendar days. However, the Bible uses a Hebrew term that could mean a day, an era, or a season, in line with 2 Peter 3:8, where a day can be a thousand years (and any period of time). The leading church authorities give a figurative interpretation to days in Genesis, and most Christians (except fundamentalists) do not have a problem with a creation account; there are many “creationists” who refuse the findings of modern science since they are biblical literalists (fundamentalists in interpretation) and believe that God created the earth (literally) in six days.
• The Bible is not a scientific textbook, and it does not give a detailed account of the creation of the earth and universe which has a cause in God as the supernatural Creator who used natural laws.
• According to the Bible, God breathed an immaterial soul into man; thus, there is no problem in viewing the body as the one deriving from other creatures (in line with Darwin’s theory of evolution). While a minority of Christians proclaimed evolution a heresy, most Christian leaders reconciled the biblical creation and Darwin’s theory. Under the approval of the Anglican church, the agnostic Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey. Christian apologist C.S. Lewis had no problem with that (evolution), while several evolutionists are Christians, such as geneticist Francis Collins and biologist Kenneth Miller. Religious believers should embrace evolution. However, evolution cannot explain human morality and rationality.
• Faith is not opposed to reason; the believer embraces faith with open eyes and not blindly (although there are many cases of blind religious fanaticism).

Exaggerated critics of religion

• The problem with the critique of religion is that it greatly exaggerates the crimes committed by religious fanatics while rationalizing or neglecting vastly greater crimes committed by atheist fanatics during atheist regimes of Communist China and Russia, and Nazi Germany. The view that religion is the primary source of killings and conflicts is wrong. Instead, Stalin was responsible for around twenty million deaths, Mao Zedong for seventy million, and Hitler for around ten million. Therefore, religion-inspired killings (which are a fact) cannot compete with murders during atheist regimes.

Totalitarianism against religion

• Moreover, Nazism has a lot in common with communism; the first wanted to empower a master race and the latter the proletariat (and both represent totalitarian forms of government, with many overlaps in ideas and practices against individual freedom).
• Hitler’s antisemitism was racial and ethnic, not religious. Hitler called Christianity one of the greatest scourges in history, due to values of equality and compassion and blamed Jews for inventing Christianity (since the first Christians were ethnic Jews). Hitler’s Youth prayed to him rather than God, and churches were under Gestapo surveillance, while religious newspapers were censored.
• The Nazis drew on the atheist philosophy of Nietzsche, his vision of Übermensch, and the death of God, which would result in the total eclipse of all values. Therefore, in rejecting God, man becomes convinced of the perfectibility of his nature; by seeking to replace God, he creates a secular utopia here on earth (and many socialists strive(d) to improve social welfare); therefore, atheist rulers established total control of society and totalitarianism, where every aspect of life came under political supervision.

Individual responsibility for freedom of conscience

• On the other hand, moral laws presume a moral lawgiver, God as the ultimate standard of good, based on conscience as the “impartial spectator”, according to Adam Smith.
• Outward behavior is not enough, because there is an inner self that only God perceives as the interior light that powers our souls. Hereby, the Reformation developed the idea of the priesthood of the individual believer, in which every person looks within himself to discover God’s will.

Distinctive elements of Christianity

• Religion is man’s manual for reaching God. But Christianity is not a religion in this sense. It holds that man cannot reach God. Therefore, there is only one remedy – God must come down to man’s level, become a man, and assume the burden of sins.
• Christians believe that this was Christ’s sacrifice, as the basis of faith on which we inherit salvation as God’s gift, who decided to pay the price for human sin. As a pastor from San Diego Bob Botsford said, Christ paid a debt he did not owe since we owe a debt we cannot pay.
• We hear from those seeking to avoid conflict that Christ was a peacemaker, but he came to bring a sword, according to Matthew 10:34.
• The history of the West is incomprehensible without Christ.
• Christianity has embraced faith and reason, and modern science emerged from a Christian framework that gives a sense of purpose enables us to become the better persons we want to be and shows how to be better.