Chapter 5-7 D’Souza and the West

       Modern Western civilized man is ignorant of the history of Western civilization. Many modern people believe that Western culture was built on Athens and Rome when in fact it is built on Athens and Jerusalem with Jerusalem being the most important influence through Judaism and Christianity. Many believe Rome was destroyed by Christianity leading to the dark ages of Europe with only the Renaissance saving it to become what it is today. In fact Rome fell because of its own decadence and ultimately was sacked by barbarians of northeastern Europe pushed from the East through expansionist pressure from Asia in the form of the Indo-Turkic peoples. Over time, Christianity civilized these people. Christopher Dawson shows in "Religion and the Rise of Western Culture" how the Christian monasteries became the locus of productivity and learning through Europe. Where there was wasteland they produced hamlets, then town, and eventually commonwealths and cities. Through the years, the savage barbarian warrior became the idealized chivalric Christian knight, and new ideals of civility and manners and romance were formed that shape our society to this day. If Christianity had not come, we might still be living in the dark ages.
      The idea of USA’s limited government is born out of the idea that man inhabits two realms at the same time, the physical and the spiritual. A ruler’s realm is circumscribed by limits beyond which he simply cannot go. The Greek, Alexander the Great when confronted by those limits after conquering much of the known world, perhaps reluctantly, claimed divinity so as to be able to command the Greek city states who believed no mortal had the right to command them to unite. He died before the theory was tested. The American form of government was formed upon the Christian principle of the limitation of government to non religious activities and Christian morality was believed to be a requirement if the constitution was to be effective.
      The belief that ordinary people matter is derived from Christianity. The nuclear family, the idea of limited government, the Western concept of the rule of law, and our culture’s high emphasis on the relief of suffering are derived from the basic Christian understanding of the dignity of fallible human beings. For the Greeks of Plato and Aristotle’s time, the ordinary people were primarily useful as slaves whose value was to provide time for the ruling class to learn, think, and participate in the government of the community. An old Chinese proverb states that the tears of strangers are only water. A Roman father had the right to kill his children. The idea that individuals matter arises not from Greece, Rome, or the east, but from Christianity. Under Christianity, women and children gradually assumed value until prior to the Renaissance, women could conduct business, vote, assume public office based on character and wisdom. One unfortunate consequence of the Renaissance was that women again lost those rights, not to be regained for many centuries.
      Nietzsche thought the Christian idea of the equality of man was crazy and that this crazy idea was “the prototype of all theories of equal rights.” Christianity gave status to women; few societies in the world today give the status to women found in the West. Slavery was opposed by Christian thinkers and is it surprising the slavery world wide is on the rise? Slavery was the norm throughout history, the values of Christianity slowly eroded support for slavery until it was eventually made illegal. Nietzsche forecasted that as Secularism gained ascendancy, ‘new’ values – infanticide, redefinition of the family, and eugenic theories of human superiority – would begin to emerge. D’Souza postulates that “if the West gives up Christianity, it will also endanger the egalitarian values that Christianity brought into the world.” Nietzsche’s future is now.