by Mark Tooley, World
Those who want the West to ditch Christianity would destroy the foundation of its success
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor recently lost all his royal titles, plus his home, resulting from scandal related to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Many asked why it took so long. But most people across history would instead have been amazed that it happened at all. How can a royal prince be punished for sexual exploitation? Is that not what the powerful do?
In his book, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, Tom Holland illustrates how the example of Jesus as Savior turned voluntary innocent victim gradually but inexorably elevated across centuries those whom the ancient world disdained. Classical antiquity produced magnificent philosophy and architecture. But the strong incontestably exploited the weak. No rich Roman or Greek ever lost status by exploiting, or enslaving, anybody.
“Liberalism” has enacted an expectation of equal justice and social equality especially across the last several centuries, starting in the West. Everybody theoretically has equal rights, regardless of race, sex, wealth, ancestry, or religion. These assumptions are so pervasive that many in the West just assume they are intrinsic, natural, and universal. They fall upon all like an April rainstorm.
The secular left argues that this view of human dignity emerged only after the Enlightenment displaced Christendom. In an article called “The Golden Age of Humanity? We’re Living in It.” in The Free Press, Steven Pinker and Marian Tupy extol this view. They worry that Christendom’s superstitions and bigotries are now reviving. “Christian Nationalists,” post-liberals, and anti-Semites like Nick Fuentes, platformed by Tucker Carlson, want to overthrow liberalism in favor of legally privileged Christianity.