I love this book! Here’s a great quote from the conclusion:
“Christianity created Western Civilization. Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls. Without a theology committed to reason, progress, and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800: A world with many astrologers and alchemists but no scientists. A world of despots, lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys, and pianos. A world where most infants do not live to see the age of five and many women die in childbirth – a world truly living in “dark ages.” “The modern world arose only in Christian societies. Not in Islam. Not in Asia. Not in a ‘secular’ society – there having been none. And all the modernization that has since occurred outside Christendom was imported from the West, often brought by colonizers and missionaries.”
He concludes the book with this quote from a Chinese scholar:
“One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world. We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.” Stark concludes by saying, “Neither do I.” (The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark. Stark shared this quote from David Aikman’s book, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power)
How I hope we Christians will appreciate what we have and continue to stand strong in Christ and His Word, and how I hope we can communicate this to a new generation that is lost and has no idea what it is doing or where it is heading!