1. Allen Hainline Reasonable Faith UTD April 2, 2015
The Positive Impacts of Biblical Christianity on the World: A Brief Survey
Allen Hainline
Reasonable Faith UTD
April 2, 2015
“astonished” quote: Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 194). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
“evangelicals” quote: Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 206). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
India is a good focal point because it has significant populations of all of the major religions: Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians
Theist, Pantheist, Atheist …
Evangelicals helped in India by opposing: “widow burning, infanticide, untouchability, temple prostitution, polygamy, and idolatry.”
“I was astonished to discover that the Bible was the source of practically everything good in my hometown, even the secular university that undermined the Bible.” Manglawadi

2. Other Resources
Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004)
Personal religious faith
In their 1987 book A Theory of Religion, Stark and Bainbridge describe themselves as "personally incapable of religious faith".[8] While reluctant to discuss his own religious views, he stated in a 2004 interview that he was not a man of faith, but also not an atheist.[9] In a 2007 interview, after accepting an appointment at Baylor University, Stark indicated that his self-understanding had changed and that he could now be described as an "independent Christian." In this interview Stark recollects that he has "always been a “cultural” Christian" understood by him as having "been strongly committed to Western Civilization." Of his previous positions he wrote: "I was never an atheist, but I probably could have been best described as an agnostic."[10]

3. Dawkins was on CNN on March 24 arguing that the world would be a much better place without religion
Partially true (without bad religion)

4. “As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God” Matthew Parris’s article in Times online
“Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.”
“It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God. Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.”
He realises that this is not just about doing good works, but the faith which lies behind the charitable deeds: “I used to avoid this truth by applauding – as you can – the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith. But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.”
He reminisces about missionaries he has known: “We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world – a directness in their dealings with others – that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.”
And he notes the major worldview differences between Christianity and African tribal beliefs: “Anxiety – fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things – strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won’t take the initiative, won’t take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.
He concludes by noting the importance of worldviews: “Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.”

5. Outline Equality Education Medical Care Properity Ending slavery
Elevating status of women
Education
Universities
Science
Written languages
Medical Care
Hospitals
Nursing
Properity
Influenced by
Caring for needy – e.g. widows and orphans

6. Bible Promotes Equality
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Gal 3:28
Jesus came “to proclaim release to the captives” and “to set free those who are oppressed” Luke 4:18
Paul appealed to Philemon to release the slave named Onesimus
Contrast with Islam
Muhammad bought, sold, captured and owned slaves
Copan

7. What About Old Testament “Slavery”?
OT slavery was unlike slavery in antebellum south
More like indentured servanthood and POWs
Apprentice-like positions to pay off debts
Mandatory freeing of all slaves/servants every 7 years
3 unprecedented provisions of law in Israel
Anti-harm laws (release injured serrvants)
Anti-kidnapping laws – punishable by death (Ex 21:16, Deut 24:7)
Anti-return laws – had to offer safe harbor to runaway slaves
God gave Mosaic legislation to prevent the poor from entering, even temporarily, into voluntary indentured service. The poor could glean the edges of fields or pick lingering fruit on trees after their fellow Israelites’ harvest (Leviticus 19:9,10; 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:20,21; cp. Exodus 23:10). Also, God commanded fellow-Israelites to lend freely to the poor (Deuteronomy 15:7,8), and to not charge them interest (Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:36,37)
Moses permitted you … because of the hardness of your hearts” Jesus in Matt 19:8 (with respect to divorce but I argue applies in that too)
Could not impose servanthood
Old Testament scholar Christopher Wright observes: “No other ancient near Eastern law has been found that holds a master to account for the treatment of his own slaves (as distinct from injury done to the slave of another master), and the otherwise universal law regarding runaway slaves was that they must be sent back, with severe penalties for those who failed to comply.”13

8. Bible-Believing Christians Led Battle to Eliminate Slavery
All classical societies were slave societies
“Amid this universal slavery, only one civilization ever rejected human bondage: Christendom. And it did it twice.” Stark in Triumph of Christianity
As the ninth century dawned, Bishop Agobard of Lyons thundered: “All men are brothers, all invoke one same Father, God: the slave and the master, the poor man and the rich man, there is no... slave or free, but in all things and always there is only Christ… Soon, no one doubted that slavery in itself was against divine law.”
Lincoln, Stowe, Wilberforce won battle in 19th century
Harriet Beecher Stowe was one of the most important authors of the nineteenth century. Her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin transformed the way Americans thought about the institution of slavery and was read by people all over the world. Stowe said that the death of her own mother at a young age gave her sympathy towards the situation of slaves, who were often separated from their own family members. Stowe's book galvanized the abolition movement, and may have even helped begin the American Civil War.
Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter of a Congregational minister and her strong faith was evident in her writings. Stowe believed that supporting the abolition movement was a moral imperative for a Christian person, and her work inspired others to join the movement. Her life was remarkable, especially for a woman in the nineteenth century. In a time when women were expected to live their lives in private,

10. “What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of America, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.” (Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, 100)

11. Status of Women in Other Cultures
“Most cultures have believed that women are intrinsically inferior to men. For example, Rousseau—one of the fathers of secular Enlightenment and a champion of liberty—believed that woman was unfinished man. Hindu sages taught that a soul with poor karma incarnated as a female to serve males.”
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (pp ). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
The Ten Commandments had already made it a sin to covet your neighbor’s spouse. Jesus offered a more radical solution—one that demanded not merely modesty from women but also self-discipline and inner holiness from men. He asked his followers to deal with the spiritual problem of adultery in their hearts and the lust in their eyes. He told them not to divorce their wives except for marital unfaithfulness and not to marry women divorced in circumstances that mock marriage and camouflage adultery—
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 280). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
Monogamy only entered the Hindu marital law in Yet, in the mid-1990s, we still had a member of Parliament who had forty-nine wives! Many men with more than one wife have occupied high elected offices in India. It is no problem for the mistress of a popular elected leader to contest and win an election.
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 281). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

12. Christianity Elevated Status of Women
Husbands are to lay down their lives for their wives as Christ did for the church (Eph 5:25)
First of all, a major aspect of women’s improved status in the Christian subculture is that Christians did not condone female infanticide the more favorable Christian view of women is also demonstrated in their condemnation of divorce,20 incest,21 marital infidelity,22 and polygamy.23 As Fox put it, “fidelity, without divorce, was expected of every Christian.” Like pagans, early Christians prized female chastity, but unlike pagans, they rejected the double standard that gave pagan men so much sexual license. Christian men were urged to remain virgins until marriage, and extramarital sex was condemned as adultery. Chadwick noted that Christianity “regarded unchastity in a husband as no less serious a breach of loyalty and trust than unfaithfulness in a wife.”24
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 283). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

13. Christianity Elevated Status of Women
“Why did the women’s liberation movement begin in America and not in a Muslim nation under regimes like the Taliban? Was it because American women were more oppressed than their Muslim counterparts? Clearly, the opposite is true. An anemic body cannot fight disease. One has to build up strength in order to fight germs. Women’s lib began in America because the American women were simultaneously empowered and discriminated against.”
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 277). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

14. Education Universities Science Written languages
Public schools (Luther/Melanchthon)
Public Schools –
Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), Luther’s principal co-worker, often called “the preceptor of Germany,” helped further Luther’s educational desires when he successfully persuaded the civic authorities to implement the first public school system in Germany.27 The organization of these schools was largely the accomplishment of Johannes Bugenhagen, pastor of St. Mary’s Church, where Luther attended and often preached. For his efforts, Bugenhagen has been called the father of the deutsche Volkschule (German public school).28
Schmidt, Alvin J. ( ). How Christianity Changed the World (Kindle Locations ). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

15. Have Other Religions Strongly Promoted Education?
“The Buddha, as we have seen, taught that the Ultimate Reality was Silence, or Shoonyta. The human mind was a product of Avidhya (Primeval Ignorance). It was not made in the image of God; human language, logic, and words had no correlation with Truth. The way to Enlightenment was through emptying one’s mind of all words and thoughts. The goal was to reach absolute Silence. Therefore, the Buddhist monks barely studied their own scriptures. They had no religious motivation to take the trouble to turn their neighbors’ dialects into literary languages to make the Buddha’s thought accessible to everyone. The monks’ mission was to propagate meditation techniques to empty everyone’s minds of all thought. They were not out to fill minds with great ideas.”
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 166). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

16. Christian Impact on Indian Education
“Why did my university in Allahabad have a church, but not a Hindu temple or a Muslim mosque? Because the university was invented and established by Christians. Neither colonialism nor commerce spread modern education around the world. Soldiers and merchants do not educate. Education was a Christian missionary enterprise. It was integral to Christian missions because modern education is a fruit of the Bible. The biblical Reformation, born in European universities, took education out of the cloister and spread it around the globe.”
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 194). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

17. Christian Impact on Indian Education
“The type of education the British had found when they arrived in India was almost entirely religious, and higher education for Hindus and Muslims was purely literary. Hindu higher education was almost a Brahmin monopoly. Brahmins, the priestly caste, spent their time [in schools called Tols] studying religious texts in a dead language, Sanskrit. There were a number of schools [called Pathshalas], using living languages, but few Brahmins sent their children to such schools, where the main subject taught was the preparation of account. Muslim higher education was conducted [in madrasas*] in a living language—Arabic, which was not spoken in India. But there were also schools which taught Persian** and some secular subjects. The state—as distinct from individual rulers— accepted no responsibility for education.” Historian Michael Edwardes
Michael Edwardes, British India 1772–1947 (New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 1994), 110.

18. Christians Invented Universities
Catholic scholars formed universities in Paris & Bologna ~1160 and Oxford & Cambridge soon after
Quite unlike Chinese academies for training Mandarins or a Zen’s master’s school
Innovation was focus not just imparting knowledge
For an opposing view see:

19. Christian Emphasis on Education
“Harvard University is one of the most compelling examples of the symbiosis between the Bible and education. The Puritans established this college within the first decade of arriving in America, before they built any industry. The Bible directly inspired the first 123 colleges and universities in America that taught secular subjects. The Bible did so because God commanded human beings to establish their dominion over the earth.”
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 218). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

20. Not Just India
“The world’s largest women’s university is Ewha in Seoul, South Korea. It boasts of 140,000 graduates, 21,000 students, 14 colleges, and 13 graduate schools. Not much more than a century ago, South Korea’s oppressive feudal social order was governed by the Chosun dynasty. Its polite culture mocked the idea of teaching anything to women beyond caring for their husbands and sons.”
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 216). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

21. What about Science?
What’s Wrong with This Graph?

22. Did Christianity Stifle Science?
“In the academic sphere … the "Conflict Thesis" of a historical war between science and theology has been long since overturned.” Atheist Historian Tim O’Neill
“The fact is that the idea of the Church suppressing science and rational analysis of the physical world is a myth.  Not one Medieval scholar was ever burned, imprisoned or oppressed by the Medieval Church for making a claim about the physical world.  This why the modern proponents of the myth always have to fall back on an exceptional and post-Medieval example to prop up this idea: the Galileo case.” O’Neill

23. Atheist Historian Tim O’Neil
“So the claim that "science made little clear progress in Europe in the Middle Ages" is based on a profound ignorance of the period and depends on a prejudiced myth that is without any basis.  Once Medieval Europe recovered from the chaos that followed the fall of Rome, it quickly revived the ancient tradition of natural philosophy that had been languishing since Roman times.  Medieval scholars engaged in a remarkable process of examining the physical universe using reason and logic and, in doing so, developed principles that were to become the foundations of modern science proper.  And they applied these principles in ways that corrected errors the Greeks had made and did the ground work for the later discoveries in physics and astronomy that made up the beginning of the Scientific Revolution.  While people with no detailed knowledge of modern studies in the history of science still cling to Nineteenth Century myths about the Church suppressing science, it is now clear that without the flowering of speculation and analysis in the period from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century, western science would never have arisen at all.”

24. What about the Dark Ages?
Little wonder that many contemporary historians become incensed by use of the term Dark Ages. As the distinguished medievalist Warren Hollister (1930– 1997) put it in his presidential address to the Pacific Historical Association, “to my mind, anyone who believes that the era that witnessed the building of Chartres Cathedral and the invention of parliament and the university was ‘dark’ must be mentally retarded— or at best, deeply, deeply, ignorant.”
Stark, Rodney ( ). The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion (p. 250). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

25. What he [Pierre Duhem] and later modern historians of early science found is that the Enlightenment myths of the Middle Ages as a scientific dark age suppressed by the dead hand of an oppressive Church were nonsense. 

26. Science
“Why was it that, although many civilizations have pursued alchemy, it led to chemistry only in Europe? Or, while many societies have made excellent observations of the heavens and have created sophisticated systems of astrology, why was this transformed into scientific astronomy only in Europe?”
Stark, Rodney ( ). The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion (p. 254). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Others have traced the rise of the West to steel, or to guns and sailing ships, and still others have credited a more productive agriculture. The trouble is that these answers are part of what needs to be explained: Why did Europeans excel at metallurgy, ship-building, or farming?

27. Indian Written Languages
“Sanskrit could have been the court language of pre-British India, but it wasn’t. Sanskrit is India’s national treasure. But those who had the key to the intellectual treasure would not share it even with their own women, let alone with non-Brahmin males. The Brahmins’ religion required them to treat their neighbors as untouchables. Sanskrit was used as a means to keep people at a distance from knowledge that was power. Ashoka (304–232 BC), India’s greatest Buddhist ruler, used the Pali language and Brahmi script to spread his wisdom throughout India. It became the language of Buddhist learning. Yet, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, India did not have even one scholar who could read a single sentence inscribed on the Ashoka pillars found throughout India. Worse—the antihistoric nature of Hinduism had ensured that for centuries no Indian had even heard Ashoka’s name until the 1830s when an Anglo-India scholar, James Prinsep, found the key to reading Brahmi script on the pillars. Ashoka’s efforts to unify geographic”
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (pp ). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

28. Languages
“Bible translators and missionaries did not merely give me my mother tongue, Hindi. Every living literary language in India is a testimony to their labor. In 2005 a Malyalee scholar from Mumbai, Dr. Babu Verghese, submitted a seven-hundred-page doctoral thesis to the University of Nagpur.* It demonstrated that Bible translators, using the dialects of mostly illiterate Indians, created seventy-three modern literary languages. These include the national languages of India (Hindi), Pakistan (Urdu), and Bangladesh (Bengali). Five Brahmin scholars examined Dr. Verghese’s thesis and awarded him a PhD in 2008”
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 169). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

29. Literature
Khushwant Singh (b. 1915) is a secular Sikh and one of India’s best-known writers. For decades he also taught English literature at Delhi University. He has often said that he reads at least two chapters of the Bible every day, because no one can understand English literature without first reading the Bible. The Bible is just as necessary to understand the literature written during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in India, a period often referred to as the “Indian Renaissance.” One could, for example, read any poem from Gitanjali in a Christian church without anyone suspecting that the Bengali poet, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), was not a Christian. The Indian Renaissance triggered various reform movements and beginning with Madhusudan Dutt created Indian nationalism.
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 178). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

30. St. Augustine’s treatise on Christian learning, De Doctrina Christiana
“Therefore, students ought to be taught languages, history, grammar, logic, and sciences. These studies brought students to the door of a rich country of spiritual truth found in the Bible. The ultimate goal of scholarship was to dig into the scriptural mine of knowledge.”
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 208). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

31. “Virtually all education was Church education. H. G
“Virtually all education was Church education. H. G. Wells grudgingly admitted, The Catholic Church provided what the Roman Republic had lacked, a system of popular teaching, a number of universities and methods of intellectual communication. By this achievement it opened the way to the new possibilities of human government possibilities that are still being apprehended and worked out But though it is certain that the Catholic Church, through its propaganda, its popular appeals, its schools and universities opened up the prospect of the modern educational state in Europe”
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 210). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

32. “This is why John Dewey, who perhaps did more than anyone else to secularize American education, advised secularists to move slowly in attacking Christianity. He noted, These persons [evangelical Christians] form the backbone of philanthropic social interest, of social reform through political action, of pacifism, of popular education. They embody and express the spirit of kindly goodwill toward classes which are at an economic disadvantage and toward other nations; especially when the latter show any disposition toward a republican form of government It has been the element responsive to appeals for the square deal and more nearly equal opportunities for all, as it has understood equality of opportunity. It followed Lincoln in the abolition of slavery, and it followed Roosevelt in his denunciation of “bad” corporations and aggregations of wealth.32 Dewey’s depiction of America is true for most countries. In Kerala, India’s second most literate state,* the word for school is pallikudam— “[the building] next to the church.”
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 213). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

33. Secular historians have yet to compute Comenius’s contributions to the modern world. This father of modern education is often ignored because he rarely made a statement without justifying it from the Bible. All the characters reviewed in this chapter—men like Grant, Wilberforce, Carey, Roy, Duff, Trevelyan, Macaulay, and Muir—were following Comenius, even if some of them were not conscious of it. Not only modern India, but also modern America was shaped by Comenius’s vision. The difference is that the pioneers of American education knew the debt they owed Comenius. They invited him to come to the new world to head up their new college, Harvard, in New England. Comenius’s optimism through education had such a profound impact on some Puritan settlers in America that they chose to become an educational community before becoming a commercial or industrial nation.34

34. Christian Compassion
“'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.‘ Matt 25:40
Yale Historian Kenneth Scott Latourette noted that early Christians innovated 5 ways in showing compassion:
Those who joined were expected to give to their ability level, both rich and poor. Christ even called some to give all they had to the poor. St. Francis of Assissi, Pope Gregory the Great, and missionary C.T. Studd all did as well.
They had a new motivation: the love for and example of Christ, who being rich became poor for others’ sakes (2 Corinthians 8:9).{25}
Christianity like Judaism, created new objects of giving: widows, orphans, slaves, the persecuted.
Personalized giving “For the most part, the few Roman acts of relief and assistance were isolated state activities, ‘dictated much more by policy than by benevolence’.”{26}
Last, Christian generosity was not solely for insiders.{27} This was truly radical. The emperor known as Julian the Apostate complained that since Jews never had to beg and Christians supported both their own poor and those outside the church, “those who belong to us look in vain for the help we should render to them.”{28}
Reference: Byron Barlowe
Notes
1. Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004) Ibid, Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language (Nashville: Word/Thomas Nelson, 1995) Schmidt, pg Logan Paul Gage, Touchstone, January/February “New Study Shows Trends in Tithing and Donating,” Barna Research Group, April 14, 2008, 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2007), Ibid, Ibid, R. J. Rummel, Death by Government (Transaction Publishers, 1994), quoted in The Truth Project DVD-based curriculum, Focus on the Family, D’Souza, Schmidt, Schmidt, James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994) Schmidt, Schmidt, Christopher Price, “Pagans, Christianity, and Charity,” CADRE (Christian Colligation of Apologetics Debate Research & Evangelism), 20 Schmidt, Schmidt, Schmidt, Schmidt, D’Souza, Corinthians 8: Lecky, quoted in Schmidt, Kennedy and Newcombe, Shelley, Schmidt, Quoted in Kennedy and Newcombe, Schmidt, Schmidt, Will Durant, The Age of Faith, 31, quoted by Christopher Price: Schmidt Schmidt, Schmidt, Schmidt, Schmidt, 131.

35. Christian Compassion
Believers sometimes fasted for charity. The vision was big: ten thousand Christians skipping one hundred days’ meals could provide a million meals, it was figured. Transformed hearts and minds imitated the God who left the throne of heaven to serve and die for others.{29}
Even W.E. Lecky, no friend to Christianity, wrote, “The active, habitual, and detailed charity of private persons, which is such a conspicuous feature in all Christian societies, was scarcely known in antiquity.”{30} That is, until Christians showed up. Reference: Byron Barlowe

36. Compassion to Blind
Greeks often used blind boys as galley slaves & blind girls as prostitutes
By 4th century, Christians began opening asylums for the blind.
In 13th century, Louis IX built Hospice des Quinze-Vingts for blind
By 16th century, Christians taught blind to read using raised letters
In 1834, Louis Braille, a blind Church organist, invented the six-dot system of embossing letters
“The Christian missionary movement carried his invention around the globe, challenging traditional neglect and contempt for the blind, inspiring secular establishments to imbibe some of Christ’s spirit.”
“Darwin’s secular “survival of the fittest” philosophy would never pay for developing an education to humanize the handicapped. Every traditional culture left them to their fate or karma. Some deliberately exposed handicapped infants to death. The Bible alone presents a compassionate God who has come to this earth to save us from our sin and its consequences—including sickness and death. Jesus restored sight to the blind. He opened the ears of the deaf and the mouths of the dumb. He gave his disciples the power to love the unlovely. Christians began to understand that education plays a central role in restoring the dignity of the handicapped.
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (pp ). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
In AD 630, some Christians started a typholocomium (typholos = blind + komeo = take care of) in Jerusalem.
Épée, a priest in Paris, developed the sign language for the deaf. In 1754, he financed and founded in Paris the first public deaf school, the “Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets à Paris” (National Deaf-Dumb Institute). His sign language enabled French deaf people to communicate words and concepts. It influenced other European sign languages and became the basis for American Sign Language through Gallaudet, a graduate of Yale and Andover Theological Seminary.

37. Compassion to Deaf
Formal education for the deaf began with Charles-Michel de l’Épée (1712–89)
A priest who developed sign language, formed first public deaf school in 1754
It came to America through Thomas Gallaudet (1787– 1851)
“Gallaudet brought this innovation to the United States in 1817 to help the deaf to “hear” Christ’s gospel. He founded the American School for the Deaf at Hartford, which led to the formation of Gallaudet University for the Deaf in Washington DC.”
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (pp ). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
In AD 630, some Christians started a typholocomium (typholos = blind + komeo = take care of) in Jerusalem.
Épée, a priest in Paris, developed the sign language for the deaf. In 1754, he financed and founded in Paris the first public deaf school, the “Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets à Paris” (National Deaf-Dumb Institute). His sign language enabled French deaf people to communicate words and concepts. It influenced other European sign languages and became the basis for American Sign Language through Gallaudet, a graduate of Yale and Andover Theological Seminary.

38. * According to India Today (July 5, 1999), Mizoram, India’s most Christian state (98 percent) has also become India’s most literate state (95 percent) while literacy in Kerala is 93 percent. Kerala has the oldest Christian community in India, tracing its origin to the apostle Thomas in the first century after Christ.
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 219). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

39. Christianity Elevated Charity
"One of the strong links in the Christian chain was its charities and social aid, offered with little discrimination. Although the Romans practiced largess, they sought something in return, if not quid pro quo in the gift." The Early Church, page 140. In other words, "[t]he active, habitual, and detailed charity of private persons which is such a conspicuous feature in all Christian societies was scarcely known in antiquity." Lecky, The History of European Morals, 2:78-79.

40. As early as the second century, Christians were practicing an interesting and very sacrificial form of charity. They would fast from meals so that the unconsumed food and resources could be given to the poor and hungry. The first mention of this practice that I have found is in the Shepard of Hermas (early 100s):
Having fulfilled what is written, in the day on which you fast you will taste nothing but bread and water; and having reckoned up the price of the dishes of that day which you intended to have eaten, you will give it to a widow, or an orphan, or to some person in want, and thus you will exhibit humility of mind, so that he who has received benefit from your humility may fill his own soul, and pray for you to the Lord. Chapter 3.
It is also found in another second-century writing, the Apology of Aristides (130 CE).
And if there is among them any that is poor and needy, and if they have no spare food, they fast two or three days in order to supply to the needy their lack of food.
Chapter 15.
The practice was enduring. Origen writes in the third century: "Let the poor man be provided with food from the self-denial of him who fasts." Also, according to historian Michel Riquet,
It has been calculated that at Rome in 250, under Pope Cornelius, ten thousand Christians obliged to fast could provide, from a hundred days' fasting, a million rations a year. These more or less regular offerings were supplemented by gifts made to the Church by rich converts.

41. Difference in Charity Between Christians & Pagans
Pagan satirist Lucian ( c.e.) mocked Christians for their charity:
“The earnestness with which the people of this religion help one another in their needs is incredible. They spare themselves nothing for this end. Their first lawgiver put it into their heads that they were all brethren.”
Even more interestingly, the Pagan Emperor Julian -- who attempted to lead the Roman Empire back to paganism -- was frustrated by the superior morality shown by the Christians, especially when it came to charity. This was something he readily admitted: "The impious Galileans relieve both their own poor and ours It is shameful that ours should be so destitute of our assistance." Epistles of Julian, 49. Julian "especially admired the letters bishops wrote to commend poor travelers to the care of other Christians." Hinson, op. cit., page 211.
In an attempt to emulate the Christian Church, Julian attempted to impose a high sense of moral behavior on his priests and attempted to copy aspects of Christian charity. In fact, one of these emulations is found in his instruction to high priest in Galatia to establish numerous hostels in each village so that strangers could have the care they needed. Ibid. Julian's efforts failed and paganism was never again to be a force in the Empire.

42. Hospitals
Christians institutionalized hospitals and made them widespread and accessible to all
After Council of Nicea in 325, construction of hospital begun in every cathedral town
Some call Roman valetudinaria hospitals; “However, these facilities, as various historians have shown, treated only sick slaves, gladiators, and sometimes ailing soldiers; whereas the sick common people, manual laborers, and the poor “had no place of refuge.”
“It is important to note—and the evidence is quite decisive—that these Christian hospitals were the world’s first voluntary charitable institutions. There is “no certain evidence,” says one scholar, “of any medical institution supported by voluntary contributions. . .till we come to Christian days.”28 And it is these Christian hospitals that revolutionized the treatment of the poor, the sick, and the dying.” Schmidt
Schmidt, Alvin J. ( ). How Christianity Changed the World (Kindle Locations ). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
Schmidt, Alvin J. ( ). How Christianity Changed the World (Kindle Locations ). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

43. Nursing Nurses utilized in these early hospitals
Florence Nightingale singlehandedly revolutionized the field of nursing
As a response to a call of God to serve at age 17
“The Star of the East,” as Nightingale was often called, returned to England after the war as a national heroine. Indeed, who has not heard of her! At home she devoted the remaining fifty years of her life to promoting hospital reform in administration and in nursing. In 1860 she founded a school of nursing at St. Thomas Hospital in London.56 This humble, compassionate woman, who was propelled by her love for Christ to help the sick and dying, lifted the art of nursing to a level of dignity, honor, and medical expertise not previously known. Today there are thousands of nursing schools indebted to her principles. She accomplished what she did because she never doubted her own words: “The kingdom of heaven is within, but we must also make it so without.”57 Before she departed this earthly life,
Schmidt, Alvin J. ( ). How Christianity Changed the World (Kindle Locations ). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

44. Largest US Charities All Have Christian Origins
Rank
Name
Total income (millions)
Public support (millions) 1
YMCA of the USA
$5986.1
$823.4
Founded by Thomas Valentine Sullivan, a marine missionary 2
Goodwill Industries International
4,437.0
778.0
Founded 1902 by Boston minister Edgar Helms 3
Catholic Charities USA
4,422.8
679.2
Obvious 4
United Way
4,139.9
3,903.2
In 1887, a Denver woman, a priest, two ministers and a rabbi recognized the need for cooperative action to address their city’s welfare problems. 5
American Red Cross
3,453.0
945.9
“I am a disciple of Christ as in the first century, and nothing more.” Founder Jean Henri Dunant 6
The Salvation Army
3,203.8
1,697.6
Formed in 1865 by London minister William Booth
2011 stats
#7 Habitat for humanity - ummary Habitat for Humanity International was founded in 1976 by Millard and Linda Fuller. Today, Habitat for Humanity is a true world leader in addressing the issues of poverty housing.
  Photo timeline: Habitat for Humanity’s history
      Workers build the exterior wall of a house in Zaire in 1975.
      Habitat for Humanity dedicated its 200,000th house in 2005 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
      In 2008, the 300,000th Habitat house was built in Naples, Florida, USA.
    Koinonia Farm The concept that grew into Habitat for Humanity International was born at Koinonia Farm, a small, interracial, Christian community outside of Americus, Georgia. Koinonia Farm was founded in 1942 by farmer and biblical scholar Clarence Jordan.
The Fullers first visited Koinonia in They had recently left a successful business and an affluent lifestyle in Montgomery, Alabama to begin a new life of Christian service.
At Koinonia, Jordan and Fuller developed the concept of “partnership housing.” The concept centered on those in need of adequate shelter working side by side with volunteers to build simple, decent houses.
The Fund for Humanity The houses would be built at no profit and interest would not be charged on the loans. Building costs would be financed by a revolving fund called “The Fund for Humanity.”
The fund’s money would come from the new homeowners’ house payments, no-interest loans provided by supporters and money earned by fund-raising activities. The monies in the Fund for Humanity would be used to build more houses.

45. Backup

46. Urban Renewal
". . . Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear, and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent problems. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachment. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fire, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services For what they brought was not simply an urban movement, but a new culture capable of making life in Greco-Roman cities more tolerable." Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, Princeton University Press, 1996, page 161.

47. Science

48. Did Christianity Help Start Modern Science?
“Around the time I was born, my parents bought a farm about fifty miles northwest of the diamond mines of Panna. My cousin, uncle, brother, I, and then my father farmed it for nearly forty years. None of us, however, ever tried to dig for diamonds. Why not? Because no one had ever found such wealth in our district. People only toil for treasures if they believe that such labor might lead to rich rewards. Faith makes a difference. A culture may have capable individuals, but they don’t look for “laws of nature” if they believe that nature is enchanted and ruled by millions of little deities like a rain god, a river goddess, or a rat deva. If the planets themselves are gods, then why should they follow established laws? Cultures that worship nature often use magic to manipulate the unseen powers governing nature. They don’t develop science and technology to establish “dominion” over nature. Some “magic” may seem to “work,” but magicians don’t seek a systematic, coherent understanding of nature.” Mangalwadi
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 220). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

49. “The first historian of the Royal Society of Science, Thomas Sprat (1635–1713), explained that the society’s objective was to enable mankind to reestablish “Dominion over Things. It was this religio-scientific exercise that collected the data that showed the apparent design in nature.” Mangalwadi
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 221). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

50. “Joseph Needham (1900–95), a Marxist historian who spent his life investigating Chinese science and civilization, confirmed Whitehead’s views. Needham searched for materialistic explanations for China’s failure. Finally, his integrity overcame his ideology. He concluded that there were no good geographical, racial, political, or economic reasons that explained the Chinese failure to develop science. The Chinese did not develop science because it never occurred to them that science was possible. They did not have science because “the conception of a divine celestial law-giver imposing ordinances on non-human nature never developed in China.”11
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 226). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

51. Religious leaders in my country, India, never persecuted a Galileo
Religious leaders in my country, India, never persecuted a Galileo. Does that give me a right to boast? Well into the nineteenth century our teachers taught—in a British-funded college—that the earth sat on the back of a great tortoise!15 We never persecuted a Galileo because the Hindu, Buddhist, or animist India never produced one.
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 229). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

52. This [Christian] way assumed that the physical universe was real
This [Christian] way assumed that the physical universe was real. It was neither a Platonic “shadow” nor a Hindu maya (illusion). The pioneers of science believed that the material realm was real, not magical, enchanted, or governed by spirits and demons. They assumed it was understandable because God created it as rational, ordered, and regulated by natural laws. Those pioneers invested their time, effort, resources, and their lives studying the physical universe because they believed that God created it good. It was not the creation of a malevolent deity to entrap pure souls in impure matter.
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 222). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

53. “This scientific outlook was born in a critique of Aristotelian rationalism. The scientific method assumes that human logic has validity, but it must be subservient to observed facts, because man is finite, fallen, and fallible. Scientists use logic to make sense of facts. They theorize to explain the world. But for a theory to be scientific, it must make quantitative predictions that are empirically verifiable, or at least falsifiable. A theory is modified or replaced if it doesn’t fit observed facts, or if later observations don’t match its predictions. Science rests on a paradox. Science must have the confidence that human beings can transcend nature (understand it, master it, and change it). Yet, science requires humility—accepting that humans are not divine but finite and fallen—prone to sin, error, and hubris. Therefore, science needs more than Aristotelian logic or individual enlightenment.” Mangalwadi
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 222). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

54. Science had to reject two opposing beliefs: 1) The reductionistic idea that man was merely a part of nature—a cog in the machine, incapable of transcending it; and 2) the science-precluding notion that the human self was the Divine Self and could be enlightened only by insight or mystical experience; that it could become infinite, knowing everything, needing no correction.
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (pp ). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

55. “The notion of fundamental laws of nature was derived from the belief in a divine lawgiver which was deeply rooted in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. In the words of Thomas Aquinas: “There is a certain eternal law, to wit, Reason, existing in the mind of God and governing the whole universe.” This notion of an eternal, divine law of nature greatly influenced Western philosophy and science. Descartes wrote about the six laws which God has put into nature, and Newton believed that the highest aim of his scientific work was to give evidence of the six laws impressed upon nature by God.”5
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (pp ). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
5. Fritjof Capra, Tao of Physics (Flamingo S. 1975), 317. The ideas of Aldous Huxley and Lynn White Jr. had begun to circulate in India in the 1960s. Later, Capra, physicist-turned-mystic/environmentalist became very popular in India. Capra is one of many who condemn Christianity for creating science and the ecological mess. Also popular was Marilyn Ferguson’s book Aquarian Conspiracy (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1980), which blamed Christianity for science, technology, social oppression, and ecological crisis.
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 414). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

56. “Russell had the chutzpah to assert that since Chinese civilization did not have the Bible’s God who intervenes in nature, its science would soon surpass the West’s. No one in our university told us that Russel’s coauthor, Alfred North Whitehead, considered his arguments carefully then shocked Western intellectuals in his Harvard Lowell Lectures (1925). Whitehead declared that Western science had sprung from the Bible’s teaching that the cosmos was the product of “the intelligible rationality of a personal being [God].” The implication was that personal beings— humans—could understand the cosmos. Whitehead elaborated: I do not think, however, that I have even yet brought out the greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement. I mean the inexpugnable belief thatevery detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles. Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without hope. It is this instinctive conviction, vividly poised before the imagination, which is the motive power of research—that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled. How has this conviction been so vividly implanted in the European mind? When we compare this tone of thought in Europe with the attitude of other civilizations when left to themselves, there seems but one source of its origin. It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah.”10
10. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World: Lowell Lectures, 1925 (NY: Macmillan, 1967), 12.
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (pp ). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
Mangalwadi, Vishal ( ). The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (p. 415). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.