What if Christmas Never Happened?

No Christmas means no Christianity. And without Christianity, Western Civilization would have turned out very differently (assuming such a thing as Western Civilization would have existed at all beyond the time of the Roman Empire). Rodney Stark of Baylor University has written a new book: The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Random House), where he puts forward the thesis that only in the crucible of Christian Europe could science and capitalism have been produced, with the result that the technological advancements we have today, as wrought by science and capitalism, are being enjoyed by many.

This essay is an adaptation of his book.

Stark writes:

“The success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians.”

“For the past several centuries, far too many of us have been misled by the incredible fiction that, from the fall of Rome until about the 15th century, Europe was submerged in the Dark Ages — centuries of ignorance, superstition, and misery — from which it was suddenly, almost miraculously, rescued; first by the Renaissance and then by the Enlightenment. But, as even dictionaries and encyclopedias recently have begun to acknowledge, it was all a lie!”

“It was during the so-called Dark Ages that European technology and science overtook and surpassed the rest of the world. Some of that involved original inventions and discoveries; some of it came from Asia. But what was so remarkable was the way that the full capacities of new technologies were recognized and widely adopted. By the 10th century Europe already was far ahead in terms of farming equipment and techniques, had unmatched capacities in the use of water and wind power, and possessed superior military equipment and tactics. Not to be overlooked in all that medieval progress was the invention of a whole new way to organize and operate commerce and industry: capitalism.”

“Through all prior recorded history, slavery was universal — Christianity began in a world where as much as half the population was in bondage. But by the seventh century, Christianity had become the only major world religion to formulate specific theological opposition to slavery, and, by no later than the 11th century, the church had expelled the dreadful institution from Europe. That it later reappeared in the New World is another matter, although there, too, slavery was vigorously condemned by popes and all of the eventual abolition movements were of religious origins.”

(via Arts and Letters Daily)