The following article originally appeared in The Lutheran Witness, June/July 2003, and is reprinted by permission of Concordia Publishing House.

Civilization Transformed

by Alvin J. Schmidt

Does it seem to you, too, that virtually any religion is held in higher regard than Christianity by those who strive to be "politically correct"?

Christianity may get no respect from the world, but the world would be a far different place - and a far worse one - had it not been for the followers of Jesus Christ.

As the early Christians began to spread out into the Roman world of 2,000 years ago, they could not have envisioned the powerful impact they would have on civilization. But their impact was powerful indeed.

Let's look at a few examples of what Christianity has meant to civilization.

Sanctification of life

Before Christians influenced Roman society during the first century, human life was cheap and expendable. Infanticide, child abandonment and abortion were legal and common. The slaughter of gladiators and other bloody forms of entertainment were widespread.

Christians courageously opposed Rome's low value of human life. To them, life was a sacred gift of God. It took centuries for their view to win important changes. In AD. 374, Valentinian (a Christian emperor) outlawed infanticide, abortion and child abandonment. At the same time, St. Basil of Ceasarea mobilized Christians to minister to woman facing unwanted pregnancies.

A generation later, Christian emperors banned the gladiator games, and they have never returned.

Dignity for women

Before Christianity arrived, women had little or no freedom or dignity in any culture. At the time of Christ, an Athenian woman, for instance, had to go to her quarters when her husband had male guests. She was not permitted to speak in public. She had virtually no rights. Historians say she had the status of a slave.

In Rome, the laws greatly curtailed a woman's life. For instance, she could not inherit property, appear in public without a guardian or testify in court.

If anyone doubts it was the teachings of Jesus that improved the life of women, let them ask: Where do women have the most freedom, opportunity and dignity? It is in countries where Christianity has had a major presence.

Christianity brought a new and wholesome view of women, which it received from Christ and the apostles. In preparing individuals for membership, the church never discriminated against women. This boldly defied cultural practices of the Greco-Romans. In teaching both sexes, Christians took their cue from Jesus, who taught men and women alike.

The Christian view of women equalized the sin of adultery by no longer defining it in terms of a woman's marital status only; a married man having sex with a single woman also was guilty of adultery.

Unlike the Roman woman, a Christian woman could reject a male suitor, inherit property, and she no longer had to worship her husband's gods. Said one historian, "The conversion of the Roman world to Christianity [brought] a great change in women's status."

Charity and hospitals

Jesus said: "I was sick and you looked after me" (Matt. 25:36). The early Christians took these words to heart, even though Romans saw helping a sick person as a sign of weakness. Plautus, a Roman philosopher in the second century B.C., declared that helping to keep a beggar alive was doing him and society a bad service. In the fourth century AD., many Romans panicked and fled from a contagious plague in Alexandria leaving friends and relatives behind to die.

But the Christians were different. They fed and nursed the sick - even total strangers - often succumbing themselves. Their compassion was so remarkable that the pagan emperor Julian the Apostate said, "The impious Galileans [his word for Christians] relieve both their own poor and ours." And he lamented, "It is shameful that ours [the poor] should be so destitute of our assistance."

It was in this merciless pagan environment that Christians built the world's first hospital in AD. 369. By 750, there were Christian hospitals across Europe. They built nosocomia (for the sick only), morotrophia (for the mentally disturbed), gerontocomia (for the aged), orphanotrophia (for orphans), brephotrophia (for infants) and typholocomia (for the blind).

The Christian stamp on hospitals is still with us, for many still bear Christian names as St. Luke's, St. John's, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, etc. Whenever you drive by a hospital, remember its Christian origin.

Science's Christian connections

Today, Christianity is often portrayed as an enemy to science. How untrue! It was Christian theology that motivated the early scientists to explore God's natural world. Alfred North Whitehead, a non-Christian philosopher of science, once said that "faith in the possibility of science. .. is an unconscious derivative from medieval [Christian] theology." Another writer stated that "the monk was an intellectual ancestor of the scientist."

Most of the pioneers of science were committed Christians: Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, William Occam, Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Louis Pasteur and countless others. From the 12th century to the early 19th century, before methodological atheism appeared, every scientist tried to relate his scientific theory to Christian theology.

When Martin Luther challenged the authority of church hierarchy with "Sola Scriptura," the Reformation created an atmosphere of intellectual freedom of thought. When Copernicus stated that the earth travels around the sun, not the sun around the earth, it was two Lutheran friends who persuaded him to publish his work despite his fear of ridicule-not from the church, but from other scientists.

This is surprising to many people, because most only hear that Christian theologians condemned Copernicus' work.

It was Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), a devout Lutheran, who brought about acceptance of the heliocentric concept. Kepler's major contributions to understanding the universe included the first three laws of planetary motion.

Education's Christian roots

Universities grew out of the medieval monasteries, whose monks, unlike the Greeks, were not afraid to link theory with research, two vital ingredients of a university. While some of the universities' roots go back to the monasteries of the sixth century, the first university appeared in Bologna, Italy, in 1158. Soon others - all of them Christian institutions - appeared over much of Europe. Many colleges still have Christian connections.

While Christians were not the first to encourage formal education, they appear to be the first to teach both sexes in the same setting, and that was revolutionary thinking.

Johann Sturm, a 16th-century Lutheran educator, introduced the grade-level education system to motivate young students to advance to the next grade.

Abolition of slavery

Christianity has been on the forefront of fighting slavery, and the countries that first abolished slavery were countries where Christianity had the greatest presence. Where Christianity had little or no presence, slavery ended much later or, as in some Islamic-African countries, still exists today.

While some in the early church supported slavery, the early Christians freed thousands of slaves, baptized and received them as members, and communed them at their altars.

Long before the abolition movement in America, the first formal proclamation against slavery was issued in 1688 in Germantown, Pa., by Franz Pastorius, a German immigrant and a pious Mennonite. In the 1820s, William Wilberforce made powerful speeches fueled by his ardent Christian convictions to persuade the British Parliament to end slavery throughout its vast empire.

Other transforming contributions

The length of an article in The Lutheran Witness does not allow discussion of the many other Christian contributions that enriched the world. But here is a list of some of the most important:

• Economic freedom
• Constitutional government
• Freedom of speech
• Magnificent works of art
• Enlightening literature
• Separation of church and state
• Using Christ's birth to record calendar time
• The invention of the musical scale
• Inspiring musical compositions
• The beauty of cathedral architecture

With regard to music, plainsong, operas, polyphony, motets, oratorios, symphonies, sonatas, cantatas and concertos all first appeared in Christian churches and later were adopted by society at large. What would the world be like without them?

Gothic architecture, which began with St. Denis cathedral near Paris in 1144, has been described as the architecture that exemplifies Christianity. With their imposing height towering far above the cities and their pointed arches, they move people to look upward, reminding them of the divine and their humanity.

One observer noted the Gothic cathedrals provide "an actual picture of heaven which the human senses can perceive." Another has said each cathedral is a "Bible in stone and glass." The Gothic architects did not just shape pillars and arches of stone, but they adorned them with frescoes, stained-glass windows, statues and engravings depicting Biblical messages.

The art and architecture of Byzantine churches with their domes and mosaics not only advanced eastern Christian life, but influenced Islamic art and architecture in the design of their mosques. When Islam appeared a hundred years after the construction of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople by the Christian emperor Justinian, it emulated this Christian masterpiece.
Until about World War II, Christians in North America tried to imitate, although limitedly, the Gothic design in their churches. They wanted them to reflect God's majesty and grace.

Carsten Thiede, an academic researcher in Germany, and Matthew d' Ancona, a British journalist, co-authors of The Jesus Papyrus, said: "The [Christian] Gospels are the very building blocks of our civilization. Without them Giotto di Bondone would not have painted his frescoes in the Arena Chapel at Padua, considered one of the major turning points in the history of European painting. Dante would not have written the 'Divine Comedy'; Mozart would not have composed his 'Requiem'; and [Christopher] Wren would not have built St. Paul's Cathedral [in London]."

The message of these four Gospels-along with the Judaic tradition of the Old Testament-pervades not only the moral conventions of the West, but also our systems of social organization, nomenclature, architecture, literature and education, as well as the rituals of , marriage and death which shape our lives... Christian and non-Christian alike.

Dr. Alvin J. Schmidt formerly taught at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, and Illinois College, Jacksonville, Ill. He is the author, of Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization (Available from Concordia Publishing House. Call (800)325-3040).