Democracy was a pre-Christian invention of the Greeks and has developed through many cultures since.

There is absolutely nothing in Christianity that can claim any credit for it's development other than by historical association.

Rather than displaying democratic pronciples, many stages in Western history highlight the autocratic influence of Church over State.

Indeed the Vatican is probably the most undemocratic regime in the world today where nobody gets to vote on any of their representatives or influence any of the subsequent decisions it makes.

Rather than the warm-and-fuzzy Sunday School version, the rise of Christianity was really due to the brutal oppression, elimination and slaughter of all its rivals during the first centuries of its existence - not exactly a good role model for a democracy.

It may be able to claim historical credit for some things but Western Democracy is certainly not one of them and if it wants to remain relevant it should accept the historical bad as well as the good.

The godless fruit of violence, rape, child abuse, perversion, lack of empathy have all increased dramatically as the influence of Christianity decreased.Feminism has led to women being treated as meat and children by and large are totally disreptful thanks to the haters of what made the West such a desirable place to immigrate to.

For once, Shadow Minister, I agree with you. Well, I agree to a certain extent.

I don't think Christianity is going anywhere - it's here for the long haul. In our immediate future, however, I'd say its influence will continue to spiral to an all-time low. Even those Christians who ended their lives in the Roman arenas had some influence: after all, if they were so irrelevant and harmless they would have been ignored, not executed. I don't know that the Christians of my generation can hope to achieve that sort of influence.

Of course, the Christian lobby - though pretty powerless in Europe - is still enormous in the USA. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be the 'love thy neighbour' sort of Christian who shouts the loudest and is heard over there - it is the more bigoted types. Sadly, those who are still having a go at politics here tend to belong to the same denominations and tend to have some success. I'm a practising Catholic and proud of it, but I certainly don't accept that there's a place for the imposition of religion on others. Evangelise through good deeds by all means, but don't force religion on others through politics and insidious 'back-door' educational processes.

That, of course, is just my opinion. The fact that so many stand back and let it happen and so many others actively support it suggests that many, many people disagree with me. That's fine.

Christianity was a vital element in the development of a free and open society, just as smallpox was a vital element in the development of vaccination.

Dear Jon J,

Not sure I entirely agree but what a post! Well done. Lol.

Dear Runner,

Dear Runner,

Today I listened to Rachael Kohn's Spirit of things on Radio National.

I have copied and pasted the precis below.

“Chrissie and Anthony Foster of Melbourne are the first in our new monthly series on couples. What does it take to keep a couple together, when all they worked for is taken from them? Two of their three daughters were sexually abused by the parish priest, leading to one's death and the other's permanent disability. The Foster's love for each other and their children, and their pursuit of justice has been the focus of their lives, but their faith has been irrevocably changed.”

You can listen to the audio here; http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl?s=rn/spiritofthings&d=rn/spiritofthings/audio&r=sot-2011-03-27.ram&w=sot-2011-03-27.asx&t=Sunday%2027%20March%202011&p=1

Reading your post all I could see was;

'The Church's toll of violence, rape, child abuse, perversion, lack of empathy have all decreased dramatically as the influence of Christianity decreased.'

@Pericles, did you read more than one paragraph past the headline? It rather puts the lie to your thesis that Christianity was incidental to Western development. To the extent that the West has unique characteristics, and for most of its history a unique religion, it's not drawing that long a bow to assert a causal relationship from the latter to the former. Most of the examples you flippantly cite as equal 'influences' are not unique to the West, or even Western (Persia??)