The Forum > Article Comments > Rumours of Christianity's demise greatly exaggerated > Comments
Rumours of Christianity's demise greatly exaggerated : Comments
By Lyle Shelton, published 4/1/2012Christianity has been the great civilising influence in the face of barbarism, indifference to the sick and poor and in opposition to tyrants in the institutional church, nobility and state.
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Christianity has some pretty damning periods in history - the crusades, much of the dark ages, even in modern times we have to contend with the odd Christian lunatic with the desire to murder abortion doctors to 'defend life' (evidently irony isn't a strong point of theirs), or worry about the more aggressive evangelical sects pushing their creationism worldview in schools.
That being said, I think we also need to take into account that throughout history, aside from the crusades, the mighty power of the church was mostly used for politicking and power-mongering throughout Europe, with the most prominent casualties being wayward royalty. Given their centuries-old history, that's actually pretty reasonable.
I view it more as the devil we know, rather than the one we don't. There are always going to be powerful institutions abusing their position and there are always going to be religious people.
When compared to other institutions of comparative power, at least the church preaches humility, even if it's not always followed in practice.
Sure, I can hope that the world continually becomes more secular (which tends to go hand in hand with increased levels of education and increased recognition of women's rights, funny that) but I can also recognize that Christianity is probably among the religions most likely to let that happen peacefully. I'm willing to give them credit for being a force throughout history which has ultimately contributed to this trend.