Posted on 03/07/2011 9:00:56 AM PST by Eurotwit
In the West we are doing our best to destroy our Christian heritage but in China, Chinese intellectuals are coming around to the view that it is precisely this heritage that has made the West so successful.
Former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Dominic Lawson, in a review in the Sunday Times of Niall Ferguson's new book, ‘Civilisation: The West and the Rest’, carries a quote from a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in which he tries to account for the success of the West, to date.
He said: “One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world.
“We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had.
“Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system.
“But in the past twenty years, we have realised that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful.
“The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”
Note the source. It isn't from a religious leader, or some religious think-tank. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is an instrument of the Chinese Communist government which spends a not inconsiderable amount of time and money persecuting Christians and is officially atheistic.
If this is the conclusion it has come to, maybe Europe needs to reconsider whether it mightn't be an idea to encourage rather than eradicate Christianity.
Incidentally, just to drive home the point, Lawson also refers to this data point in Ferguson's book: Wenzhou, the Chinese city which is rated as the most entrepreneurial in the country, is also home to 1,400 churches.
Lawson refers to a quote in the book from a prominent Wenzhou business leader, a Mr Hanping Zhang, who argues that “an absence of trust had been one of the main factors holding China back; but he feels he can trust his fellow Christians because he knows that they will be honest in their dealings with him”.
It has long been accepted that Christianity is one of the core elements of Western civilisation; it is too little understood that it is also one of the secrets of the stunning success of that civilisation.
Forwarding article to Charlie Sheen.
Its all vary twue. Its the root of the G7 ...excepting Japan ... that rode together to the Crusades....
Absolutely no doubt about it. The Greeks developed some great political and philosophical ideas, but Athens didn’t last long because they didn’t have a religion that would enable them to hold on to it.
Christopher Dawson has written several excellent books on this subject.
Put it another way. Christianity develops the idea of free will, which is dependent upon moral behavior, within a rational universe. Islam has zero idea of free will, and Allah is not rational. Confucianism was a reasonably good way of running things, which let people rise through the ranks by virtue of their scholarship, but it did not have Christianity’s ideas about free will and moral choice.
Yes, God blesses the faithful with prosperity.
Luke 12:29-34 (Phi) “You must not set your heart on what you eat or drink, nor must you live in a state of anxiety. The whole heathen world is busy about getting food and drink, and your Father knows well enough that you need such things. No, set your heart on his kingdom, and your food and drink will come as a matter of course... Sell your possessions and give the money away to those in need. Get yourselves purses that never grow old, inexhaustible treasure in Heaven, where no thief can ever reach it, or moth destroy it. For where your treasure is, you may be certain that your heart will be there too!”
Seems to be a lifetime ago that I leaned this in a freshman Western Civilization class in college. I seriously doubt any college would deliver that message today, but it is the fact none the less.
Depend upon men for your liberties and be enslaved. Obama.
Francis Schaeffer was documenting this 50 years ago.
Confucius say, “A pearl before swine is still a pearl.”
“....the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful.”
.
Main target for liberals, communists and Islam.
You also of course had works like the seminal:
“The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” - Max Weber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism
published more than a hundred years ago.
It used to be on the reading list for any college graduate at least within the social sciences or economics..
Ding ding ding ding ding! We have a winner!
Forwarding this article to the Mad Muslim Terrorist pretending to be the POTUS desecrating Our White House as we type this message!
As I mention in the essay that formed the inspiration for the book:
"But it took another philosopher to highlight and to put into play one of the most destructive ideas to emerge in modern times.""Friedrich Nietzsche was also an atheist. But he saw God not as an invention, but as a casualty. He wrote in 1886: "The greatest event in recent times - that 'God is Dead,' that the belief in the Christian God is no longer tenable - is beginning to cast its first shadows upon Europe." The Christian God, he wrote, would no longer stand in the way of the development of the New Man who Nietzsche said would be ‘beyond good and evil’. Nietzsche knew that in Europe, the decline of religion as a guide to conscience and morality would leave a huge vacuum. Who or what would fill that vacuum? "
"Nietzsche thought that the most likely candidate would be what he called the 'Will to Power,' which he felt offered a better and more persuasive explanation of human behavior than either Marx or Freud. In place of religious belief, there would be secular ideology. The very concept of good and evil would be discarded as the product of weak and inferior minds."
"But above all, Nietzsche believed that the Will to Power would produce a new kind of messiah, uninhibited by religious sanctions, without moral restraint of any kind, and with an unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind."
A lot of what's happening today can only make sense if seen in that light.
Thought you’d enjoy this.
Forwarding article to Barack Obama.
“The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”
Tell that to Schumer, Franken, Soros, Harvard, the Brookings Institution, et. al; and keep your head down.
Thus the clandestine hatred for George W. Bush, and Sarah Palin.
Johnny Suntrade
So you think it has some merits to say that we stand on the pillars of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome?
That the Christian idea about morals was wedded to the “western” logical thoughts of the Greeks to put it simply...
(I need to post here more. My English is deteriorating...)
Thanks.
When I was there,
there was a classified doc that had been outted affirming that the most reliable, honest, trustworthy, effective employees were Christians etc.
PRAISE GOD.
To be more specific, it’s Protestantism.. or God Himself that made us a success. The same cannot be said of predominantly Catholic countries.
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