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.
ping
I know.
Reading through pretty much all the enlightenment thinkers... Locke... later on Adam Smith...
They all emphasized the importance of “christian ethics” - in Adam Smith’s case in tempering the raw effects human greed and unbridled capitalism could have. i.e. Greed is not good. A little greed and a little christian love for your next man will go a long way :D
Perhaps not the most popular words here on freerepublic, but they are there nonetheless.
Cheers.
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”
2 Cor 3:17
When a person or society is self-governed by Christian principles, very little outside control (government) is necessary.
Very incisive post on your part.
I must recommend the book Fortunate Sons by Liel Leibovitz.
It is an amazing story of 120 Chinese children who came to the U.S. 150 years ago. They came here at the young age of 5 or 6 living with adopted American families and stayed for 15years before being called back to China.
They went to Yale and Harvard and interacted with the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Mark Twain. They went back to become leaders in China.
But their Western education and technological ideas were no match against the ingrained Chinese culture and feng shui.
We often ask is the man or the times that determine history? Perhaps the better question is whether it is the culture or the religion?
I’ve yet to read a better book elucidating Kipling’s ballad of “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.”
But, this will to power must surely be tempered by Christian ethics and belief not to run amok. Tempered by Christian feeling, this will to power is not necessarily a bad thing...
You are correct. As Solzhenitysn put it in his monumental speech at Harvard in June, 1978 (A World Split Apart), and far better than I could:
"And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims."Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice.
State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century’s moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century."
As a side note, we should recall that Solzhenitsyn was jeered and booed as he delivered this speech. Seems that his observation toucheda nerve or two. So yes, our desire for knowledge and all of our creativity can be seen as an expression of the will to power, but stripped of moral restraint or any kind of religious sanctions regarding right and wrong, the will to power quickly descends into savagery and monstrosity.
freedom and liberty with a moral foundation.
To be more specific, absent Catholicism, Protestantism would not exist.
It’s an interesting thought. And, by the way, they never succeeded. Christianity lived on in Russia even under the depravities of Stalin.
Though if the the Communists had embraced Christianity they never could have done the atrocities they committed. Shooting, starving millions of people. Not very Christian.
As an economist my view on Jesus... He IS God. It’s silly to take him on anyone’s side in economic debates. I guess he was a non-materialist though.
So in that way opposed to both Marxists and avid capitalists.
Though as Jesus said, if you follow him and stop praying to the false god of materialism, you will be amply taken care of :D
It’s both. I like reading your posts in the same way I like watching the movie “Alien” or the old show X-Files :D
Interesting stuff, but as always the smoking man gets away :(
It’s probably been a lifetime since more than a handful of colleges taught a Western Civilization course to freshmen - unless the first 3 words were “The Evils Of ...”.
While you’re at it, which Catholic country led the Industrial Revolution and the rapid, historical drift toward representative democracy?
Do you really consider this “spirit of capitalism” stuff to be protestant propaganda?
Thank you for your answer.
We should only say Jerusalem and Athens. Twin pillars sound much better in a marketing sense :D
Though obviously in many cases Rome refined some of the earlier Greek thinking, as I am sure a guy called Cicero would have to agree to.
But, it was largely a refinement... Or did Rome bring something fundamentally new to the mix?
Sadly I know too little of China.
I have read Spengler’s “Untergang des Abendlandes”, but it does get a bit convoluted. It’s a loooong history they do have there.
See the post below :P
Though I agree the Inquisition came at special point and time in history where the entire continent was in play.
It’s not fair to judge it by today’s standards.
Another reference source to validate the contributions of Christianity to freedom and economic sustainability is the book by Rodney Stark entitled The Victory of Reason, How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success. A quote from the book: “The modern world arose only in Christian societies. Not in Islam. Not in Asia. Not in a “secular” society—there having been none.”
Our founding fathers were aware of the same fact over 200 years ago that has just now become aware to the Chinese. President John Adams said, “Statesmen my dear sir may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand...The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue.”
In the same time period a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville was also aware. He said, “It was religion that gave birth to the English colonies in America. One must never forget that...I think I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores, as that of the whole human race in the first man...Despotism may be able to do without faith, but freedom cannot...When a people’s religion is destroyed...then not only will they let their freedom be taken from them, but often they actually hand it over themselves.”
And Russell Kirk said, “Among the props of order in democratic societies, the chief is religion; and Tocqueville found in his American observations some reassurance on this score. Democratic peoples simplify religion, certainly; but it may remain with them as an abiding force, helping to counteract that materialism which leads to democratic despotism.”
I believe that our Constitution is a divinely inspired document written mostly by religious men seeking guidance form God. I do not believe that mortal man left to his on devices alone could have drafted such a profound work. How much longer this document stands will depend on how America accepts or rejects Christianity.
“As a side note, we should recall that Solzhenitsyn was jeered and booed as he delivered this speech”
Preaching against materialism has never been popular - either in the Soviet Union or the United States of America.
Money is great.
But, sitting with your grandchild laughing on your lap in in a different league.
To bring it back to Christianity. I think what Jesus is telling us is that by acting like Christians.... Our material needs will be taken care of anyhow.
And, if the west has been Christian he has been speaking the truth. :)
Get your book our there. I very much look forward to reading it.
Friendly cheers from Norway.
Having studied such stuff for 45 years . . .
I have LONG known that by the time my assertions were ‘proven’ in any conventional widely accepted sense,
there would BY THEN be absolutely no chance to do anything about it.
That’s the nature of such things.
These blokes have been at it a very long time . . . 110 years clearly. Evidently at least 160 years given some of the earlier quotes . . . and some folks insist 400 years in terms of the ruling elite families.
And a number of experts trace it back 400 years.
“From the days of Sparticus, Wieskhopf, Karl Marx, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemberg, and Emma Goldman, this world conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy played a definite recognizable role in the tragedy of the French revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century. And now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their head and have become the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”
Winston Churchill, stated to the London Press, in l922.
.
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
Woodrow Wilson,The New Freedom (1913)
.
“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”
Benjamin Disraeli, first Prime Minister of England, in a novel he published in 1844 called Coningsby, the New Generation
“The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments’ plans. “
British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, 1876
. . .
.
“What is important is to dwell upon the increasing evidence of the existence of a secret conspiracy, throughout the world, for the destruction of organized government and the letting loose of evil.”
Christian Science Monitor editorial, June 19th, l920
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2624713/posts?page=153#153
etc:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2130557/posts?page=81#81
AMAZING DISCOVERIES DR VEITH RE ILLUMINATI ETC SECRET SOCIETIES (he quotes the elite in their own documents and speeches):
http://amazingdiscoveries.tv/media/123/211-232K/
BTW, given that it was my task to check the whole pile of docs for the proper handling of classified docs at the comm center . . . I may well have handled in my own fingers more such docs than you have.
Most were dreadfully boring. And the more highly classified usually comprised some Admiral’s golf schedule.
Good points.
If the church had been doing it’s Biblical job . . . the welfare entitlements program of the government would have never been needed nor wanted.
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