The West and the Rest
First, there was Vishal Mangalwadi’s book, The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (2011). Then came The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (2005) by sociologist Rodney Stark. Next, I read Stark’s book, America’s Blessings: How Religion Benefits Everyone, Including Atheists (2012).
Now, I have come across Niall Ferguson’s Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011). Ferguson is the Laurence Tisch Professor of History at Harvard and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Sanford. This book is about six, what Ferguson calls in today’s parlance, “killer apps” that have allowed the “West” to succeed in areas where the “rest” have not. What led to the rise of Britain, France, and the U. S. as opposed to Islam and China and Japan?
The six killer apps, according to Ferguson, that separate the West from the Rest are: Competition, Science, Property, Medicine, Consumption, and Work.
While Ferguson is not nearly as overtly religious in his portrayal as Mangalwadi and Stark, first, he dates the divergence of the ascendency of the West over the rest in the year 1500. What was the great event that happened in the 1500s? The Protestant Reformation, the former scholars would answer.
Yet, Ferguson does give glimpses of the power of Christianity to effect dramatic changes in non-spiritual areas. The two “Christian” scholars would argue that the Protestant Reformation and its insistence on translating the Bible into the language of the common man and the concomitant emphasis on the priesthood of all believers and their freedom to interpret the Scriptures for themselves have released many (if not all) the innovations that have propelled the West to the front of civilization.
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To give some examples of Ferguson’s hint that “Christianity” was a significant force behind our progress, in the chapter on “Competition,” he writes: “religious fervor provided another incentive to expand overseas. Political fragmentation [caused by the Reformation, p.h.] … also propelled Europeans to seek opportunities – economic, geopolitical and religious – in distant lands” (pg. 39).
In the chapter on “Science,” Ferguson notes that the Scientific Revolution “had its origins in the fundamental Christian tenet that Church and state should be separate,” citing Matthew 22:21 (60). The Protestant Reformation led budding scientists out from under the dictating hand of the Catholic Church and allowed man to freely pursue study of God’s creation. On the same page, the author says, “But a more decisive breakthrough than the Renaissance was the advent of the Reformation and the ensuing fragmentation of Western Christianity after 1517.” Two pages later (62), he writes: “Because of its emphasis on individual reading of scripture and ‘mutual teaching’, the new medium [the printing press, p.h.] was truly the message of the Reformation.”
Ferguson is even more open with the influence of Christianity in the area of the West’s “Work” ethic. In that chapter, he writes: “Religions matter” (264). He contrasts the West’s roots in Christianity with China’s inhibiting Confucianism, Arab’s lack of interest in the scientific revolution, even the Catholic Church’s “brakes on economic development in South America.” Most interesting, to me, is his statement: “But perhaps the biggest contribution of religion [Protestantism, p.h.] to the history of Western civilization was this. Protestantism made the West not only work, but also save and read. …Above all, it depended on the accumulation of human capital. The literacy that Protestantism promoted was vital to all of this. On reflection, we would do better to talk about the Protestant word ethic” (first emphasis is mine; second in the orig.).
Ferguson, especially coming from a more overt secular writer, confirms Mangalwadi’s thesis: “The Bible created the soul of western civilization.” As modern America, led by the Left, strips our culture of its Christian roots, they are not only cutting us off from our moral and spiritual lifeline, they are also destroying the foundation of everything that has made us the country we are. In Ferguson’s words: “Religions matter.”
–Paul Holland
