Human Dignity

Imagine if we had captured Adolf Hitler at the end of World War II, a man responsible for spearheading a global war of aggression bent on domination, the slaughter of millions of Jews, with a total death toll nearing 50 million lives. Now imagine he sits in the witness chair at Nuremberg, and says, “Don’t …

You know, we can learn a lot about how important Christian principles are for a culture simply by comparing the French Revolution to another revolution that happened a few years earlier, across the Atlantic—the American Revolution. “Freedom from God.” For many people that sounds pretty good— Freedom from that grumpy old rule maker in the …

Medieval Europe got rid of slavery, but it came back with a vengeance during the age of exploration. Before long, Christians from every sailing nation were rationalizing the practice of seizing non-Europeans, putting them in chains, and placing them on the auction block. Fortunately, though, that’s not the end of the story. The story of …

When Americans think of the Pilgrims, a few things spring to mind: Thanksgiving; the Mayflower; Plymouth Rock. But if you go any deeper than that, things get blurry in a hurry. Were the Pilgrims peace loving Puritans who simply sat down at the table of brotherhood with the pagan Indians? Or, were they fiendish, opportunistic, …

Faith or reason. Religion or science. Tradition or progress. This is how many people in our culture, today, think. They see these things in opposition. But the history of the West is one of faith completing reason. The scientific revolution was ignited not in ancient Greece and Rome, but in Christian Europe. Europe took off …

You may have heard it said that Western democracy is based on ancient Greek democracy. The democracy of ancient Athens did serve as an inspiration for modern democracy. But there’s one important element missing from the Greek model: they had no firm foundation for higher law. Because of this, ancient Greek democracy became mob democracy. …

Did you know that the opponents of Christianity have—for centuries—controlled the very terms by which we understand the history of Christianity, arguing that Christianity hobbled the Roman Empire, snuffed out scientific progress, and threw the world into the Dark Ages? Many people don’t even give Christianity a hearing because they think, “Why would I want …