William Chong

A couple of weeks ago, I had this grandiose idea of writing a novel. The premise was this: modern-day alternate reality tracing the story of a couple of fishermen. They’d live in a world where Jesus never came. A world where Jesus never tapped anyone on the shoulder and ask: “Follow me”. Every sphere of life – politics, education, music, the arts, devoid of the influence of Jesus and Christianity. Could it have been a compelling message?

As fanciful as the idea of painting a Tolkien-level realm devoid of the influence of Jesus Christ, my fiction writing skills are pretty thumbs down and so I decided to read a book about the idea instead.

The title of this book pretty much sums up the theme of the novel, and chancellor of Knox Theological Seminary Dr D James Kennedy and documentary producer Jerry Newcombe (both Americans) tackle this intriguing premise. Each chapter in this book presents their research and suppositions on the impact of Christ has made upon humanity: covering areas from civil liberties, medicine, the arts, economics, sexuality, education, morality and more.

I’ll say it upfront – they know much more than I do. I mean, off the top of my head, the only place I can think of where Christianity might have influenced our culture today was in Puff Daddy’s Notorious B.I.G. tribute where the coda has the hymn “I’ll Fly Away” – “One bright morning when this life is over…”, or that Coolio’s “Gangster Paradise” wouldn’t have otherwise started with a verse from Psalm 23: “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”.

But the authors here have over 20 pages of references. I definitely learnt a lot more than I knew about Christianity’s impact on the world. Here’s a gem of an example:

[Guido of Arrezzo, an eleventh century monk,] wanted his students to memorise the notes c-d-e-f-g-a. So he took the words of a familiar hymn “Ut Queant Laxis”, which was a Christian song centered on St. John, and he created a mnemonic device:

UT queant laxis REsonare fibris
MIre gestorum FAmuli tuorum
SOLve pollutis LAbiis reatum
Sancte Iohannes

… We still learn them this way today, except we say “doh” for “ut” and have added a “ti” after “la”.

I guess I won’t look at this song the same way again.

There are many other well-informed points that Dr Kennedy makes throughout the book, including that:

• Most of the Ivy League universities (e.g. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Columbia) had strong Christian roots. In fact, Harvard University is named after Reverend John Harvard, and an early ad for what is now Columbia University stated: “The chief thing that is aimed at in this college is to teach and engage children to know God in Jesus Christ.” You probably won’t find that in their latest ad.
• The Red Cross was started by Swiss banker, philanthropist and member of “the Church of the Awakening” Henry Dunant (he also helped establish the YMCA); Dr Louis Pasteur, who developed pasteurisation, sterilisation and vaccines against rabies, diphtheria and anthrax, was a devout Christian
• Numerous charities were started by Christians or church organisations: think Salvation Army, World Vision, Tearfund and so on
• While some Christians enabled and continued the practice of slavery, it was Christians like William Wilberforce who helped put an end to them, and Christians like Martin Luther King Jr. who paved the way for racial equality
• The codifying and setting to writing of many of the world’s languages was a result of the need for Bibles and Christian literature to be translated to local tongues and dialects

At times Dr Kennedy does make too much of a conclusion from the research. For example, in a chapter where he credits Christianity as the foundation of free enterprise and the work ethic, he moves into a 2-page diatribe calling welfare “a Christian heresy” – it reads more political than factual. In another part of the book he quotes a research article by psychiatrist David Larson and grandly concludes that being spiritually committed is good for your health, making the all-too-common mix-up between correlation and causality. Faults aside, everything with an endnote or superscripted number on it in this book is thought-provoking and points to a serious effort to accurately present facts about Christianity.

One thing I liked about this book is that it covers both the positive and negative impact on Christianity. There’s a whole chapter dedicated to injustices and sins committed in the name of Christ: the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, anti-Semitism. These are not glossed over and treated with sensitivity and truthfulness. Dr Kennedy also makes a distinction between Christendom and Christianity, suggesting that many atrocities were committed by those who were Christians only by name. It’s a fair point, and the authors give a number of examples where whole territories were declared “Christian” whether or not they had a genuine relationship with Christ or not, leading to many “Christians” causing all kinds of havoc.

All in all, if you read this book you’ll definitely learn more about the overwhelmingly positive impact of Christianity on humanity. It’s easy-to-read, biblically-sound, and presents by all accounts historically correct information to back things up. It’s definitely worth a read.

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