When people believe that the West became strong, free, and prosperous by liberating itself from Christianity, they are either mistaken or lacking a basic understanding of history.
Western civilization was not built on a single foundation, but on three. Christianity, Greek philosophy, and Roman law. Remove any one of these pillars, and you no longer understand why the West became what it is today.
That is why it is historically incorrect to claim that religion is the problem and that reason alone created our civilization. Reason is a tool. It tells us how we can do something. It does not necessarily tell us why we should do it, or which values are worth defending.
It is also incorrect to conflate faith and religion as if they were the same thing. Faith is an existential question concerning humanity’s relationship with truth, meaning, and morality. Religion is the cultural and institutional framework through which faith is expressed. Reducing both to superstition or power struggles is an intellectual oversimplification.
And perhaps the greatest mistake of all is to equate Christianity and Islam as if they were simply two versions of the same phenomenon.
Christianity underwent the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and a fundamental separation of church and state. The modern West did not emerge despite Christianity, but out of the Christian civilization’s understanding of the inherent value of the individual, freedom of conscience, and personal responsibility.
Islam has never undergone a comparable process of reformation. Therefore, it makes neither historical nor civilizational sense to treat the two traditions as identical.
Our universities, our legal principles, our human rights, our understanding of the value of the individual, and our civil liberties did not emerge in a vacuum. They developed within a civilization shaped by Christianity, Greek philosophy, and Roman law.
This does not mean that the West should become a theocratic society. It means that we must understand our own roots before attempting to cut them off.
When more and more people today turn toward Christianity, it is not necessarily because they want more religion. It is often because they recognize that a society cannot survive on technology, economics, and procedures alone. A civilization also requires a cultural, moral, and spiritual foundation.
To reject that is not a sign of enlightenment. It is often a sign of historical amnesia.✝️🪽❤️🔥