By Christian atrocities, are we talking about offenses committed in the name of Christ, or offenses actually sanctioned by the Gospels, which might include a defense of Christians and Christian property?
More than any other faith, any government, any corporation, Christianity has shown itself exceedingly compassionate. In its humanitarian output – schools, hospitals, shelters, soup kitchens – the church within which Jesus Christ is the cornerstone put into practical terms the manifestations of love and compassion unmatched by any other organization or institution before or since. Christians turn out for famine and disaster relief. They counsel addicts and unwed pregnant women, and aid and comfort the sick, powerless, jobless, and exploited. In every city, in virtually every small town and hamlet in America, a Christian church or organization has had an outreach ministry of some kind.
Christianity enkindles the dispirited heart and animates the pedestrian imagination. The proliferation of art, literature, music, and architecture that it has inspired, as well as a culture of privilege, prosperity, free enterprise, and a work ethic, built in the West civilizations of unprecedented welfare, equality, and family cohesion. Christianity has been a catalyst for tremendous progress that has improved the quality of life around the world.
In America, Christianity served as a cornerstone around which the country grew and as a linchpin of its republican virtue. Conjugating such ideas as charity, free will, and the natural law, American Christians helped shape an economic and military superpower not by might or aforethought but merely by extension. Created in God’s image with rights to property, conscience, and liberty, the human being, through divine familiarity, is an expression of the Creator, of unbound potential, an expression that rang with resounding clarity in British America, whose singular, unifying faith found brotherhood in even the remotest recesses of an unchartered landscape. Christianity, by its altruistic maxims, its recognition of the humanity of slaves and women, and its profession of truth and love, has been a force for good in the world, as illustrated splendidly in America’s growth.