This article first appeared in the Christian magazine Reform as part of a debate

We cannot rerun history like an experiment in the lab and find out whether, if it weren’t for the invention of Christianity, the world would have been a better place. I think the probable answer is that it would have been better in some ways, worse in others, but mostly not that different.

This is certainly the case in relation to morality. It is a lesson of anthropology that, at a global level, human morality doesn’t vary much. Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Oxford published their analysis of sixty societies from across the world with different cultures and worldviews. They found seven moral rules were always present: love your family, help your group, return favours, be brave, defer to authority, be fair, and respect others’ property. This is just as you would expect if morality were indeed – as humanists believe – a result of our biology as social animals and the prudential experience of living in communities and much less culturally contingent than many may think.

To the extent that there are values specific to Christianity, it would be hard to rigorously determine their net beneficial or detrimental effect with some calculation: inquisitions vs charitable hospitals, crusades vs almshouses, the (morally horrendous) concept of original sin vs an endorsement of theoretical human equality, all totted up to give a final answer. 

Human beings reached our present stage of biological development 50,000 years ago. ‘Civilisation’ in the sense of city living  may be said to have begun around 5,000 years ago. Christianity began barely 2,000 years ago and can be said to have been a global force for less than a thousand years. It hasn’t yet even lasted as long as the worship of the goddess Isis did. The real answer to this question may therefore be that it is simply too early to tell.

If forced to give an answer, however, I would say – on balance – no.

I believe that any good things done by Christians in our history could and would have been done by others. On the other hand, I believe it has wrought many unique harms – sexual repression, the idea of original sin, the notion of orthodoxy and its concomitant concept of heresy or thoughtcrime, the religious chauvinism implicit in monotheism and the myriad crimes done in the name of that exclusivism. In the UK at least, as society has become decreasingly Christian in practice, belief, and identity, with laws built on secular principles of equality, human rights, and freedom, we have seen increasing tolerance, mutual respect and social morality and become a less violent, less racist, and more accommodating society than we ever were a couple of centuries ago. We have become more critical of acts that harm others (like drunk driving or rape) and less critical of acts that harm no-one (like consensual gay sex). Our moral scale is much improved. Correlation does not necessarily imply cause, but it does rule out the opposite.