Western civilization is not rooted in Christian values

A common line I keep hearing from modern Christian conservatives is that “Western civilisation is rooted in Christian values.” Well, fine, yes. But also, no. Mostly, it’s complicated, which is what people who do bumper-sticker history tend to dismiss as mere details. So let’s go into the details. 

Christianity is certainly one of Europe’s important civilisational layers, especially in the medieval world. But “the West” most certainly did not begin with Christianity, nor can its foundations be reduced to it. 

Long before Christianity arrived in Europe, the Greeks and Romans had already built many of the foundations of Western thought: philosophy, logic, mathematics, law, political theory, republican ideas, drama, history, ethics (and not all of these are exclusively Western ideas). Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, Cicero and others were part of the house well before Christianity moved in and started rearranging the furniture. 

Christianity itself emerged from Judaism inside the Greco-Roman world and absorbed and assimilated a great deal from that world. Medieval Christian thinkers and theologians leaned heavily on Greek metaphysics and Roman law. Ideas like natural law, logos, virtue ethics, rational inquiry and civic duty were not Christian inventions. Stoicism was a huge influence. 

Later, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment revived and reinterpreted many pre-Christian traditions, often in direct tension with Church authority. Lucretius and Epicurean thought are a useful example: materialist, empirical, suspicious of fear-driven religion, and focused on reducing suffering in this life rather than preparing for some deferred afterlife. 

In fact, modern Western thought draws from many different streams simultaneously: Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, Renaissance humanism, science, secular critique, classical republicanism, and yes, Christianity too. 

So I find the claim that Western civilisation is “rooted in Christian values” rather silly. Western civilisation is a layered, quarrelsome inheritance, full of argument, borrowing, rebellion and reinvention. It also absorbed ideas from other civilisations and influenced them in return. 

I think it is probably more helpful to think of it as a compost heap, rather than as a refined cathedral. As with most compost heaps, quite a lot grew out of it. Some of it quite good. Some of it rather nasty.