TIL that a pastor and his wife kidnapped a 4-month old baby to raise as a slave. They forced her to serve them and consistently beat, tortured, and molested her. She was rescued at 19 years old and had 410 scars on her body.

Christians in the west live in societies based on Christian ideals.

Honestly I'd say that isn't true at all, almost all of the major shifts in (western european and North American) society have come from secular and rationalist ideals during the age of enlightenment. Either that or a resurgence of Roman and Greek concepts that happened during the renaissance prior to the age of reason and enlightenment.
Both of which were an abandonment (often openly) of christian education and philosophy, especially scholasticism in favour of empericalism.

Christianity (especially catholicism) did nothing but lose influence and power and fight tooth and nail at every step to keep as much power as it could against the rise of secular democratic government - often openly trying to prevent it, and failing that twisting it so it retained as much influence as possible - look at Ireland for an example of this.

The Magna Carta: trial by jury, not king, or priest.
English Common law and the resurgence of Roman Civil law taking law away from kings, priests and the churches - and putting it in the hand of civil authority.

Rationalist Thinkers (with some influence from the Quakers to be fair) were the driving force abolishing slavery in the UK and colonies - a move which the rest of europe quickly followed. Something only possible thanks to common law (1706, "as soon as a Negro comes into England, he becomes free. One may be a villein in England, but not a slave.") leading to 1833 when Britain abolished slavery empire wide - with other european nations following suit shortly.

Then you had the universal declaration of human rights, again a secular document that set the tone of all of western civilization post world war 2.

Frankly I think the concept that we in the west live in societies based on christian ideals is a nice little lie that christians tell themselves in order to justify certain prejudices.

/r/todayilearned Thread Parent Link - sullivan-county.com