Today we're pleased to share with you an audio essay written and read by Sharon James entitled

Five Ways the World Would Be Worse Without Christianity.

Sharon is the author of Is Christianity Good for the World, which is part of the TGC

Hard Questions series from Crossway.

Five Ways. hard question series from Crossway. Five ways the world would be worse without Christianity.

Written and read by Sharon James.

A World Without Christianity.

In 2007, God is Not Great, a best-selling book by the late Christopher Hitchens, denounced

Christianity as being violent, hateful, and harmful to human flourishing.

Today, similar claims are reiterated by those who condemn Christianity as the religion of the oppressor class.

Christians are instructed to check their privilege and do the work to repudiate Christianity's toxic legacy.

But what would the world really be like without Christianity?

Firstly, the world would be crueler. In pagan culture, compassion to the needy was regarded as foolish.

At a time when many in the Greco-Roman world suffered misery and brutality,

the early Christian communities offered care. Orphans were given refuge and education.

Widows obtained aid. The destitute were given food and farward. By the fourth century after

Constantine became emperor, the church became the first organised institution of public welfare.

The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD ordered that a hospital should be built in every town where there was a Christian cathedral.

In later times, Christians pioneered the establishment of hospitals, orphanages, leprosurians and hospices for the dying.

The evangelical awakenings of the 18th century affected whole nations.

Evangelical Christians were responsible for a remarkable range of social advances,

including prison reform, care of the mentally ill,

...