“The major ethical changes brought by Christianity came … as the Christian populations of the West began to adopt Jesus’s teachings of altruistic love, even to strangers, and its concomitant material expression in new practices of charitable giving. Here I think there really was a revolution. In our (still) predominantly Christian world, most people do feel they should love others who are in need, even if they are strangers, and at least do something to provide some help, for example by doing volunteer work or donating hard-earned money for disaster relief or to institutions dealing with hunger, homelessness, and the myriad other personal and social problems our world confronts. Not everyone does that, of course. Many don’t. But many do and even more think they should.
“Moreover, this shift in ethical thinking led to the formation of remarkable institutions whose sole purpose was to heal the sick, feed the hungry, provide housing to the homeless, and care for those who were widowed, orphaned, or elderly.”
