Dinosaurs, Roman armies, Greek gods were much more interesting than the Christian God to Tom Holland as a boy in England. His faith faded away as he grew up and had no revival in adulthood. Today he's a historian and author.
He has modern, secular, humanistic values. But gradually he learned to his surprise that those values decidedly did not come from ancient Rome or Greece. And it went further. As a historian looking across hundreds of years, he found that modern, secular, humanistic values like his own . . . came from Christianity.
Compassion for slaves, for the poor, for human suffering, made Christianity a stark contrast to ancient attitudes.
(cont'd tomorrow)
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