Director, Commonwealth Policy Center

We sometimes take for granted what it is that undergirds our society. In trying to discover what makes the West so successful a Chinese sociologist said this: “We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next, we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.” The question we face is whether we share the confidence of this outside observer.