A Very Brief History of Christian Philanthropy

I have been asked to give a very brief history of the ways Christian philanthropy "grit and grace" changed our world.

Jesus certainly foresaw that it would. He urged his students to be a "lamp that gives light to everyone in the house."

"Let your light shine before others," he said, "that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." (Matthew Chapter 5)

But I can't speak triumphantly about this. I made a film in 2018 with the Centre for Public Christianity subtitled "how the church is better and worse than you ever imagined."

I still believe it.

I think of the Christian riots in Alexandria in AD 415 that led to the murder of the brilliant philosopher Hypatia. I think of Charlemagne in the 700s seeking to "convert" the Saxons in northern Germany under the brutal policy: "Baptism or sword." And I think, with bafflement, of Martin Luther's despicable advice to German princes about European Jews: he urged "to set fire to their synagogues or schools, that their houses also be razed and destroyed, that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb."

I have no stomach for Christian triumphalism. But the question isn't: Have Christians participated in the evils common to humanity? The answer to that is obvious! The more revealing question is: What is Christianity's unique contribution to humanity? No one can claim that Christianity's unique contribution has been violence, racism, or bigotry. Romans were doing brilliantly on that front long before Christians, as were the Greeks, Gauls, Saxons, and so on.

So, what is Christianity's unique contribution? Many will know the answer given by English historian Tom Holland. In his 2021 Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, he says Christianity's unique contribution was the message that God went to a cross out of love for humanity (philanthropia), and that this placed sacrificial love at the centre of ethics in a remarkable way. To my great surprise, the famously sceptical scholar Bart Ehrman agrees. He has just announced the title and theme of his next book, The Invention of Charity: "Prior to the Christian conquest of the Empire," he writes, "the Western world knew of no such things as hospitals, orphanages, private charities, or governmental assistance to the poor. These are Christian innovations."

Indeed, I will take that as permission to outline three ways Christian philanthropy changed our world.

1. The End of Infanticide

Aristotle (384–322 BC) had advised, "Let there be a law that no deformed child shall be reared." And I am afraid to say that many after him extended this principle to girls! In an otherwise sweet letter from a Roman soldier to his wife in 1 BC, we read: "If you bear a child and it is male, let it be; if it is female, cast it out."

This shocks us, but it was commonplace in antiquity. Jews and Christians preached against infanticide. Christians even convinced Emperor Constantine to pass laws in AD 313 designed to remove the economic impulse to discard children. According to the law: "If any parent should report that he has offspring which on account of poverty he is not able to rear, there shall be no delay in issuing food and clothing."

Churches were the welfare distribution centres for this program. Some Christians went further and personally rescued abandoned babies. The most poignant example is Macrina the Younger, sister of the famous bishop-theologians Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great. But Macrina was "great" in her own right. A wealthy, highborn woman, she and a team of pious women bought a property, studied and prayed together, worked the farm, and collected and raised discarded children. Gregory tells us that when Macrina died, the loudest cries came not from family and friends but from the many young women she had saved and raised. Christians eventually won a total ban on infanticide, in a law of AD 374. Thanks to Christians like Macrina, we no longer even have to think about the evil of infanticide.

2. Establishing Hospitals

Macrina's brother Basil the Great (AD 330–379) established the world's first public hospital. As an elite boy, he had studied at the famous Academy at Athens (founded by Plato), where he learned and loved medicine. Later, as a bishop, he combined the best of Greek medicine and the best of Christian philanthropy to establish a giant welfare centre with multiple departments: for lepers, for the aged, and a hospital proper for the sick. He employed live-in medical staff to care for the sick.

The idea inspired others. Fabiola was arguably the wealthiest woman in Rome (she belonged to one of the original seven families). She established the first hospital in the West. Astonishingly (for a Roman noble), she didn't just use her fortune; she got her hands dirty. Her friend Jerome wrote:

Fabiola sold all her property and, when she had turned it into money, she disposed of everything for the benefit of the poor. First of all, she founded an infirmary and gathered into it sufferers from the streets, giving a nurse's care to poor bodies worn with sickness and hunger. She gave food with her own hand, and even when a man was but a breathing corpse, she would moisten his lips with drops of water.

Talk about grit and grace! Fabiola's work launched a cascade of hospitals in Europe, all run by the church. It is no accident that the oldest still-functioning hospital in the world is the Hôtel Dieu ("Hostel of God"), founded in Paris in AD 829.

3. Fighting Poverty

We take for granted today that charitable services are widely available. This was not the case in the ancient world. Plato had offered a very simple solution to poverty: beggars should be banished from the city and the countryside. Many cities in antiquity took his advice and during times of famine expelled the non-citizen poor. Christians inherited the Jewish tradition of charity and applied it to all. The earliest description of a church service comes from Justin Martyr (AD 100–165). He lists the five regular elements of the service: readings from the prophets and apostles, an exhortation from a designated leader, a meal with bread and wine, prayers and praises, and, finally, a collection for "orphans and widows, and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds."

Directing the church collection to the ministry of the church, rather than to the poor, is a recent innovation.

We have a surviving sermon from this period, known as the Shepherd of Hermas. It gives us an idea of the kind of rhetoric that inspired Christian philanthropy:

"Instead of fields, buy souls that are in distress, as anyone is able, and visit widows and orphans, and do not neglect them; and spend your wealth and all your possessions, which you received from God, on fields and houses of this kind."

These two sources mention a special kind of philanthropy: "to purchase souls in bonds." And if we lived in France in the middle of the 600s, we would have witnessed an extraordinary example of just this kind of philanthropy. Eligius of Noyon was the greatest jeweller of Europe, and extremely personally wealthy. After some kind of spiritual awakening, he devoted himself to using his vast wealth for the poor and, particularly, for slaves. He would go to slave auctions dressed like a king, buy everyone, and give them money to return to their homes.

A contemporary source reports: "Wherever he understood that slaves were to be sold he hastened with mercy and soon ransomed the captive. He liberated both sexes and from different nations. He freed all alike, Romans, Gauls, Britons and Moors but particularly Saxons who were as numerous as sheep at that time."

When he ran out of coins, he gave more by stripping what he had on his own body from his belt and cloak to the food he needed and even his shoes so long as he could help the captives. Eligius introduced the word of God among them by the grace of Christ, and a great multitude left their idols and converted. It seems he was an evangelist, as well as a social reformer. Eligius eventually became bishop and began to reshape northern France (for a time) around his principles of philanthropy, or should I say around the gospel of Christ's loving self-sacrifice? He was a shining example of Jesus' expectation that his students would be a light to the world through their good deeds.

*John Dickson is an author and historian, the host of "Undeceptions", and the Jean Kvamme Distinguished Professor of Biblical Studies and Public Christianity at Wheaton College, Illinois, in the USA.