Christian Hagiography & Human Rights

 Christianity divorced religion from the state apparatus in the Western world, and spoke of salvation as a largely individual phenomena. It also rather uniquely spoke about the necessity of loving one's enemies, and in viewing the sinner as having a second shot at life and not simply one who was born of poor constitution or character.

These things are quite vital in opposing the totalitarian urge in humanity, which is still very plain to see when you speak with East Asians who even in societies with modern political constitutions ruled by modern political philosophies often see the state, the culture, and the people functioning as a single unit.

What's funny is this idea we see returning in the West where people treat dissenters and people who disagree actively with the government narrative of events as agents of misinformation, which draws into question the inalienable rights that were at the basis of classical liberalism and even to lesser degrees of monarchy as distinguished from despotism.

Of course, other societies have always had concepts of justice and an awareness of tyranny, but it was Christianity that provided the basis and the lexicon for subsequent political theory that invested great worth in the individual.

Idiots like Stephen Pinker look at the 'age of enlightenment' for this and gush about literate men being touched by literature humanizing women because they are completely unaware of Christian hagiography that has always been obsessed with the stories of women, children, the downtrodden, etc., all handing themselves over to Christ, often facing martyrdom by powerful political forces, which are always ultimately millennia old stories about the righteous individual against the mob & the tyrant.

There are some prequels to this in other civilizations but nothing as extensive, and they often have within them ethnocentric and community identity as central themes, like with Esther and Daniel from the Old Testament who stood up against tyranny but were successful and did so as part of a greater struggle for ethnos. Christians record the singular deaths of young women at the hands of their own communities that provide no political change as edifying stories.