I don’t know of any countries in Central or South America which were not founded by Christians, and which are not now mostly Christian (and mostly Catholic, to boot). Yet, socialism, fascism, and corruption have been the norm for many of these countries.
Russia caused a lot of that during the Cold War, funding rebellions to overthrow the legitimate governments and replace them with socialist regimes subservient to Moscow. Then the USSR drained them of resources, leaving a lot of the bad economic circumstances that exist today.
Europe is hardly immune. Germany was a heavily Christian area (the so-called Holy Roman Empire was German, not Roman). But along came Hitler.
Good point.
By the way, a lot more Lutherans supported Hitler than Catholics, and part of the reason for this is that Martin Luther himself was a virulent Anti-Semite who called for the destruction of the Jews.
Italy, the land in which the See of Peter was established, aligned with Hitler.
Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews and create a World War weren’t publicly known at the beginning of the conflict. Lots of famous non-Italians, including Winston Churchill and Gandhi, spoke well of Mussolini during his rise to power.
The Italians ended up rebelling against Mussolini and deposing him, together with the Allied invasion.
When Christians have risen up against an oppressive government, the results are hardly assured to be favorable to the Church (the French Revolution comes especially to mind, as do many South American revolutions - and, lets not forget Cuba). These revolutions have often been led by atheists (such as Che Guevara in Cuba), but the ordinary citizens who backed them (and gave them their power) were overwhelmingly Christian.
I haven’t researched the South American revolutions and so couldn’t comment on them. The Church did not support the French Revolution, though. The French Revolution was radically Anti-Catholic.
I certainly don’t believe that Christians rising up in violent rebellion is a good thing, though, and I agree that it often has bad results. Violent rebellion, even when one has legitimate grievances, is extremely contradictory both to the example Jesus Christ gave us and the example the Early Church gave under Roman persecution.
Also, if one looks at the roots of many of our modern freedoms, one will see that many of them sprang from the political turmoil of the religious wars and the Enlightenment. So I agree with your overall point that many of today’s modern freedoms didn’t come from our religion.
