Honestly Acknowledging the Foundations of Western Freedom:
The Common Creed of Christianity Includes and Supports The Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy
Intro for Christians: Christian Unity in Diversity
This author (William Baptiste), who has been a university professor teaching the Early Church Fathers, has a scholarly special interest in the Undivided Early Church of the First Millennium, which possessed a marvelous unity in diversity based on Common Faith which understood all Christians are adopted by God into one Christian Family, despite the many differences in worship customs and practices and even theology (different but complementary academic understandings of the Faith) between different Early Eastern and Western Christian “Sister Churches.”
As the original Jewish Christians from Jerusalem spread the Christian Message to the surrounding cultures, they brought about the fulfillment of Scriptural prophecies that the nations to the North, South, East and West of Jerusalem would come to worship the One True God whose Temple was in Jerusalem. Greeks did not cease to be Greeks when they became Christians; Romans did not stop being Romans; Syrians and Egyptians retained their cultural identity. They just became the best Roman, Greeks, Syrians and Egyptians they could be when they became Christians, learning to love every human like God loves them! Christians kept the good or morally neutral aspects of their particular culture and rejected those parts of their culture which were incompatible with Christianity, especially Human Rights abuses such as infanticide, abortion, and murderous bloodsports including gladiatorial fights to the death in the Roman arenas as “entertainment” (throughout history as Christian missions established Christianity in a new culture they would put an end to Human Rights abuses they found in indigenous cultures, like human sacrifices and cannibalism and widow-burning).
Each cultural group renewed in Jesus (or “Sister Church”) brought a different cultural perspective to the Christian Revelation of the Infinite Truth of God revealed in Jesus Christ, and each developed their Christian liturgical and devotional worship customs and academic theology with a different cultural emphasis, complimentary not contradictory. Whenever there was a crisis in the Early Christian Church, the ordained Christian leaders got together in Ecumenical (“worldwide”) Councils of the Christian Church, following the model of the Council of Jerusalem recorded in the Bible (Acts 15), and together sought the Holy Spirit’s guidance which Jesus had promised to settle the crisis. At these early Councils, the Christian leaders from the different Eastern and Western “Sister Churches” with different liturgical rites for worship prayerfully together pooled their resources and shared their different insights in order to settle controversies. This fruitful collaboration demonstrated that “the whole Church is greater than the sum of its parts,” and showed why different human cultures were part of God’s plan from the beginning (in the Bible, God told the first humans to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,” and gave humans different languages at the Tower of Babel to make sure they did so. Different geographic locations and languages guaranteed different human cultures would develop). These different cultures as renewed in Christ Jesus (taking out incompatible elements such as culturally accepted forms of murder) together shared their different cultural insights on the Christian Revelation and together explicitly established in clear doctrinal terms and formulas that which had been at least the implicit way the Church had always understood her own Scriptures; explicating the Christian Faith as passed on at least implicitly from one generation of Christians to the next, against new-fangled notions of heretics in later generations which would have changed the essential character of the Christian Faith.
The Early Ecumenical Councils thus clearly articulated the ancient Christian Faith with theological terms and formulas not explicitly in the Bible in so clear a form, though substantially testified to in the Bible: fundamental Christian terms such as “Trinity,” “Incarnation,” and Jesus "one in being with the Father, “fully God and fully human.” To do this, the Ecumenical Councils through both prayer and scholarship drew from the insights of all the different culturally-based Christian Sister Churches, in order to solve a new explicit question of dispute by determining as far as possible what previously had been at least implicitly held “everywhere, always, and by all” (in Latin ubique, semper, ab omnibus) with respect to the current issue of dispute. For example, to settle the Monophysite controversy against the Monophysite heretics who said Jesus had only one nature, the Divine, and was no longer truly human after the Incarnation, at the 4th Ecumenical Council in 451 AD Roman Pope Leo I (Saint Leo the Great) clarified the essential Christian doctrine that Jesus is fully God and fully human, by drawing from insights from the Early Church’s Antiochian School in Syria which had developed the theology of the true humanity of Jesus, as well as insights from the Early Church’s Alexandrian School in Egypt, which had developed the theology of the true Divinity of Jesus. When Pope Leo’s famous Tome theologically clarifying precisely both the true humanity and true Divinity of Jesus was read in the 451 AD 4th Ecumenical Council, the 618 gathered Christian leaders of East and West immediately recognized that Roman Leo, drawing from the Syrian and Egyptian schools, had solved the Monophysite controversy, and they together cried out “This is the Faith of the Church,” the Faith which had been at least implicitly believed “everywhere, always, and by all,” a Faith now understood more explicitly and clearly (because of having to explain it in the face of new heresies which attempted to answer new questions without sufficient attention paid to how the Church for centuries had at least implicitly handed on its faith from generation to generation of new Christians). In such manner, whenever new-fangled challenges came to the ancient Christian faith, at the Undivided Early Church's Ecumenical Councils the ordained leaders of the different Christian Sister Churches of East and West worked out the difficulty prayerfully and together.
Each Sister Church’s differences were rooted in the response of different cultures to the Christian Gospel. The “Gospel” literally means “Good News” for all humanity, and the Good News of Christianity included the revelation that every human life without exception (regardless of race/ethnicity, social class or status, or gender) is not cheap, to serve a greater State, as was normal in the West and worldwide, but that every human life without exception is equally precious to God and equally loved by God, who created every human life, “male and female,” “in God’s Image,” as is stated in the very first chapter of the Judeo-Christian Bible (Genesis 1:27). As Christians over the centuries gradually came to better and better understand and practice the Christian Revelation themselves, these different Christian “Sister Churches” of East and West (in the First Millennium united in one “Universal” (in Greek, katholikos, or “Catholic” Christian Church) over the centuries gradually transformed the viciously brutal, oppressive and totalitarian ancient pagan Western Civilization to be ever more and more humane, and ever more and more free, based on the below Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy which are included in the below Common Creed of Christianity. Today “Christians” as a group remain by far the largest and most diverse group of human beings on the planet. There are approximately 2.3 billion Christians in the world – at least some from just about every national or racial/ethnic or cultural group or social class or gender, of all abilities and disabilities, simply because Christianity teaches every single human without exception, regardless of race, class, gender, disability or biological disorder (including sex/gender and reproductive disorders) are equally made “in the Image of God” and are equally precious to God, with equal Human Rights not given by any government and not subject to any government legislation, especially the Inherent Human Right to Live. These Christian teachings are the historical and logical foundations of all Western Human Rights and freedoms.
This author in his Ph.D. studies spent considerable time examining the earlier and later factors and misunderstandings influencing the Second Millennium divisions of the Undivided Early Christian Church into 3 major branches (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant/Evangelical) and many more sub-divisions or “denominations,” and came to some very interesting conclusions which will have to be subject of a later book; but for now today’s divided Christians need to work together on the basis of their below articulated vast Common Christian Faith to save Democracy and Religious Freedom for everyone, Christian and not, since Free Democracy itself is today threatened by the recent (in the last decades) Western abandonment of The Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy which Christianity originally introduced into the West.
With today’s “Ecumenical Movement” to help restore the Early Church’s loving unity in diversity among different groups of Christians, many Christians have thankfully overcome (or are in the process of overcoming) their differences so they can work lovingly and fruitfully together on the basis of their vast Common Christian Faith despite their differences; others sadly maintain past misunderstandings and prejudices against each other. All Christians should be reminded:
Jesus’ only explicit command was this: “A new command I give you: Love one another … By this all men will know that you are [Christians], if you love one another” (John 13:34-5). Jesus prayed to His Father “that all [Christians] may be one … so that the world may believe that You have sent me … May [Christians] be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent me and have loved them even as You have loved me.” (John 17:21,23)
Jesus linked the world’s belief in Jesus to our unity as Christians. Unloving Christian disunity ultimately resulted in the marginalization of Christianity in the public sphere (because Christianity was no longer a unifying force in Europe) and now the West cannot even sustain Human Rights and freedoms without their historical and logical foundations in Biblical, Judeo-Christian Pro-Life Family Values. We Christians “dropped the ball” of our Christian calling to be the “salt and light” that preserves and enlightens the greater culture, with our unloving Christian “family feud” of centuries of uncharitable disunity amongst ourselves over our differences which are quite minor compared to our vast Common Christian Faith articulated below (and most, though not quite all, of our differences are of the same sort that did not divide, but mutually enriched the Undivided Early Church). Our long unloving disunity amongst ourselves understandably tarnished the reputation of Christianity, and the whole of Western Civilization is now paying the price, gradually losing its freedom without Free Democracy’s Christian and Pro-Life foundations.
The secularized and “Pro-Choice” West no longer legally recognizes the Inherent Human Right to Live, foundational to Democracy where every human gets a say in their own government; and is now even passing laws making peaceful Pro-Life Human Rights advocacy a crime! It took only 3 weeks to pass such totalitarian-oriented laws where this author lived - and then another province in his country copied these terrible laws in similarly quick order. We can lose our freedom much faster than we think. Some Pro-Lifers have been arrested not for breaking the unjust law against Human Rights advocacy, but just for being “known Pro-Lifers” carrying signs advocating free speech (in Canada’s capital this author gave a eulogy at the funeral of one such elderly Christian martyr for Freedom of Speech on behalf of Human Rights for all humans who died while awaiting unjust trial in 2018). The only reason there have not been more arrests than there have been is because most Christians and Pro-Lifers, who are inclined to be law-abiding, have obeyed totalitarian laws which have no place in a free democracy and given up their usual democratic freedoms of speech, expression, assembly, conscience and religion within these large “no-free-speech-bubble-zones” wherein you can be arrested and jailed just for staring at an abortion clinic because the police made it clear it will be taken as a sign of the “disapproval of abortion” which it is now illegal to show in any fashion anywhere within up to 150 meters (500 feet) of a human-killing abortion facility in Canada’s most populous province of Ontario. In France you can be arrested and jailed and heavily fined for making a Pro-Life website.
Pro-Choice and other “Intellectophobes” fear intelligent and respectful debate they would lose on the basis of facts, so they usually simply label stronger and more educated positions than theirs “phobias” or “hate speech” in an intellectually dishonest attempt to avoid the scientific and logical and factual discussion and argument which they would lose. “Intellectophobia” in government is getting more common. Sometimes using groundless, unsustainable, and ridiculous accusations of irrational “phobias” or “hate” as an excuse, governments are starting to pass laws against free speech of traditional Christian (and scientific) positions just because they cannot win honest, intelligent, respectful arguments to support their unscientific Pro-Choice and other radically anti-traditional new-fangled ideological political policies. Without the Christian and Pro-Life foundation of Western freedom, Western governments are actually starting to end Free Democracy in order to save their Pro-Choice-to-Kill-Humans “abortion access” and their new-fangled unscientific ideologies from the free, intelligent, rational, scientific and rigorously logical dialogue and debate which they would lose on the basis of facts.
To fix this growing travesty of a “post-Christian” and therefore “post-democratic,” once-but-no-longer-free West with less and less freedom of speech, and to preserve religious freedom and democracy for everyone, including ourselves, we Christians are obligated to work together as loving brothers and sisters in God’s adopted Family despite our disagreements (and what family does not have these?). Especially since, as this author’s books show, all the most pertinent facts of Human Rights History, Science, and Logic are on our side, and prove that modern Human Rights, International Law, Democracy, and even modern Science itself depend historically and logically on Biblical, Judeo-Christian First Principles developed mostly by Christians throughout Western Christian History, there is every reason to believe that ending human-killing abortion and preserving religious freedom for all from the current worldwide anti-Christian and anti-democratic trends of ‘Creeping Totalitarianism’ can be the first big victory of Christians working together in family love despite our differences and disagreements, on the basis of our vast common faith described below (which includes The Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy).
2.3 Billion Christians: Largest & most diverse group on Earth since teaches EQUAL HUMAN PRECIOUSNESS
The Common Creed of Christianity :
10 Articles of Common, Traditional Christian Faith Describing The Vast Common Beliefs of (Eastern & Western) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and (Western) Conservative/ Evangelical Protestant Christianity (and ‘Messianic Judaism’)
(On the Basis of this Common Christian Faith Christians can most credibly & effectively together guide Western Civilization into not losing its Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms which depend historically & logically on Biblical, Judeo-Christian principles)
The Common Creed of Christianity
Most Eastern & Western Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant/Evangelical) Agree on This
While the precise wording or academic theology varies among Christian denominations and schools, in essence most Christians are united in the following tenets of the Core Christian Faith or “Common Creed” of Christianity, which are usually either assumed by most Christians or referred to explicitly in some form in most ancient and most modern Christian “Creeds” or “Statements of Faith.” (William Baptiste has been refining this "Common Creed" based on much ecumenical Christian experience since 2005).
In William Baptiste's book KILLING HUMANS IS WRONG The 10 Articles of Common Christian Faith or the “Common Creed of Christianity” below are enhanced with pages of Historical Notes and gloss which more fully bring out the vast contribution of Traditional Christianity to Modern Human Rights and Freedoms (and Science). Some BONUS material from that book is included in the below Internet presentation of The Common Creed of Christianity.
Traditional Christians-(East/West) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, (West) Protestant/Evangelical believe
1. The One God, Creator and Orderer of the Universe, who “is Love” (1 John 4:8, 16), mysteriously (beyond merely human comprehension) exists as a Trinity of Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Note that “God is Love” is the ultimate foundation of the below Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy which Christianity introduced into the West. Note that the universe being created and ordered by an intelligent orderer, and not ultimately random and undirected, is the starting point and First Principles of all Western Science. The ancient Greeks acknowledged as the first scientists got this key notion of the universe as an ordered cosmos (not random chaos) from their exposure to the Jewish Bible (Christian Old Testament). Modern Science was logically built upon these Biblical First Principles by Christians who developed the Pure Sciences and the Modern Scientific Method in the Christian universities of Christian Europe, the world’s first stable long-term community of scientific scholars.)
Traditional Christians-(East/West) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, (West) Protestant/Evangelical believe
2. God created humanity, both “male and female,” “in the Image of God” (Genesis 1:27, from the very first chapter in the Bible). (Note this is the origin of the Equal Human Preciousness which grounds Human Rights and Democracy.)
BONUS Historical note from KILLING HUMANS IS WRONG:
This is why ancient Biblical Judaism never practiced the infanticide-killing of baby girls which was common throughout the ancient world surrounding it; nor practiced the human sacrifice of babies common in nearby cultures - every human life, male or female or very young, has the immense and equal dignity of being made “in the Image of God.” This is also why humans since Christianity was adopted by the West are called valuable persons with rights; God was called “Three Persons” before humans were called “persons,” and thereby considered precious not cheap. Christianity made cheap not precious humans who served greater States into precious not cheap PERSONS with inherent rights that State governments were obligated to protect. Just 5 years after the 313 AD Edict of Milan ended centuries of the killing of Christians by the government, the Inherent Human Right to Live was first effectively legally recognized in 318 AD, with the original criminalization of abortion and infanticide BECAUSE Christianity then taught the West that killing humans is wrong and that governments are obligated to protect human lives which are precious not cheap.
Traditional Christians-(East/West) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, (West) Protestant/Evangelical believe
3. God created humanity “in God’s Image” intending to have a loving family relationship with humans described in the Bible as adoption (Romans 8:15), such that 1) every human life without exception is supremely and equally precious to God and therefore 2) all humans must be FREE from all government coercion in matters of belief/thought/religion/speech in order that they may FREELY seek and hopefully hear and find this wonderful truth about human existence, that humans are equally precious to God. (Note these two “Pro-Life” principles Christianity introduced into the West are The Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy which are the implicit underlying historical and logical foundations of all modern Human Rights, International Law, and Democratic Freedoms, which understandably developed only in the traditionally Christian West. Note that personhood, charity, hospitals and universities were all developed by Christians for the purpose of expressing or serving the vast dignity of humans made “in the Image of God.”)
BONUS Historical note from KILLING HUMANS IS WRONG:
Before Christianity introduced these principles to the West it was NORMAL for governments to be oppressive and totalitarian and decide the range of what citizens may or may not believe– and even which humans were citizens with any rights at all (rights which the government chose to give full citizens, which did not inhere in them). Inherent Human Rights governments were accountable - to something higher than the government - to protect were unheard of. Parents could abort their children, leave them to die after birth (infanticide), or even sell their own children into slavery (and governments could enslave or kill humans at whim) because there were no Human Rights. Female humans in particular were commonly killed by infanticide just for being females and so “less valuable.” Christians entered this environment and treated all humans (regardless of social class, race, gender, abilities or disabilities, the latter of which they served and helped) as equally precious to God. The numbers of Christians grew exponentially even while the government persecuted Christians violently, because of the unprecedented loving care Christians would show to all humans, for example by taking care of sick pagans during a plague. Christians also insisted humans had an unheard-of religious freedom from God who gave humans Free Will, meaning both that humans MUST be FREE to become Christians, but also that Christianity could not be forced on anyone. When a Christian Roman Emperor massacred revolting pagans, the local Christian Overseer/Bishop (Saint Ambrose, who baptized the famous Saint Augustine) excommunicated the Emperor for 8 months until he changed the law to protect all humans (pagans as well as Christians) from rash killing by the government, the government which had previously for centuries been used to having nearly unqualified power of life and death over the humans it governed.
Christians invented hospitals and universities, and to this day Christian missionaries and religious orders provide free healthcare and education wherever possible to as many humans as possible, as most appropriate to the vast dignity of precious human beings made in God’s Image. Note that all later incidences of the slavery common before Christianity were continuations of pre-Christian norms and failures to enact Christian principles – failures corrected by devout Christians like William Wilberforce ending slavery in the British Empire and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. leading the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. In fact, most social ills common after the advent of Christianity even to today – including racial prejudice or gender inequity, or ambitious politicians starting wars to increase their influence – were simply continuations of pre-Christian norms – incidences of where Christian principles had not or have not yet been put into good practice (remember that despite Christianity still being imperfectly practiced, there is still no larger, more inclusive and caring group on the planet than Christians, because Christians believe every human without exception is equally precious, and created specifically in order to be adopted into God's loving Family, though humans have to freely accept this adoption, the sign of which is Christian Baptism). Most of the greatest social reformers of history were specifically devout Christians seeking to have Christian principles better put into practice in their time and place, or at least non-Christians very familiar with and heavily influenced by the Bible and Christianity (like Gandhi; and like Abraham Lincoln, freer of the American slaves, whose wife and others testified he intended to be baptized Christian before he was assassinated – after many years of attending Christian churches with his wife and absorbing Christian teaching and values like equal human preciousness!). All of the fathers and founders of International Law to protect the dignity and rights and property of humans worldwide, Christian or not, were likewise devout Christians seeking to put Christian principles into practice (and even the founders of modern Science in the Christian universities of Christian Europe were devout Christians working from Biblical, Judeo-Christian First Principles and worldview – see more below).
Traditional Christians-(East/West) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, (West) Protestant/Evangelical believe
4. Humanity lost its original relationship with God, the Creator who Is Love, through sin (anti-love), but God so loved humanity that He made reconciliation possible through the Incarnation (enfleshment) of God the Son in Jesus Christ through Mary’s Virgin Birth, making Jesus fully God and fully human, able to make Atonement for the sins of all humanity, which He did by dying on the Cross and rising from the dead so that humanity can be forgiven and saved (and find human fulfillment) through Jesus Christ.
Traditional Christians-(East/West) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, (West) Protestant/Evangelical believe
5. We humans acquire this forgiveness from sin and salvation unto eternal life through, drawn and empowered by God’s Grace, our turning away from sin (anti-love), accepting what Jesus has done for us and coming into loving, saving relationship with Jesus (and His Father and His Holy Spirit) through belief and baptism, as Jesus taught (Mark 16:16: “whoever believes and is baptized will be saved”). Those who “believe and are baptized” become supernaturally adopted children of God and members of the one Body of Christ the Church (which may be described as God’s adopted family, both on Earth and continuing in Heaven).
Traditional Christians-(East/West) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, (West) Protestant/Evangelical believe
6. In Jesus’ literal Resurrection from the dead and Ascension into Heaven.
Traditional Christians-(East/West) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, (West) Protestant/Evangelical believe
7. In Jesus’ future return in glory and judgement and the bodily resurrection of all the dead
Traditional Christians-(East/West) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, (West) Protestant/Evangelical believe
8. In the tenets of traditional (Judeo-)Christian morality (“You shall not kill;” nor steal, lie, Covet, commit adultery etc.; described more thoroughly in the 10 Commandments and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, among other passages of Scripture) as how to be loving and so how to please the God who is Love (thus demonstrating practically that despite our human weaknesses we are childrenof the God who Is Love, in a gradual lifelong process of growth in maturity in love which may be called Sanctification or growth in holiness; a growth process which Individual Christians engage in according to their capacity and motivation but with access to God’s empowering Grace to assist them to do better).
Traditional Christians-(East/West) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, (West) Protestant/Evangelical believe
9. In the logical and loving limits of traditional Biblical, Judeo-Christian sexual morality with its Pro-Life Family Values which undergird Free Democracy and also best serve the scientific, biological needs of the human species: sex sensibly reserved for lifetime loving marriage between an adult human male and female who are naturally emotionally bonded by their sexual union to form a stable human family in which they as mother and father (a female and male role model) raise the human children naturally produced by their sexual union to emotionally and physically healthy human maturity in loving human families which are the building blocks of loving human societies. This Biblical sexual morality is essential to Human Rights: History demonstrates that only if the sexual process is thus considered precious not cheap are the humans produced by that process considered precious not cheap. (Preciously made humans of the Christian West that believe sex is precious not cheap, and reserved for marriage, gradually but logically developed Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms appropriate to their equal human preciousness which is championed today by the Pro-Life Movement; while cheap humans cheaply made by cheap “sex for pleasure” (instead of precious and exalted “sex for marriage”) can be legally killed and typically serve a greater, totalitarian State, as in the ancient pre-Christian West which was typified by unrestricted sexual practices, Pro-Choice Legal Abortion to kill the unwanted humans produced by immaturely and irresponsibly engaging in nature’s way of generating new humans without any intention of doing so; and totalitarian State government which held the power of life and death over humans who were considered cheap not precious just as the sexual process which produces humans was considered cheap not precious. Today’s Pro-Choice ‘Creeping Totalitarianism’ undermining Free Democracy is specifically rooted in the return of unrestricted, immature and irresponsible sexual practices since the 1960s Sexual Revolution; which created demand for the return of Legal Abortion to kill the unwanted humans produced by immaturely and irresponsibly engaging in nature’s way of generating new humans without any intention of doing so; Legal Abortion legally eradicated the Inherent Human Right to Live which is the historical and logical foundation of all the Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms which developed only in the Christian West since the 318 AD criminalization of abortion due to Christian influence; thus today, officially Pro-Choice political parties in power, specifically to support “abortion access” without anyone complaining about humans being killed, have been passing anti-democratic laws and policies taking away normal democratic freedoms of speech, expression, assembly, conscience and religion of peaceful Pro-Life Human Rights Advocates and of Pro-Life doctors who follow the ancient non-killing Hippocratic Medical Tradition that doctors do not kill. The return of ancient, pre-Christian unrestricted sexual practices in the Sexual Revolution brought the return of ancient, pre-Christian Pro-Choice Legal Abortion, which is now in the process of bringing the return of ancient, pre-Christian totalitarian Pro-Choice government. Legal human-killing abortion throughout history has always gone hand-in-hand with totalitarian government, specifically because if humans do not even have a legally recognized Inherent Human Right to Live because they can be legally killed by abortion, there is no compelling reason for governments to recognize a right to vote, or to speak freely, or any other rights. It was specifically the oppressive totalitarian Extremist Left Atheist Soviet Communist Party which was the first political party in modern times to legalize abortion – followed by the oppressive totalitarian Extremist Right German Nazi Party. Both parties despised Democracy and did not believe that killing humans is wrong. Of course, any legal human-killing such as abortion and euthanasia (the Nazis were the first to legalize both) is inherently politically extremist and depends on the rejection of the Pro-Life Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy which Christianity introduced into the West).
BONUS from William Baptiste's book DEMOCRACY 101: A Voter’s and Politician’s Manual for LASTING Democracy :
. . . sex which generates human beings is so powerful that any human society’s guiding attitude towards sex determines our human destiny as either valuable persons to be protected or as tools to be used and thrown away; if sex is primarily for recreational pleasure (as the new Ontario Sexual Education curriculum teaches young children in Canada’s most populous province) then other humans are sex objects or tools to be used for our pleasure, the humans produced by sex can be killed by abortion as unwanted tools, and when human tools no longer serve the State/society the State sanctions their killing by euthanasia (and shames them into asking for it in “assisted suicide”) as worn-out tools to be thrown away; but if sex is primarily for lifelong-committed loving marriages naturally generating new precious humans in stable loving families (the building blocks of stable loving societies), then humans are always valuable persons who must never be mere tools for others’ sexual pleasure nor mere tools serving a greater State/society, but rather the State is always obligated to protect and serve precious human persons, which is the necessary foundation for the Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms which only ever developed in Western Christian Civilization which lived by this traditional Judeo-Christian sexual ethic and traditional Family Values. So ironically, what the “Sexual Revolution” called the “sexual repression” of the traditional, Christian sexual ethic is what brought real freedom to unrestrictedly sexual but totalitarian Western Society starting in the 4th Century, and what the “Sexual Revolution” called “sexual freedom” is what is bringing back the real repression of the ultimately totalitarian or ‘Creeping Totalitarian’ Pro-Choice philosophy which contradicts the primary human right to live upon which all Human Rights and Democracy depends. So-called Christian “sexual repression” directing sexuality into mature committed loving marriage and family life brought actual freedom into Western Civilization; and so-called “sexual freedom” for immature sexual pleasure-seeking is bringing back actual repression with the compromise of Human Rights and Freedoms for the sake of being able to legally kill the unwanted humans produced by sexual pleasure-seeking and restricting the democratic freedoms of those medical professionals and other Pro-Life Human Rights advocates who would defend human lives because human lives are always precious. Remember, this author can be arrested and jailed in his country just for “staring disapprovingly” at an abortion clinic; or just for saying “killing humans is wrong because Human Rights are for all humans” or just for speaking verifiable scientific and medical facts about abortion anywhere near a human-killing abortion clinic; normal democratic freedoms of speech, expression, assembly, conscience and religion are being taken away by Pro-Choice political parties in power, simply because they cannot win any intelligent nor intellectually honest Abortion Debate (Human Rights for All Humans Debate), and so ending free speech (and ultimately ending Free Democracy) is the only way they can keep human-killing abortion legal long-term.
In summary . . . a low, cheap view of sex as merely for recreation and pleasure logically cheapens the human lives which are naturally generated or produced only by sex. This cheap view of sex primarily for pleasure means other humans are tools “for what they can do for me,” not precious persons always to be supremely respected and protected. And it logically follows, as our current Western society with its increasingly unrestricted sexuality proves, that unwanted human tools produced by “sex for pleasure” can be legally thrown away (killed) by abortion, and old and worn out human out tools can be legally thrown away (killed) by euthanasia/“assisted suicide,” since they can no longer be used by the State/society, and a tool is only valuable if it can be used. It further logically follows eventually that there is no reason to give every human life, being so cheap, a vote or democratic say in his or her own governance, which is why democratic freedoms are already currently being restricted precisely to ensure access to abortion without medical professionals and others effectively objecting to killing humans (who no longer have guaranteed Human Rights), and ultimately this ensures the immature “sex for pleasure not mature, loving family life” low, cheap view of sex continues, at the expense of genuine Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms.
In contrast, a high, exalted view of sex as for lifelong committed loving marriage naturally producing through sex the next generation of humans and providing for them a loving family environment in which to grow to maturity in love themselves, exalts the human lives which are naturally produced only by sex into precious human persons who must never be viewed as mere tools to be used, either by their partners, their families or the State/society, and who must always be protected because of their immense human value. This high view of “sex for committed loving marriage and family life” gives the human products of sex an exalted human personhood which gives them not only guaranteed Human Rights but the great human dignity of it being appropriate to give each human a democratic say in his or her own governance. Traditional Western, Biblical, Judeo-Christian, Pro-Life Family Values are essentially intertwined with and supportive of The Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy.
Traditional Christians-(East/West) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, (West) Protestant/Evangelical believe
10. In the inspiration and inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures (the Bible) which testify to all these things.
(Note it is especially reasonable for Christians to believe this, because all modern Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms, and all modern Science and Technology, are historically and logically built upon enlightened First Principles which the West learned from the Judeo-Christian Bible. Modern Science and the Modern Scientific Method were pioneered specifically by Christian religious believers in the Christian universities of Christian Europe, the world’s first ongoing stable community of scientific scholars, the premier figures of “the Scientific Revolution” being particularly devout Christians who developed Modern Science and the Modern Scientific Method logically upon Biblical First Principles such as the universe being an ordered cosmos – with an Intelligent Orderer or Creator God – and not an ultimately random, undirected chaos. Modern Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms and International Law to protect humans wherever they are also developed only in Western Christian Civilization, primarily developed by devout Christian social reformers seeking to have Christian principles like equal human preciousness governments are obligated to protect and the Inherent Human Right to Live better put into practice in human societies. Christian principles which are rooted in the Bible’s testimony that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8) and so “You shall not kill” (Exodus 20:13) because humans, “male and female,” are made equally “in the Image of God” (Genesis 1:27).)
BONUS Historical note from KILLING HUMANS IS WRONG:
In the 19th Century, Liberal Protestant Christianity questioned whether the Bible was wholly inspired by God and incapable of error (or inerrant), as traditionally affirmed, on the basis of some seeming contradictions between the Bible and science or history. Some late 19thCentury Catholic “modernist” scholars took up these Liberal Protestant objections to the Bible’s inerrancy and so Biblical inerrancy was soundly reaffirmed for all Catholic Christians by Pope Leo XIII in 1893. A helpful ancient Christian principle is that Scripture is without error in all it intentionally affirms. Some critics of the Bible accuse the Bible of making errors in science. Though Scripture may occasionally incidentally use “scientific” terms common to the (ancient) period in which it was written which were necessary for the original readers’ comprehension, in such cases the Scripture, a religious text, no more intends to affirm a scientific truth than a newspaper which declares what time the sunrise will be intends to affirm that the sun moves around the Earth and is therefore said to “rise.” The pre-Copernican terms of sunrise and sunset remain today in common usage because they usefully describe the appearance of things relative to our Earth-bound position, even though they do not describe the now well-known scientific reality that the Earth moves around the sun and the sun is technically not “rising” at all. Making use of common terms is not an error. Other seeming problems with the Bible’s inerrancy disappear once one recognizes the literary form or genre a particular Bible passage was written in, and in many instances, later historical or archeological finds have proven the Bible historically accurate in places where critics had previously accused the Bible of being historically inaccurate.
Furthermore, this author’s books have demonstrated that the Judeo-Christian Bible is the ultimate source of not only The Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy(devout Christians, some Catholic, some Protestant, being the founders of International Law that protects Human Rights even outside of the Christian West where Human Rights developed), but also the ultimate source of the underlying “First Principles” and philosophical starting point of all Western Logic, Science, and Technology, which all depend on the universe being an ordered cosmos (with an Intelligent Orderer) and NOT an ultimately random, undirected chaos. This is why the Pure Sciences and the Modern Scientific Method developed nowhere else in the world but at the Christian Universities of Christian Europe (the modern University System itself was literally invented by Christians and literally grew out of the Medieval Cathedral Schools, rooted in the ancient Judeo-Christian emphasis on the scholarly search for truth in all its forms). This is why the major figures of the Scientific Revolution were all devout Christians (some Catholic, some Protestant), operating from a basic Biblical, Judeo-Christian worldview of the nature of the universe and proceeding from Biblical First Principles of the ordered cosmos which the ancient Greeks of the Socratic School, generally recognized as the first scientists, had been earlier exposed to.
The ancient Greeks loved Wisdom; the Hebrew/Jewish culture was much older than the Greek culture, and the Biblical Jewish King Solomon’s wisdom was legendary, so the Greeks made sure they knew the Jewish Bible, which is the Christian Bible’s Old Testament, and they absorbed the Bible’s clear sense of the universe as an ordered cosmos not a random chaos in order to begin the discipline of Science. The Bible which Traditional Christians hold to be inerrant is demonstrably the cradle of the West’s highest achievements and highest values – the source of the West’s prolific and practical Science and Technology and the source of its wonderful Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms. Even Einstein, whose name has become synonymous with Science, confirmed, “the highest principles for our aspirations and judgements are given to us in the Jewish-Christian Religious Tradition.”
Conclusion: These 10 Articles of Common Christian Faith entering the West with the 1st Century advent of Christianity and embraced by the West starting in the 4th Century gave individual humans the means to their greatest possible human fulfillment and happiness in Family Love both on Earth and eternally in Heaven; and gave human societies the Foundations for Modern Human Rights, Modern International Law, and Modern Democracy - and even Modern Science, developed in the Christian universities of Christian Europe from Biblical First Principles (even Modern Science depends historically and logically on the universe being an ordered cosmos with an intelligent orderer as in Article 1 above, and not a random, undirected chaos!). The vast, practical fruitfulness of this Common Christian Faith for humans individually and collectively is WHY Christians today are by far the largest and most diverse group of humans on the planet, with 2.3 billion Christians who come from nearly every other group of humans, Christians found among nearly every national/racial/ethnic/cultural group, social class, gender and ability or disability. The surest path to the destruction of Free Democracy which was historically and logically built upon the above Christian and Pro-Life principles is the current and growing Pro-Choice and anti-Christian bigotry and illogical “Bulverism” that dismisses Christian ideas out-of-hand as “having no place in the public sphere” when in fact Christian Pro-Life Family Values include and support the absolutely essential Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy (and when in fact the Modern University System itself grew out of the Judeo-Christian scholarly pursuit of the Honest Truth in all its forms). Continued lack of respect for Christianity as the source of these democratic foundations (while continuing to follow the evil totalitarian Soviet and Nazi precedent of de-criminalized human-killing abortion) is the surest way to ultimately end Free Democracy.
Christianity Must Be at Least RESPECTED as The SOURCE of Western Freedom in LASTING Democracies
This above Common Creed of Christianity arranged in 10 Articles of Common Christian Faith shared by today's divided (Eastern and Western) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and (Western) Protestant/Evangelical Christian Churches, emphasizing the Christian origin of The Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy, encapsulates the essential or fundamental Christian teaching of the early Christian Creeds as confirmed by the early Ecumenical (worldwide) and other major Councils of the Undivided Early Christian Church (of East and West).
Christians know that Jesus intended His Church to be one loving family of God on Earth (a family continuing eternally in Heaven), and so they generally recognize that the divisions among Christians on Earth which since arose in history are a scandal that should be corrected – either by gradually (no rush!) seeking eventual full structural Christian unity in diversity as in the Undivided Early Church of the First Millennium, or at least some kind of “unity in love” based on common faith despite disagreements past and present on lesser points of doctrine. A traditional way of expressing this is some variation of “in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, diversity; in all things, charity.” Charity is from the Latin caritas, translating the New Testament Greek word agape, which Christians interpret as the Divine, unconditional, self-giving Love of God. This is a traditional expression of the ideal of Christian unity in diversity even among historically divided Christians, based on God’s Love (and on our common adoption by the God of Love which makes Christians family despite our disagreements – and after all, what family does not have any disagreements?). Thus, today many Christians still seek at least a visible, tangible “unity in love” that allows Christians to credibly present a united front to the greater culture despite their current structural divisions rooted in long-past history . . .
Note that this above Common Creed in addition to capturing the essence of the ancient Creeds still used by the older [Catholic and Orthodox] Christian communions also encapsulates all the details of the early 20th Century “Fundamentals” tract series which began the Protestant Fundamentalist movement, as well as common details usually included in the many conservative and Evangelical Protestant creedal “statements of faith.”
The early 20th Century Protestant Fundamentalist and Evangelical movements were “doctrinally conservative,” orthodox responses to the huge “doctrinally liberal” or unorthodox trend within the earlier Protestant “mainline” churches. Those Protestant “mainline” denominations and congregations which are going increasingly “doctrinally liberal” or unorthodox may or may not still preserve with certainty all these above ancient fundamental beliefs of orthodox Christianity. Orthodoxy means “right teaching,” as opposed to unorthodox or heretical teaching, including the moral heresy of parroting the secular society’s “Pro-Choice abortion” values, making such unorthodox Protestant Christian denominations useless for preserving Western Human Rights and democratic freedoms which are grounded in Traditional, fundamentally orthodox Christianity with its “Pro-Life” principles (still held by Catholic, Orthodox, and Conservative/Evangelical Protestant Christians).
Christian Unity in Diversity
Today’s Catholic Communion of 26 Eastern and Western Christian Rites or ‘Sister Churches’ and today’s Eastern Orthodox Communion of 16 Eastern Christian ‘Sister Churches’ share with the tens of thousands of (Western) Conservative/Evangelical Protestant Christian Church Denominations (and with ‘Messianic Jews’) belief in the above Common Creed of Christianity which includes and supports The Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy) . . .[these] are the wonderful, life-changing, saving truths of Christianity which “turned the world upside down” in barbaric times and transformed the ancient world with God’s Love, laying the historical and logical foundations for all the later Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms which developed nowhere else in the world but in Western Christian Civilization – common truths which still make Catholic, Orthodox, and Conservative/Evangelical Protestant Christians (and “Messianic Jews”) brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus and most certainly instruments of God’s salvation in the world (despite our misunderstandings and disagreements) . . . On the basis of this above vast common faith identified in The Common Creed of Christianity, currently divided Christians must work together in family love to preserve human life, religious freedom, and democracy itself which are all literally built on Christian principles and which are all seriously threatened since Christianity was rejected as Western Society’s moral guide.
Ecumenical Movement to Restore Christian Unity in Diversity
Today’s “Ecumenical Movement” to restore some level of brotherly and sisterly loving Christian unity in diversity among today’s divided Christians refers back to the Undivided Early Church’s worldwide or “ecumenical” gatherings of the ordained Christian leaders from different Eastern and Western cultural ‘Sister Churches’ throughout the ancient world, known as the early Ecumenical Councils. These Early Ecumenical Councils (and the “Nicene Creed” produced in its current form at the first two Ecumenical Councils held in 325 and 381 AD; the 325 AD Council Fathers still bearing scars and missing body parts from the last Great Persecution under Roman Emperor Diocletian) are recognized as having established the irrevocable norms of the Christian Faith by most Christians, including the two oldest and largest communions of today’s Christians, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.
(Historical Note: The Catholic Church today is made up of 26 Western and Eastern cultural Rites or ‘Sister Churches’ or Patriarchates united under the Head Pastorship of the Pope - the (Western) Roman Catholic Church which (Western) Protestant Christians left in the 16th Century is only the largest of these; the Eastern Orthodox Church today is made up of 16 ‘Sister Churches’ or Patriarchates more loosely united in the very beautiful ancient Byzantine/Greek Rite Christian worship. All these Eastern and Western ‘Sister Churches’ were together one Catholic (Greek for Universal) Christian Church before the 2nd Millennium. In the hopes of eventually healing the first “Great Schism” of Christianity which in the Second Millennium split the First Millennium Christian Church with its “unity in diversity” into a “unity equals uniformity” separated Eastern Orthodox Church and a mostly Western, Roman Catholic Church (though some Eastern Churches remained in the Catholic Communion); and in the hopes of setting a good precedent for future Christian reunifications, since 1958 the two oldest and largest Christian Communions, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, have been involved in an informal “Dialogue of Love.” In 1982 this spawned an ongoing “Official Theological Dialogue” to work out differences with the express purpose of (in the long term – no rush!) restoring the united First Millennium Catholic (Greek for Universal) Communion of DIFFERENT Orthodox (“right-teaching,” non-heretical) Christian ‘Sister Churches’ of both East and West. But even while still formally separated by past history and ongoing disagreement on some lesser points of doctrine, today’s Catholic Communion of 26 Eastern and Western Christian Rites or ‘Sister Churches’ and today’s Eastern Orthodox Communion of 16 Eastern Christian ‘Sister Churches’ share with the tens of thousands of (Western) Conservative/Evangelical Protestant Christian Church Denominations (and even with ‘Messianic Jews’) belief in the above Common Creed of Christianity which includes and supports The Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy).
The above common Christian beliefs are the wonderful, life-changing, saving truths of Christianity which “turned the world upside down” in barbaric times and transformed the ancient world with God’s Love, laying the historical and logical foundations for all the later Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms which developed nowhere else in the world but in Western Christian Civilization – common truths which still make Catholic, Orthodox, and Conservative/Evangelical Protestant Christians (and “Messianic Jews” or “Hebrew Catholics” – ethnic Jews who accept Jesus as Israel’s prophesied Messiah) brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus and most certainly instruments of God’s salvation in the world (despite our misunderstandings and disagreements over some of our different secondary doctrines, differences which each side sees in the light of the above common fundamentals we are already agreed on, meaning our differences are never as big as they seem). This vast Common Core Christian Faith must be acknowledged before we divided Christians ever discuss our differences, so we may discuss them fruitfully in family love (“affirming together” our vast common faith, and “contending together” over our disagreements, until loving Christian Family resolutions for significant differences can be found, as it says in the Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) Accords. But most of the differences between Evangelical and Catholic and Orthodox Christians are of the sort which mutually enriched, and did not divide the different Early Christian ‘Sister Churches’ of East and West).
On the basis of this above vast common faith identified in The Common Creed of Christianity, currently divided Christians must work together in family love to preserve human life, religious freedom, and democracy itself which are all literally built on Christian principles and which are all seriously threatened since Christianity was rejected as Western Society’s moral guide.
This above Common Creed of Christianity in 10 Articles of Common Christian Faith encapsulates the core of the Gift of Truth which Christians believe God gave to the world of humanity for its salvation (salvation from the selfish anti-love called sin, which breaks a human being’s relationship not only with other humans but with God the Creator, Who is Love – for much more on this see the chapter The Christian Gospel (“Good News” for Humanity) is the Foundation of The Foundational Principles of Human Rights and Democracy in the author’s book Killing Humans Is Wrong).
The “Good News” of the Christian Gospel is God is Love and Created Humans Equally Precious to God Who Desires to Adopt Each Human into God’s Eternal Family, and through Jesus Christ Made a Way for Humans to Overcome the “Anti-Love” of Selfish Sin (and its consequences) and Learn to Love Like God Loves
Also “Good News”: When Human Societies and Governments Order Themselves According to Biblical, Judeo-Christian Principles Like Equal Human Preciousness and the Inherent Human Right to Live and Recognize (without compromises like abortion) that Killing Humans Is Wrong in Obedience to God’s Law “You Shall Not Kill,” Human Rights and Freedoms for All (Christian or Not) in Human Societies Is the Natural Result, and Totalitarianism Becomes Unthinkable.
Western Pope & Eastern Patriarch embrace in Jerusalem 1964 to start healing the 1054 "Great Schism"