No, the Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity to be the state religion in 380.
The Goths and Vandals were also Christian.
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But I agree that Christianity weakened the Western Empire.
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Tours, Lepanto, Vienna, yes.
Lepanto was organized by Pope Pius V. It included the ships of the appalling Philip II of Spain (Bloody Mary’s husband). But still it is good that the Christian side won.
However, the allied soldiers who fell in the world wars of the twentieth century were not fighting as Christians (though they mostly were, at least nominally). They fought as defenders of their nations against aggressors who were also mainly Christians (at least nominally) but were also not fighting to defend or spread Christianity. True, one of the aggressor armies - Ottoman Turkish - was Muslim, but they were not fighting to spread Islam.
No allied soldiers died fighting against the Soviet Union. There was no such war. But many did die in wars against Communist forces that were Soviet proxies (Korea, Vietnam).
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There is a case to be made that there would be no Islam if there had been no Christianity.
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I take as a starting position that anyone who thwarts Islamic expansion warrants attention and gratitude. Lepanto was one of those battles. The Battle of Vienna was another. The Battle of Tours stopped Islamic spread into France until the 20th Century. It is true that the Ottoman Empire was past its expansionist triumphs into the Balkans and Eastern Europe. But anyone who diminishes Islamic power anywhere is on the good side.
It is true that although WWI and II were not primarily wars against Islam, they were epic battles in defence of the best of our Civilization.to be sure. They were fought primarily by Christian men. True, they were not fighting as Christian Crusaders. It is also true that the Nazi soldiers prayed to the same Christian God and wore the motto Gott mit Uns on their belts.
There was no hot war that crippled the Soviet Union, but there was a Cold War. One could plausibly argue that the demise of this communist Leviathan was aided and hastened by the efforts of three Christians - Reagan, Thatcher, and the Pope.
I am certainly no defender of Christianity, but it is undeniable that Christian men were staunch guardians of our Civilization by confronting the major threats of Islam, Nazism, and Communism. Alas, recent history is demonstrating that these battles may have been fought in vain.
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There is also a case to be made that there would be no Christianity if there were no Judaism. Christopher Hitchens, I believe, said somewhere that this is why he didn’t celebrate Chanukah!
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I found the link to Hitchens:
This is Hitchens at his best—uncompromisingly irreligious, mixed with Voltairean wit.
Damn, I miss the man.
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Christopher Hitchens was a witty iconoclast, a brilliant mocker. He hated being Jewish. He claimed that he did not know until late in his life that his mother was Jewish. (Strange, because his brother Peter knew.) The article you link to, Cogito, displays his bitter hatred. He angrily mocks not just the religion of the Jews but a triumph of their history - the Maccabees’ defeat of the overwhelmingly bigger army of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. (The Greek king of Syria, who tried, with extreme cruelty, to force the Judeans to worship Zeus.)
The quarrel among the Jews between the traditionalists and the Hellenizers was critical in the history of the Jewish people. It seems to be a quarrel that will not die.
I admire the Epicureans. I like their philosophy and their (euphemistically expressed) atheism.
I also greatly like much of the Jewish bible in its King James translation. I think of it as literature, not holy writ.
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Yes, certainly some Christians have made vital non-religious contributions to our civilization. Your view is that therefore we owe gratitude to Christianity.
We could make a list of Jews who have made vital non-religious contributions to our civilization. Does that mean we owe gratitude to Judaism?
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Thanks for posting Hitchen’s article!
I think he makes a good point that history would have been much less “retarded” if Greek philosophy, science and reason had won out over superstition and religious belief before any of the three major religions, and the religious wars they spawned, had a chance to gain momentum.
Although the Jews were heroic for defending themselves against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, as Jillian points out, it appears that if not for his aggression, a gradual “Hellenization” of the Jews might have triumphed, and saved the world from the advent of Christianity and Islam. Who knows?
At the same time, I agree with Pat Condell, in a video I recall, that it’s stupid of secular leftists to condemn and prohibit Christmas displays - he basically says, “Big deal, who cares? Get over it!”
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Thanks for your responses, Liz and Jillian. My understanding is that Peter only learned of his Jewish heritage when he told his grandmother about his Jewish fiancée. He then told Christopher about this revelation.
Far from being an anti-Semite, Christopher Hitchens said, with his typical humour, that he was proud to be a Semi-Semite.
I agree that the KJV of the Bible can be mesmerizing beautiful, the substance continues to be utterly untenable (notwithstanding Prager, Shapiro, Friedman et al.). Likewise, I also admire some of the Book of Common Prayer.
I think that had the secular Hellenizing segment of Jewry won the day, it is entirely possible, as Hitchens contends, that there would be no Christianity and no Islam-but we will never know.
Non-religious contributions to Civilization by Jews or Christians owe nothing to Judaism or Christianity.
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I think I recall it was you who mentioned Ecclesiastes in a past discussion of the Bible, which prompted me to re-read it. I was surprised at just how much of it was quite “tenable”, actually!
Also I know Proverbs is full of quite a bit of sound wisdom. So there’s that! 
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Quite right! Ecclesiastes has always seemed more Greek to me in its tone.
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