Another thought provoking piece from Anthony Esolen's The Politically Incorrect Guide To Western Civilization (2008) Subject title of post is borrowed directly from Esolen.
"It may offend some secularlists and those prudes who think that religion ought to be kept behind closed doors, but charity and concern for the poor are integral to our culture today because of Christianity. (empahsis Esolen's). If we build hospitals for the destitute beyond our own lands, with no desire for personal or national profit, and risking life and limb to do it, it is because we retain a trace, a cultural memory of the voyages of Saint Paul, of Boniface martyred by the Germans, of Cyril and Methodius trekking north among the Slavs, of Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland, of Gregory the Great seeing blonde slaves in the marketplace and, hearing that they were called 'Angli,' replying, 'Non Angli sed angeli,' 'Not Angles but angels,' and sending missionaries among them, to give them the best he had to give.
Though it is not polite to say so, still it cries out for notice. Hindus do not send holy men into foreign lands to feed the hungry and house the naked; they will not do so for the pariahs in their own land. Buddhists, practicing benevolent detachment from the world, do not so do. Muslims, who conquer by force, and who reject natural law on the grounds that it 'fetters' Allah, are required to take care of their own, but they ignore everyone else. All cults of ancestor worship, like Shinto, are too firmly fixed upon the local and the familial to care for people far away. The Jews and Christians would care, because of the God they worship: and they did. If the world speaks of human rights now, and the dignity of the poor, it is because the world has heard of Moses and the prophets - and, summing them up in himself, Christ. Men have come at last neither to love the world nor to despise it simply, but to love its goodness, not as a final end, but as a manifestation of the goodness that is eternal." (p 128-129)
While abuses in the name of Christianity have been trumpeted in recent years, voices like Lewis' and Esolen's continue to make the very strong case for the positive impact of the faith handed down through the Semitic line via Moses, the prophets, Christ Himself as Messiah and those who have truly lived out Christ's example up through the present day. History is truly on the side of Christians and Jews in this regard. For this great positive good there is no need for Christians and Jews to apologize.