Christian culture is the cultural practicescommon to Christianity. With the rapid expansion of Christianity to Europe, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Egypt, Ethiopia, and India and by the end of the 4th century it had also become the official state church of the Roman Empire.[1][2][3] Christian culture has influenced and assimilated much from the Greco-Roman Byzantine,[4] Western culture,[5]Middle Eastern,[6][7] Slavic, Caucasian, and possibly from Indian.[8]
Western culture, throughout most of its modern history, has included Christian culture, and many of the population of the Western hemisphere could broadly be described as cultural Christians. The notion of "Europe" and the "Western World" has been intimately connected with the concept of "Christianity and Christendom" many even attribute Christianity for being the link that created a unified European identity.[9] Historian Paul Legutko of Stanford University said the Catholic Church is "at the center of the development of the values, ideas, science, laws, and institutions which constitute what we call Western civilization."[10] Though Western culture contained several polytheistic religions during its early years under the Greekand Roman Empires, as the centralized Roman power waned, the dominance of the Catholic Church was the only consistent force in Western Europe.[11] Until the Age of Enlightenment,[12] Christian culture guided the course of philosophy, literature, art, music and science.[11][13] Christian disciplines of the respective arts have subsequently developed into Christian philosophy, Christian art, Christian music, Christian literature etc. Art and literature, law, education, and politics were preserved in the teachings of the Church, in an environment that, otherwise, would have probably seen their loss. The Church founded many cathedrals, universities, monasteriesand seminaries, some of which continue to exist today. Medieval Christianity created the first modern universities.[14][15] The Catholic Church established a hospital system in Medieval Europe that vastly improved upon the Roman valetudinaria.[16] These hospitals were established to cater to "particular social groups marginalized by poverty, sickness, and age," according to historian of hospitals, Guenter Risse.[17] Christianity also had a strong impact on all other aspects of life: marriage and family, education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy, and the arts.[18]
Christianity had a significant impact on education and science and medicine as the church created the bases of the Western system of education,[19] and was the sponsor of founding universities in the Western world as the university is generally regarded as an institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting.[20][21] Many clericsthroughout history have made significant contributions to science and Jesuits in particular have made numerous significant contributions to the development of science.[22][23][24] The cultural influence of Christianity includes social welfare,[25]founding hospitals,[26] economics (as the Protestant work ethic),[27][28] natural law(which would later influence the creation of international law)[29], politics,[30]architecture,[31] literature,[32] personal hygiene,[33][34] and family life.[35] Christianity played a role in ending practices common among pagan societies, such as human sacrifice, slavery,[36] infanticide and polygamy.[37]
Christians have made a myriad contributions to human progress in a broad and diverse range of fields, both historically and in modern times, including the science and technology,[38][39][40][41][42] medicine,[43] fine arts and architecture,[44][45][46] politics, literatures,[46] music,[46] philanthropy, philosophy,[47][48][49]:15 ethics,[50] theatre and business.[51][52][53][54] According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes a review of Nobel prizes award between 1901 and 2000 reveals that (65.4%) of Nobel Prizes Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference.[55] Eastern Christians(particularly Nestorian Christians) have also contributed to the Arab Islamic Civilizationduring the Ummayad and the Abbasid periods by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards to Arabic.[56][57][58] They also excelled in philosophy, science, theology and medicine.[59][60]
Cultural Christians are secular people with a Christian heritage who may not believe in the religious claims of Christianity, but who retain an affinity for the popular culture, art, music, and so on related to it. Another frequent application of the term is to distinguish political groups in areas of mixed religious backgrounds
