On the invention of welfare

It’s correct to say that Christianity built a whole institution of social services for the poor and the disadvantaged and the ill and the elderly long before, you know, any governments ever thought of doing that. The fact is that Christianity did have a completely different view of the world. And it made a big difference, because … you know, we have surviving letters by the Bishop of Rome – who was just the Bishop of Rome at the time, he wasn’t the Pope really – writing to somebody else saying, well we have 1,500 widows in our keeping. And this was about the church in Rome, which was at that time very tiny. That’s what they were doing. And in a certain sense, they were saving the world in the world, as well as in another world.