Can anyone think of an instance where Christianity has benefited
the indigenous culture of a non-Christian place? I cannot. Certainly not in the Americas, where Christianity obliterated the existing cultures and religions as soon as they possibly could. In North, Central, and South America, long-established cultures and civilizations were wantonly destroyed and the people already there enslaved or slaughtered.
Most of Asia successfully resisted this, and ages old cultures and religions still survive in many places, but in the West, where Europeans exerted serious colonization and exploitation efforts, there is virtually nothing left of what was there when they arrived. In California, for example, the Spanish systematically destroyed the coastal aboriginal cultures and enslaved and destroyed the people they found. Near the Pacific coast, almost nothing survives of the cultures and peoples whose territory it was.
In Central America and Mexico, millennia-old civilizations, cultures, and religions were systematically destroyed as well, in the name of Christ. In North America, death and banishment were the tools used to destroy the fragile cultures discovered when the Europeans landed and began talking over indigenous territories. Any resistance was met with genocide, by any means necessary. Again this was done in the name of Jesus. The "Savages" were destroyed so that Christians might achieve wealth and land. South America suffered a similar fate, and the destruction of indigenous peoples and the environment continues today.
I don't think there is any place where something like this did not occur or where an attempt to make it occur was not undertaken. While Christianity failed in Asia, generally, the rest of the planet was overrun by Christians, who destroyed what was there before their arrival.
So, is it any wonder that some countries, like China, do not wish to allow Christians or Muslims to replace their ancient culture and territory? Makes sense to me.
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