What Caused the Largest Empire the World has Yet Known to Grow and Collapse?

And, more importantly, how did this small island-based nation come to influence the entire globe, through its language, culture, values and ideology?

Recently, the King of England, still officially the “Defender of the Faith” and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, has broadened his purview, paradoxically, to defense of “the space for faith within the multi-faith nation.” Where did the British vision of religious pluralism begin?

The answers to these questions are found in the two moral and thought foundations of the United Kingdom. One is in the Greco-Roman tradition, especially Greek philosophy. The other in the Bible, especially the teachings of King Jesus.

This can be illustrated by examining five Brits for evil, five for good.

Five for Evil

These followers of ancient Greek philosophy collectively advanced an intellectual and societal framework that systematically eroded confidence in objective truth and elevated confidence in unaided reason, while advancing extreme skepticism. Their anthropology reduced persons to products of natural processes and to mechanistic constructs. They established the imposition of an a priori exclusion of divine intervention in history—ruling miracles out of court by ideological fiat. Through the same posture, they obfuscated the geological record which indicates a global flood occurred and instead promoted a myth that death itself has been the chief creative engine by which all species originate. Simultaneously, they contributed positively to the amassing of knowledge in such areas as history, scientific method and zoological taxonomy. Evil rarely comes in an unmasked form. The cumulative result has been an intellectual climate in which revelation is sidelined, moral foundations rest on emotion, current trends or utility alone and successive generations are trained to regard the record of creation, catastrophe and redemption, as articulated in the Bible, as fable rather than foundational — just as these individuals sidelined the wisdom of the one recognized as the world's greatest teacher ever.

Five for Good

These devoted followers of Jesus Christ, drawing on the transformative power of His teachings and relying on His abiding presence among them, left a profound collective mark on education and society across Asia. Through patient cultural immersion, mastery of local languages, and practical service, they advanced women’s safety and health, by helping end the crippling practice of footbinding, securing the abolition of widow burning (sati) and female infanticide, rescuing children from temple trafficking and providing medical care for lepers, the wounded, and the displaced. They founded orphanages that offered neglected and vulnerable children shelter, education, agricultural training and holistic care. Their linguistic and scholarly labors produced a writing system for a previously oral language, translated the Scriptures into multiple tongues, established presses that disseminated Bibles, educational materials and classical cultural texts and created a college open across caste lines to both men and women. They enriched indigenous music, strengthened self-governing church groups, achieved mediation in a violent conflict and guided a perilous wartime rescue — always seeking to embody the compassion and truth of King Jesus, in lasting educational and societal reform.