WH Auden argued in an essay on the fall of Rome that “One may like or dislike Christianity, but no one can deny that it was Christianity and the Bible which raised western literature from the dead.”

Elaborating, “A faith which held that the Son of God was born in a manger, associated himself with persons of humble station in an unimportant Province, and died a slave’s death, yet did this to redeem all men, rich and poor, free men and slaves, citizens and barbarians, required a completely new way of looking at human beings; if all are children of God and equally capable of salvation, then all, irrespective of status or talent, vice or virtue, merit the serious attention of the poet, the novelist, and the historian.”