Actor, Skeptic John Rhys-Davies: ‘We Owe Christianity The Greatest Debt Of Thanks That A Generation Could Have’

If you’ve seen the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy or the “Indiana Jones” series, you saw Hollywood actor John Rhys-Davies. He’s also starring in the forthcoming “I Am Patrick” about the Irish saint.

Rhys-Davies is not a Christian, but he is not bashful about expressing his admiration of and appreciation for the role of Christianity in the development of individual civil liberties we take for granted:

“Everything that we value — everything that I valued when I was a student 50, 60 years ago, which I cannot any longer count on an audience accepting — really comes from Christianity,” Rhys-Davies recently told podcaster Lucas Miles.

“The idea of the right of free speech, the idea of the right to hold your own opinion really derives from the second century A.D., when Roman Christians were told they must practice the emperor’s religion and faith, and that quiet voice in them said, ‘No, actually, I serve a different God. And I have a divine right to do so,’” he told Miles.

“And from that,” Rhys-Davies continued, “has come our own great sense of free speech. Even things like the Bill of Rights and habeas corpus that are the founding marks of [the U.S.] Constitution, which derive in English law, which derive from the testimony of Christians operating on that early principle.”

Faithwire Editor Tre Goins-Phillips has much more here, including additional information on the upcoming movie.

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