Christian Charity
How Christian teaching built hospitals, orphanages, and charity movements in the West.
17 topics
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer argued that Jesus was not the divine savior of traditional Christianity but rather an apocalyptic prophet who expected the world to end imm…
Biblical Charity
Biblical Charity is not merely giving to the poor but is defined by Thomas Aquinas as friendship with God, making it the supreme Christian virtue that unites…
Christian Charity in the Early Church
Early Christian charity was so distinctive and visible that Roman pagans routinely attributed it to a supernatural compulsion rather than voluntary ethics, a…
Christian Charity in the Modern World
In Matthew 25, Christ identifies Himself so completely with the poor and suffering that charitable acts toward the needy are treated as acts done directly to…
Christian Hospitals in History
The Knights Hospitaller started as a group running a pilgrim hospital in Jerusalem and grew into one of the most powerful military orders in history, all whi…
Christian Orphanages in History
The first formal Christian orphanage was established in the 4th century by Saint Basil of Caesarea as part of a larger complex called the Basiliad, which eff…
Florence Nightingale and Christian Nursing
Florence Nightingale founded the world's first secular nursing school, deliberately separating nursing education from religious hospital foundations, even th…
Frederick Ozanam
The founder of one of the largest Catholic charitable organizations in the world was a 20-year-old law student who started it as a student debate club respon…
Henri Dunant and the Red Cross
Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, was driven by deep Calvinist faith and considered his humanitarian work a direct response to Christ's command to love…
Jane Addams and Hull House
Jane Addams was the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but she was also the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Yale University, a…
St. Vincent de Paul
Before becoming a saint celebrated for serving the poor, Vincent de Paul spent two years as a slave in North Africa after being kidnapped by pirates. Born in…
The Charity Organization Society
The Charity Organization Society, now seen as a forerunner of modern social work, was built on the belief that giving charity without investigation actually …
The Deaconess Movement
The deaconess office survived continuously in Constantinople and Jerusalem through the middle Byzantine period but vanished from Western Europe by the 13th c…
The Settlement Movement
The Settlement Movement created its own distinct branch of sociology called Settlement Sociology, which was deliberately activist and community-based, but wa…
The Sisters of Charity
Saint Vincent de Paul's original rule for The Sisters of Charity has influenced at least sixty religious institutes for women worldwide, making it one of the…
The Social Gospel Movement
The Social Gospel's postmillennial theology meant its leaders believed humans themselves had to eliminate all social evils before Christ could return, making…
The St. Vincent de Paul Society
The The [[St. Vincent de Paul Society|Society of St. Vincent de Paul]] was founded not primarily to fight poverty, but to save the souls of its own members t…