Reuben, don’t assume. Daphne was speaking about “Christianity in its purest and original form,” and not about a branch of it.

Daphne’s summary can be extended further to explain that Christianity became the dominant religion in Europe, and hence the origins of European values as we know them, and why Europe leads the way on fundamental human rights.

It’s in the title.

There was no dialogue at that infamous bilateral meeting involving Muscat, eirher.

[Daphne – That’s Roman Catholicism, Reuben, not actual Christianity. Roman Catholicism post-dates the original Christianity by centuries. Christ’s essential message was most certainly not about his own death. It was this: “A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.” – John 13:34-35 ]

Many Christians are blissfully ignorant of the values of Judaism and still harbour serious anti-Semitic misconceptions, the most widespread of which is that Judaism promotes revenge through the maxim “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” when this is, in actual fact, a restriction of revenge or a limitation of the lex talionis: an eye for an eye, not a life for an eye — the principle of proportionality.

As stated in the Mishnah: “whosoever saves one life, saves the whole world or all mankind” — a clear indication that in Judaism the value of human life is inestimable.

In the “Roman era”, as you put it rather imprecisely, not only slaves, the poor and the oppressed were Christian — this may have been true in the earliest times — though Acts already mentions well-to-do individuals who were Christian — but after the Edict of Milan the highest public offices were allotted to Christians. Thenceforward, oppression often came from the direction of the Christians rather than the other way round.

Incidentally, Judaism arrived in China around the 8th or 9th century, before Christianity.

Perhaps in this country where all is misinterpreted or politically twisted, I should hasten to add that:-

All of the above, needless to say, is not written to detract anything from the heroic resistance of Chinese Christians or to justify in any way whatsoever the despotism of the Chinese government.

Basic human rights and Christianity share the same common principles. One of the compulsory text books for philosophy of law is/was John Finnis’ “Natural Law and Natural Rights”.