This "the West and Christianity" thing may reinforce dichotomies that we do not need (East vs West), while glossing over essential distinctions (Christianity vs its Abrahamic roots).

Yes, much is good about Christianity, and yes, it caught on in the West -- but it originated in the Near East, and Ethiopians and Keralites had it first (and still do). Moreover, prior to the Islamic conquests, it was widespread in the countries that we now think of as Muslim. So, while it is central to the culture of Europe, it is also a bit of an adopted alien -- and it is not unique to Europe.

Second, many Protestant readings of Christianity embrace the Old Testament, while underemphasizing the break from Old Testament practices and thought that it represented. You would think that Protestant culture would be more immune to this, because it emphasizes literacy and directly reading the book. But somehow that has led to an uncritical understanding of the Old Testament, instead of to a more Gnostic repudiation. Paul is best in this regard.

Because it is precisely Christianity's reformist elements that made it good. Its universalism. Its New Covenant.

Anyway.

I do appreciate your CK Chesterton references. Some of those are also among my favorites. I very much enjoyed The Man Who was Thursday, one of his works of fiction, a sort of novel -- which, I will only say, subverts expectations, and turns out to be more than a bit philosophical!

The best response I can give to you is quoting Chesterton's Heretics:

"Mr. Rudyard Kipling has asked in a celebrated epigram what they can know of England who know England only. It is a far deeper and sharper question to ask, “What can they know of England who know only the world?” for the world does not include England any more than it includes the Church. The moment we care for anything deeply, the world—that is, all the other miscellaneous interests—becomes our enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one’s self “unspotted from the world;” but lovers talk of it just as much when they talk of the “world well lost.” Astronomically speaking, I understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers inhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth—the truth that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe. Thus Mr. Kipling does certainly know the world; he is a man of the world, with all the narrowness that belongs to those imprisoned in that planet. He knows England as an intelligent English gentleman knows Venice. He has been to England a great many times; he has stopped there for long visits. But he does not belong to it, or to any place; and the proof of it is this, that he thinks of England as a place. The moment we are rooted in a place, the place vanishes. We live like a tree with the whole strength of the universe."