One thing that can't be argued is how this world would be better off without religion.
The immeausrable good that has been done through the ages with God fearing men and women can never really be meausured.
The impact of Christianity bearing goodness on this world must certainly outweigh, by the score, any negative problems that may have also occurred.
61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill
20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State
10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime
5,964,000 Murdered: Japan's Savage Military
2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State
1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey's Genocidal Purges
1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State
1,585,000 Murdered: Poland's Ethnic Cleansing
1,503,000 Murdered: The Pakistani Cutthroat State
1,072,000 Murdered: Tito's Slaughterhouse Link
The significance of Christianity is the ability for every human to have a relationship with God. Without that opportunity a human will remain dead in the spirit.
With respect to religion, insofar as any system of thinking avoids God and promotes selfish or even worldly good, that system is also short the Christian way of life. Many problems arise with western secular thought when it lumps Christianity in with 'religion'. The most obvious is that proposed by Salmaan Rushdie when he ignores the opportunity to have a relationship with God when he identifies human good based religions and their extreme consequences with anything spiritual.
The 'negative problems' associated with Christianity generally are a consequence of antiChristian thinking and behavior amongst some who allege their 'Christianity'. Those negative aspects are generally worldly thinking and its impact upon religious institutions from within the institution. Worldly thinking, though, is not the mind of Christ, nor the Christian way of life.
I suspect Rushdie is merely confusing worldly thinking within religious institutions with fundamentalism, then categorizing fundamentalism as evil.
I also suspect he doesn't know what the meaning of a spirit being born implies. At least, I havn't observed any work of the spirit manifest in his works.