Government church taxes are the norm in European history. Even here in the early United States, church taxes were the norm, existing in all the states with the exception of New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Christian ethical influence of earlier colonial America were monstrous. For example the Virginia statute known as the Dade Code which imposed a death penalty on any person who "spoke impiously of the Trinity or one of the divine persons, or against the known articles of Christian faith." The death penalty could also be imposed for missing church three times without cause, and jail time for arguing with a member of the anglican clergy, who were the only legal clergy of Virginia. It required that new people in the colony be questioned by the local clergy to determine if they were holy enough to stay.
Reversing and eliminating the effects of Christian ethics from the American law was a hard fought protracted political war that went on for several decades after the American Revolution. Thankfully the secularists won that war. One of those secularists, James Madison, wrote early on in his life at age 22 that "religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded project." Later as President of the United States, he was once forced to veto two bills that attempted to reestablish the old doctrine of Christian ethics in the single month of February, 1811. One was a bill passed by Congress to give land in the Mississippi Territory to the Baptist, the other was a bill to provide funds to a "pious charity" established by the Episcopal Church of Alexandria, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. The fight with the old Christian ethics was hardly over even during his Presidency.
Thus your conclusion "that prior to 20 century, when the West was still listening to the social teaching of the Christian church, the government was completely separated from charity," is not correct. One of the best examples is the famous Congressman Davy Crockett legacy that has been posted to FreeRepublic many times over the years since you and I joined it. Its well worth the read.
Christ's ethical teaching, in particular expressed in the Gospel of Matthew, was revolutionary. It is therefore the start of the Western ethical teaching.
No doubt about it, Christ's ethical teaching were quite revolutionary. But they have never at any time been a part of the Western ethical teaching, and definitely did not start it. The Wests ethical teaching started in ancient Greece, predating the gospels by several hundred years. As far as Christ's ethical teachings go, they have always been rejected by ethics, as well as by all mainstream Christian churches throughout history since at least the 4th century. All mainstream churches today completely ignore his teaching's on ethics.
I would say that starting at about 1500 the West experienced decline...
I am pretty well read in history, and cannot imagine what you are referring to here. Please explain? No hurry, I work long hours on all Sundays and Mondays, and may not read your reply till Tuesday. Thankyou.
The church tax was paid by the church members. No one was forced to be Christian. Exceptions existed, but the model was that of voluntary participation.
Secularism is what brought us oppressive government. Why? Because religion is essentially voluntary: its laws are binding on its adherents and are merely advice to others. The government, in contrast, has a monopoly of power, which is claimed territorially. You could be a Jew or a Muslim in Medieval France, but you cannot pledge allegiance to Spain in the French Republic today, -- you will have to move to Spain. Once the legal realm grew separately from the religious realm, the law became imposed territorially by force and either we got government-enforced ethics or government-enforced evil. Neither is a very good deal for the individual.
Differently put, feudalism was all about voluntary allegiances, to the suzerain and to the church. This is why the libertarians should study the Middle Ages as their model, rather than assume that the French or American republics were their models. There was much good about the American republic (nothing good about the French one), but its rootedness in the false ideals of the Enlightenment doomed it to failure: it only survived a few decades.