It is one thing to originate an idea, and it is another thing to live according to this idea.
Example: The Founding Fathers deemed it self-evident that all men are created equal, but they did not include black people or women in the category "men". But this IDEA was born , and inspired a lot of men and women decades or even centuries later, notwithstanding the bad example of Jefferson and others.

We should keep in mind: Once such a powerful new idea is born, it often develops a life of its own and "infects" other minds centuries later, independent of the behavior of those who orginated the very idea.

It is true - and well-known - that the early Christians originated some revolutionary ideas, which fuelled their success in the Roman Empire, and it is also true that their successors centuries later often enough failed to live up to these ideas.

One has to be able to distinguish between ideas and their history on the one hand, and the behavior of human beings with all their flaws and shortcomings on the other hand . In the end it is the IDEAS that are the elements of cultural evolution, and those contagious ideas have effects beyond the behavior of those who should live according to them, but often enough betray them.