It's been said that if you want to know what water is like, don't ask a fish. We all swim in the culture of our time, and it isn't always easy to discern the currents of thought and the assumptions that shape us in a modern Western culture. Scrivener does a masterful job of explaining how one particular current---Christianity---has shaped many of the assumptions we live by in a post-Christian culture: assumptions that do not exist or are not nearly so forceful in cultures in which other religious systems and philosophies have held sway, yet are not commonly recognized today as owing their origins to the Judeo-Christian tradition. (One example among many: a first-century Roman would have held our beliefs about the essential equality of all human beings and the right of every person to equal protection under the rule of law to be either incomprehensible or laughable, and many 21st-century Asian and African cultures find these concepts equally difficult.) I found this to be quite a worthwhile read in both examining my own cultural assumptions and in recognizing just how unusual they are across the breadth and scope of world cultures and human history.
Discover the Christian roots of the values we prize in western society. TGC and Christianity Today 2022 Book Award Winner in Evangelism & Apologetics.
Is Christianity history? Or is Christian history the deepest explanation of the modern world?
Today in the west, many consider the church to be dead or dying. Christianity is seen as outdated, bigoted and responsible for many of societys problems. This leaves many believers embarrassed about their faith and many outsiders wary of religion. But what if the Christian message is not the enemy of our modern Western values, but the very thing that makes sense…
Some years are recognized as watersheds in the history of a culture or civilization. I found Andrew Wilson's pinpointing of 1776 as such a year with respect to Western civilization remarkable, as---like most Americans---I associated that year solely with the American Revolution. That was certainly an important event and a turning point in Western history, but as Wilson brought out, it did not have its effects in isolation; it coincided with major developments in philosophy (the Enlightenment, the Romantic movement, and the rise of post-Christian thinking) and economics (globalization, the Industrial Revolution, and the rapid increase in wealth, particularly in the West). I found the book valuable both for its basic overview of each of these elements and for its view of how these disparate factors came together in 1776 to give rise to the Western world that we know today.
In this skillfully researched book, Andrew Wilson explains how 7 historic events in 1776 shaped today's post-Christian West and equips believers to share God's truth in the current social landscape.
Reading the ancient classics may not be overly popular nowadays, but I found this Greek tragedy of the Classical period to be a gripping insight into one of the most gifted playwrights of any age as he wrestled with questions of morality, personal responsibility, and the interaction between man and the divine as they centered on the character of Oedipus.
The story of Oedipus the King (or Oedipus Rex), is a Theban play written by Sophocles, one of the three ancient Greek Tragedians whose work as survived. In the story of Oedipus Rex, Laius, King of Thebes, finds an oracle foretelling that the child born to him by his queen Jocasta would slay his father and wed his mother. So when in time a son (Oedipus) was born the infant's feet were riveted together and he was left to die on Mount Cithaeron. But a shepherd found Oedipus and tended him, and delivered him to another shepherd who took him…
The sister race to the Kentucky Derby, the Kentucky Oaks---"The Lilies for the Fillies" is the second-oldest continuously-run race in the United States and one of the most-viewed racing spectacles of the year. It is also a fashion gala, a major charity event, and a time-honored test for female Thoroughbreds to determine those most fit to be the mothers of the next generation. The first-ever history of this important event, The Kentucky Oaks: 150 Years of Running for the Lilies is told through the stories of some of the most important or memorable horses and humans to become part of a race that has become a celebration of all things feminine.
