{"id":47262,"date":"2020-01-28T06:00:26","date_gmt":"2020-01-28T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=47262"},"modified":"2020-01-27T13:16:53","modified_gmt":"2020-01-27T18:16:53","slug":"my-new-book-on-secularism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2020\/01\/my-new-book-on-secularism\/","title":{"rendered":"My New Book on Secularism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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My new book from Crossway has been released.\u00a0 It\u2019s entitled Post-Christian:\u00a0 A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Back in 1994, I published Postmodern Times:\u00a0 A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture<\/a>, which was one of the first books to critically engage postmodernism from a Christian perspective.\u00a0 That book still holds up pretty well, actually.\u00a0 I thought of updating it, but too much has happened over the last quarter-century.\u00a0 So Post-Christian<\/a> is a sequel\u00a0<\/em>to that earlier book, similarly designed to help Christians navigate the issues and mindsets and world-views of our day.<\/p>\n

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The title continues the \u201cpost-\u201d language of the earlier book, but to speak of our times as being \u201cpost-Christian\u201d does not<\/em> mean that Christianity is \u201cover.\u201d\u00a0 Quite the contrary, as my book demonstrates.\u00a0 Post-Christian<\/a> is a study of secularism<\/em> in its various manifestations, the attempts<\/em> to carry on human life and society as a whole without any Christian or other kinds of transcendent referents.\u00a0 But this is easier said than done, and secularism itself is running into problems and contradictions (including new religious assumptions).<\/p>\n

Each topic treated in the book has an \u201carc\u201d:\u00a0 a description of the phenomenon, followed by the difficulties and the dead-ends that the secularists themselves are admitting, followed by the way forward offered by Christianity.\u00a0 The whole book also has an arc, moving towards the next phase that a number of scholars are already anticipating, another \u201cpost-\u201d word:\u00a0 the post-secular.<\/em><\/p>\n

So that the sequel to Post-Christian,<\/a> covering the developments of the next 25 years, could be entitled Post-Secular<\/em>.\u00a0 (Not that I\u2019ll live long enough to write it.\u00a0 Maybe one of you could take up that task.\u00a0 You can have the title, gratis<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

This particular book outlines the challenges that Christians today will have to deal with.\u00a0 It breaks some new ground in Christian cultural analysis and brings up information and developments that will be new to most readers.\u00a0 But it is also hopeful and encouraging, showing that Christianity perseveres and remains relevant\u2013indeed, increasingly so\u2013even in ostensibly \u201cpost-Christian\u201d times.<\/p>\n

Yes, Christianity has been declining in America and in Europe\u2013due in part to the secularization of the church<\/em>\u2013but the faith is spreading like wildfire in the rest of the world.\u00a0 Our secularism is the outlier.\u00a0 And there are signs that our secularism might be changing.<\/p>\n

Here are the chapters from the Table of Contents to show you the topics that the book gets into, as well as the book\u2019s structure:<\/p>\n

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Introduction: After Postmodernism<\/span><\/p>\n

PART 1 REALITY<\/strong><\/p>\n

1 Constructing Our Own Worlds: The Ptolomaic\u00a0\u00a0Counterrevolution\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

2 Knowing Nature: The Dominance of Science<\/p>\n

3 Mastering Nature: The Achievements of Technology<\/p>\n

4 Recovering Reality: The Story of Kant\u2019s Neighbor<\/p>\n

PART 2 THE BODY<\/strong><\/p>\n

5 The End of Sex: The Exaltation of Barrenness<\/p>\n

6 Repudiating the Body: Engineering Children and Oneself<\/p>\n

7 Sexual Counterrevolution: Toward a Theology of the Body<\/p>\n

PART 3 SOCIETY<\/strong><\/p>\n

8 Culture and Anticulture: Society without Community<\/p>\n

9 Power Politics and the Death of Education: From Relativism\u00a0to Absolutism\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

10 Rebuilding Civilization: Options for the Dark Ages<\/p>\n

PART 4 RELIGION<\/strong><\/p>\n

11 Spiritual but Not Religious: The Religion of the Nones<\/p>\n

12 Religious but Not Spiritual: The New Gods<\/p>\n

13 Post-Christian Christianity: Desecularizing the Church<\/p>\n

Conclusion: Toward the Postsecular<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ll be writing a series of posts about my new book, which will flesh out more of what I mean and will highlight various themes of the book.\u00a0 You can buy it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n