The back-cover/blurb asks, under the heading  ¢â‚¬ËœChecking Out the Cultural Soup We Swim In ¢â‚¬â„¢:  ¢â‚¬ËœWhy do we buy what we buy, vote the way we vote, eat what we eat and say what we say? Why do we have the friends we have, and work and play as we do? It ¢â‚¬â„¢s our choice? Yes, but there are forces, often unseen, that shape every decision we make and every action we take. ¢â‚¬â„¢

These two Azusa Pacific University teachers critique eight  ¢â‚¬Ëœhidden worldviews ¢â‚¬â„¢:   Individualism (caricatured/summarized as I Am the Center of the Universe), Consumerism (I Am What I Own), Nationalism (My Nation, Under God), Moral Relativism (The Absolute Truth About Relativism and Something Like Relativism), Scientific Naturalism (Only Matter Matters), The New Age (Are We Gods or Are We God ¢â‚¬â„¢s?), Postmodern Tribalism (My Tribe/My Worldview), and Salvation by Therapy (Not as Good as It Gets).

Each of these ways of looking at reality  ¢â‚¬Ëœabsolutizes a single facet of our being and are therefore reductionistic ¢â‚¬â„¢ (one of their favourite words/ concepts). For example: Individualism, by absolutizing the individual, cannot adequately address our social nature; Moral relativism wants to absolutize our freedoms, but ignores ethical limits on their legitimate expression; Postmodern tribalism undermines individual moral responsibility by making people the products of their culture; Scientific naturalism finds the intellectual realm incompatible with the spiritual component of our lives.

So how does an Evangelical Christian (which is the authors ¢â‚¬â„¢ stance  ¢â‚¬“ as distinct from Christian fundamentalism or theological liberalism) critique these systems-of-thought? In two ways: by looking at God ¢â‚¬â„¢s Story in Five Acts (Creation, The Fall, Covenant, Incarnation, Redemption), and then addressing the question of truth claims/ hermeneutics under the four headings in the interpretive grid commonly known as the  ¢â‚¬ËœWesleyan Quadrilateral ¢â‚¬â„¢  ¢â‚¬“ Scripture (their first and primary criterion of truth), Reason (which helps where Scripture is silent, and with interpretation where Scripture might not seem too coherent), Experience (not understood purely subjectively, but in terms of our experience of facts/observations/life events), and Tradition (God ¢â‚¬â„¢s preservation of  ¢â‚¬Ëœtruth ¢â‚¬â„¢ despite human limitations and sinfulness).

Some presuppositions are important in all of this. Like:

• All worldviews are  ¢â‚¬Ëœfaith-driven ¢â‚¬â„¢, not just systems of organized ideas: humans are not just rational beings.
• Therefore a Christian worldview is not essentially an infallible collection of propositions. (Although our authors don ¢â‚¬â„¢t use the dictum  ¢â‚¬ËœGod has yet more light and truth to break forth from his Word ¢â‚¬â„¢ that ¢â‚¬â„¢s their position, as I understand it).
• So we come to this quest-for-truth with humility, love and gratitude. These are core Christian values driving any endeavour  ¢â‚¬“ intellectual or relational. For example, it ¢â‚¬â„¢s difficult to  ¢â‚¬Ëœsqueeze humility out of individualism, which puts me at the center of the universe ¢â‚¬â„¢. Similarly tribalism or nationalism are at odds with the Christian ethic of loving those not-like-us. But what do we say about Christians who don ¢â‚¬â„¢t live by these ethical standards? Our authors are honest:  ¢â‚¬ËœThis lack of integration cuts the other way as well: it is all too common to find Christians who possess the intellectual beliefs which should lead to lives marked by these attributes, but [they] operate only on the level of what we have called confessional beliefs. They know the right answers. They don ¢â‚¬â„¢t just live as if they do ¢â‚¬â„¢.

Pretty honest, eh?

This is best not read when you ¢â‚¬â„¢re tired. Written for a College course such as  ¢â‚¬ËœIntroduction to Christian and Other Worldviews 101 ¢â‚¬â„¢, by academics, it might all come across as a bit theoretical/dense if you ¢â‚¬â„¢re not passionately interested in the subject. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s also written for the North American cultural context, so other major world religions don ¢â‚¬â„¢t feature. But it ¢â‚¬â„¢s a book I ¢â‚¬â„¢ll return to, particularly to revisit and think about bits I ¢â‚¬â„¢ve marked, like:

• In essence, nationalism is the imbalanced and distorted form of something that is good  ¢â‚¬“ patriotism (p. 62)
• People are rarely across-the-board subjectivists or objectivists (84)
• Moral absolutists often fixate on issues such as divorce, abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality, matters that are rarely addressed directly in the Bible, but they read right past the hundreds of passages that directly call us to care for the poor (90)
•   Just as God transcends creation while also being its Creator, God transcends reason while also being its source (137)

Rowland Croucher

September 2011