What has Christianity ever done for us?
A lot more than you might think, as Nick Spencer reveals in this fresh exploration of our cultural origins.
Looking at the big ideas that characterize the West, such as human dignity, the rule of law, human rights, science – and even, paradoxically, atheism and secularism – he traces the varied ways in which many of our present values grew up and flourished in distinctively Christian soil.
Always alert to the tensions and the mess of history, and careful not to overstate the Christian role in shaping our present values, Spencer shows how a better awareness of what we owe to Christianity can help us as we face new cultural challenges.
Inhoudsopgave
Acknowledgements
Introduction 1
1 Why the West is different 10
2 A Christian nation 25
3 Trouble with the law: Magna Carta and
the limits of the law 38
4 Christianity and democracy: friend and foe 51
5 Saving humanism from the humanists 64
6 Christianity and atheism: a family affair 79
7 The accidental midwife: the emergence of a
scientific culture 94
8 ‘No doubts as to how one ought to act’:
Darwin’s doubts and his faith 110
9 The religion of Christianity and the religion
of human rights 125
10 The secular self 138
11 ‘Always with you’: Capital, inequality and
the ‘absence of war’ 152
12 Christianity and the welfare state 167
Books consulted 185
Index 187
Over de auteur
Nick Spencer is Research Director at Theos, the religion and society think tank. He is the author of numerous books, report and essays most recently The Case for Christian Humanism (with Angus Ritchie) and How to think about religious freedom.
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