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In a new book published to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Theos, The Evolution of the West (SPCK, £9.99), Spencer explores the origins of the ideas that form our culture today and finds they are thoroughly Christian.

It's an intellectually exhilarating tour of mainly British and European history and thought. Spencer shows that the big ideas: human dignity, the rule of law, human rights, science – and even, paradoxically, atheism and secularism – grew up and flourished in distinctively Christian soil.

Along the way he challenges many shallow and ill-informed prejudices about Christianity. It's easy enough to point to what Christians have done, in the name of Christianity ("Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded/ That all the apostles would have done as they did," as Byron wrote). But what's harder is to point to the way the deep structures of thinking gradually changed, and influenced how they came to behave.

Mark Woods | Read the full article here.

Buy the book here.

Image available from Christian Today.