Interested by this? Share it on social media. Join our monthly e-newsletter to keep up to date with our latest research and events. And check out our Friends Programme to find out how you can help our work.

"Nick Spencer, who is Research Director at Theos think tank in London, does an admirable job of demonstrating our collective amnesia about the Christian roots of everything from human rights to the Scientific Revolution, to the rule of law and (surprise!) atheism itself. His rich, complex origin stories also make it clear why that forgetfulness matters."

"Spencer’s (appealingly slender) volume has many strengths, but perhaps the most important is its even-handedness. He neatly deflates the popular secularist myth of a glorious Enlightenment that liberated us from religious orthodoxy into political and personal freedom and the light of science (as defended, for example, in philosopher A.C. Grayling’s recent book The Age of Genius). But he also cautions Christians against an overly triumphal account of Western history that steamrolls over the knotty, often ambiguous reality. “If Christians of the present think Christians of the past unanimously spent their time campaigning volubly for democracy, welfare, rights and the Scientific Revolution,” he writes, “they should spend some time reading the Christians of the past.”

Natasha Moore | Read the full article from Eternity.

Buy the "The Evolution of the West. How Christianity Has Shaped Our Values" here.

Image available from Bible Society Australia.