Nick Spencer is the Research Director of Theos think tank and Visiting Research Fellow at the Faiths and Civil Society Unit, Goldsmiths, University of London. He is also a frequent contributor to the national press.

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.

A sequence of sparkling essays by one of our leading public theologians, exploring and defending the enduring role of Christianity in Western thought, politics and culture.

Nick Spencer

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Why the West is different

2 A Christian nation

3 Trouble with the law: Magna Carta and the limits of the law

4 Christianity and democracy: friend and foe

5 Saving humanism from the humanists

6 Christianity and atheism: a family affair

7 The accidental midwife: the emergence of a scientific culture

8 ‘No doubts as to how one ought to act’: Darwin’s doubts and his faith

9 The religion of Christianity and the religion of human rights

10 The secular self

11 ‘Always with you’: Capital, inequality and the ‘absence of war’

12 Christianity and the welfare state

Books consulted

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__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.

Over the last decade the role of Christianity in the West has come under close, sometimes hostile, scrutiny. During that time, Nick Spencer, Research Director of the Christian think tank Theos, has been at the forefront of the debate, and this book brings together a range of his influential essays, putting forward a well-rounded case for the continuing presence of Christianity in 21st-century public life. They also sound a warning that contemporary liberal secular society risks losing sight of the basis for its deepest values - with the attendant risk that forgetting them leaves little capacity to defend them.

This is a much needed book. Spencer shows persuasively that we cannot understand our political, economic or social culture without taking into account the key role Christianity has played in shaping Western values. Balanced and never claiming too much, it offers an essential corrective to contemporary narratives that try to write Christianity out of the script.;- Richard Harries, House of Lords;Surrounded by complex issues, it is hard to understand what's going on, what the important thinkers are saying, and what a thinking Christian might make of it all. Nick Spencer carves out a clear path through this jungle, helping us to see how we got here in the first place and how we might move forward in faith and wisdom.;- N. T. Wright, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, University of St Andrews

Learn about the changes that have led us to where we are today in this books of Christianity's growth in the Western World.

Evolution of the West

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Evolution of the West

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