We’ve been thinking a lot recently about the great Crossway books from the past that end up neglected or forgotten with the publication of newer books. You can even see this tendency reflected in the content of our blog itself.
We love new books, but as a publishing ministry we also want to keep the “oldies” in view to serve you in your life and the ministry to which God calls you. This is why we publish authors from past generations, such as Martyn Lloyd Jones and Francis Schaeffer. It’s why we regularly relaunch books from a few years ago with updated covers and new content, such as R.C. Sproul’s Consequences of Ideas or John MacArthur’s Ashamed of the Gospel.
And it’s why we’re excited to start this weekly contest we’re calling Trackback Thursday. Each week we’ll feature a book (from a year back or 30 years back) that we think you should be familiar with.
Here’s how the contest part works: Simply link to the blog post from your blog, leave a comment on Crossway’s Facebook Page, or re-tweet Trackback Thursday on Twitter @Crosswaybooks. There will be three winners picked on Friday morning, one drawn from each medium.
This week’s title is Francis A. Schaeffer’s Death in the City:
Death in the City was Schaeffer’s third book, coming shortly after The God Who is There and Escape from Reason. First published in 1982 as part of The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City is based upon lectures given at Wheaton College (Illinois) in September and October of 1968.
Here is an opportunity to encounter a prophetic voice from the past that speaks today with arresting understanding of our post-Christian culture. Written against the backdrop of the sixties counter-cultural upheaval, Death in the City reads today with the same ring of truth regarding personal, moral, spiritual, and intellectual concerns. The death that Schaeffer writes about is more than just physical death—it is the moral and spiritual death that subtly suffocates truth and meaning and beauty out of the city and wider culture.
Here’s s an excerpt from Chapter 4, “An Echo of the World”:
What caused such a breakdown in our culture? The two world wars? Don’t believe it. If the house had been strong, it would not have come down with the earthquake. If the heart had not been eaten out of the culture, the world wars would not have broken it. “Don’t worry,” some say, “it’s only a technological problem, and technology will be the solution.” But that is not true. Man would not be in the position he is in simply because of technological problems if he had had a really Christian base. An energy crisis? Of course it is serious, but it is not the heart of the problem. The fact that the United States is now urban rather than agrarian? Is this the final problem? No. To solve only the urban problem would be to heal “slightly.” You can hear it over and over again—all kinds of secondary solutions to secondary problems. Of course these are problems, but they are not the central problem. And men who use theological language to fasten our eyes upon them as the central problem stand under the judgment of God, because they have forgotten that the real reason we are in such a mess is that we have turned away from the God who is there and the truth which He has revealed. The problem is that the house is so rotten that even smaller earthquakes shake it to the core (pg. 74).
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