Post-Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture

By Gene Edward Veith Jr.

... Show All

Post-Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture

By Gene Edward Veith Jr.

... Show All

We live in a post-Christian world. Contemporary thought—claiming to be “progressive” and “liberating”—seeks to undermine biblical Christianity, but in fact contradicts culture itself by assaulting family, community, authority, and nature. Today’s Christians need to understand the underlying worldviews of the post-Christian culture in order to navigate these new challenges in their world. This insightful book charts the course of how postmodernism led to our post-Christian times; explores how Christians can combat today's constructivism, relativism, and Gnosticism; and offers solutions to those problems as a way to recover reality, rebuild culture, and revive faith.

Read Chapter 1


Author:

Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Gene Edward Veith (PhD, University of Kansas) is provost and professor of literature emeritus at Patrick Henry College. He previously worked as the culture editor of World magazine. Veith and his wife, Jackquelyn, have three grown children and seven grandchildren.

Product Details

Title: Post-Christian
Subtitle: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture
Published: January 28, 2020
ISBN-10: 1-4335-6578-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-4335-6578-6
Category: Culture & Social Issues
Retail Price: $24.99
Binding: Paperback
Trim: 6.0 in x 9.0 in
Page Count: 320

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: After Postmodernism  

Part 1: Reality

  1. Constructing Our Own Worlds: The Ptolomaic Counterrevolution
  2. Knowing Nature: The Dominance of Science
  3. Mastering Nature: The Achievements of Science
  4. Recovering Reality: The Story of Kant’s Neighbor  

Part 2: The Body

  1. The End of Sex: The Exaltation of Barrenness 
  2. Repudiating the Body: Engineering Children and Oneself
  3. Sexual Counterrevolution: Toward a Theology of the Body

Part 3: Society

  1. Culture and Anticulture: Society without Community 
  2. Power Politics and the Death of Education: From Relativism to Absolutism 
  3. Rebuilding Civilization: Options for the Dark Ages

Part 4: Religion

  1. Spiritual but Not Religious: The Religion of the Nones  
  2. Religious but Not Spiritual: The New Gods 
  3. Post-Christian Christianity: Desecularizing the Church

Conclusion: Toward the Postsecular
General Index
Scripture Index

Endorsements

Post-Christian is a provocative overview of the challenges Christians at the whipping post face. As the sea of faith temporarily recedes, fewer people have the confidence to debate ideas, raise children, and build institutions. Gene Veith explains the problems of constructing our own worlds, exalting barrenness, and building society without community. Some leaders say we’ll survive by secularizing the church, but this book shows a better way: pray and work for a new reformation.”
Marvin Olasky

“No one has taught me how to think like a Christian more than Gene Veith. Post-Christian just may be the magnum opus of a writer and thinker who has already contributed a body of work of immeasurable worth to the church. This book is a library in miniature for the Christian who wants to navigate the post-Christian world biblically, thoughtfully, and faithfully. It should be on the shelf in every Christian home.”
Karen Swallow Prior,  author, The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis

“Gene Veith’s Post-Christian is a logical, cogent, sensible, no-spin, facts-based, unapologetic analysis of the zeitgeist in Western culture. Which is to say, it’s not very politically correct. But that’s a good thing! In this post-truth, reality-denying cultural moment, we need the grounded sanity this book provides. Highly informative and well-researched, Post-Christian is a treasure trove of wisdom and a valuable resource for the church’s revitalization.”
Brett McCracken, Senior Editor, The Gospel Coalition; author, The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World

“In the barrage of books attempting to make sense of our particular cultural moment, few authors exhibit the range of thought and clarity of mind that is on display in Post-Christian. Gene Veith is a competent guide through the maze of exhausted ideas that characterize late modernity. Science, technology, sex, politics, religion—nothing has escaped the corrosive effects of the attempt to abandon Christianity. This is, however, not a book of despair but of hope. As Veith reminds us, the truths of the Christian faith continually reassert themselves, for they are rooted in reality itself.”
Mark T. Mitchell, Dean of Academic Affairs, Patrick Henry College