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Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times
Logos Bookstores' Best Book in Christianity and Culture Honorable Mention, Best Book of the Year from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore We live in dark times. Christians wonder: Are the best days of the Christian faith behind us? Has modernity made Christian thought irrelevant and impotent? Is society beyond all hope of redemption and renewal? In Renaissance, Os Guinness declares no. Throughout history, the Christian faith has transformed entire cultures and civilizations, building cathedrals and universities, proclaiming God's goodness, beauty and truth through art and literature, science and medicine. The Christian faith may similarly change the world again today. The church can be revived to become a renewing power in our society―if we answer the call to a new Christian renaissance that challenges darkness with the hope of Christian faith. In this hopeful appeal for cultural transformation, Guinness shares opportunities for Christians, on both local and global levels, to win back the West and to contribute constructively to the human future. Hearkening back to similar pivotal points in history, Guinness encourages Christians in the quest for societal change. Each chapter closes with thought-provoking discussion questions and a brief, heart-felt prayer that challenges and motivates us to take action in our lives today.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
About the author
Os Guinness
77 books342 followersOs Guinness (D.Phil., Oxford) is the author or editor of more than twenty-five books, including The American Hour, Time for Truth and The Case for Civility. A frequent speaker and prominent social critic, he was the founder of the Trinity Forum and has been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies. He lives near Washington, D.C.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
February 4, 2019
An excellent and timely critique of how the Church should be engaging the culture. It also contains (as an appendix) the entire text of the Evangelical Manifesto which I found to be quite instructional since the term ‘Evangelical’ was quite familiar but was typically associated with political action (as in the Moral Majority of the 80’s and 90’s).
May 26, 2015
This is what I have been waiting for someone to say and Guinness says it well.
If I could I would highlight the entire last chapter that Guinness reprints of the Evangelical Manifesto, but as it is I will only mention a few salient points at the end of this review.
p. 14
Can the Christian church in the advanced modern world be renewed and restored even now and be sufficiently changed to have a hope of again changing the world through the power of the gospel? Or is all such talk merely whistling in the dark--pointless, naive and irresponsible?
Let there be now wavering in our answer. Such is the truth and power of the gospel that the church can be revived, reformed and restored to be a renewing power in the world again. There is no question that the good news of Jesus has effected powerful personal and cultural change in the past. There is no question too that it is still doing so in many parts of the world today. By God's grace it will do so again even here in the heart of the advanced modern world where the Christian church is presently in sorry disarray.
p. 23
We are at a truly Augustinian moment, for St. Augustine died in north Africa with the Vandals at the gates, and he had lived through the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in A.D. 410, the date that is the most celebrated milestone in the decline and fall of Rome's Western empire after eight hundred years of Roman dominance. As St. Jerome wrote famously, if melodramatically, "The light of the world was put out and the head of the Empire was cut off." Surely, it was widely felt, the end of all things was at hand.
Augustine's privilege and his challenge was to trust God and live faithfully at such a time of turmoil, breakdown and distress, and to articulate a vision of the kingdom of God that could form a pathway to cross the dark ages between the collapse of Rome in the West and the centuries-later rise of Christendom.
pgs. 25-26
The world to come will be shaped by whether the worldwide Christian church recovers its integrity and effectiveness and demonstrates a faith that can escape cultural captivity and prevail under the conditions of advanced modernity--or does not. After all, religion will always be decisive in culture, just as culture is in politics, and as the most numerous and diverse faith on earth, the Christian faith is bound to be influential in the future one way or the other--either through its faithfulness or its failure.
pgs. 27-28
Only God knows the outcome of the present state of affairs. He alone knows whether we are moving toward some bright new dawn of global affairs, or in W.B. Yeats's terms, "slouching toward Bethlehem," in a new dark age made "more sinister, and perhaps more protracted," as Churchill warned in the same speech, "by the lights of perverted science"--or whether we will simply muddle along somewhere in between. We do not know the outcome, so we have to act in faith through the chronic obscurity of the present. What we do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that we are called to "have no fear," and therefore not to indulge in what is currently the world's dominant emotion, fear. Nor are we to respond to the specter of crisis and decline with either nostalgia or despair.
pg. 28
We therefore face a common challenge as followers of Jesus in the advanced modern world. It is, I believe, that we trust in God and his gospel to move out confidently into the world, living and working for a new Christian renaissance, and thus challenge the darkness with the hope of Christian faith, believing in an outcome that lies beyond the horizon of all we can see and accomplish today.
pg. 29
Choose your own word. Call it renewal, call it reformation, call it restoration, call it revival, call it the simple but profound Jewish term return, or call it renaissance. What matters is that it is a movement that is led by the Spirit of God, which involves the people of God returning to the ways of God and so demonstrating in our time the kingdom of God, and not in word only but in power and with the plausibility of community expression.
pg. 31
The global era represents the most significant opportunity for the Christian church since the apostles and the most significant challenge for the church since the apostles.
pg. 35
For anyone who weighs the momentous significance of this situation, it highlights the three major tasks the global church must undertake over the course of the twenty-first century; to prepare the Global South, to win back the Western world, and to contribute to the human future. These tasks go far wider than the immediate issue of a Christian renaissance in the Western world, but it is an inescapable feature of the global era that no task anywhere in the world can afford to ignore the wider challenges elsewhere in the world. These three global tasks must therefore form the horizon of our thinking about the more local issues and challenges we face in the West.
p. 50
For many decades, my own concern has focused on a global issue that will lie beneath many of the other issues: how we are to live with our deepest differences, especially when those differences are religious and idealogical, and most especially when they clash over matters of common public life. In short, how are we to forge a global public square?
p. 55
As his [Jesus] full teaching makes clear and the rest of the New Testament amplifies, "Worldliness" and its opposite "other-worldliness," are the two extremes that Christians are called to avoid, and the challenge is to follow him in the more faithful and far more demanding position in between. Far from unfaithful, as we shall see, this creative Christian engagement with culture and with the world is a key source of power of the gospel in the church and of Christians in the world.
p.58
a culture is simply "a way of life lived in common."
p. 62
...some of the so-called radicalism is actually a shrunken version of faith, which is deficient in theology, unaware of history and lacking a robust understanding of calling--and therefore incapable of truly engaging society and creating culture.
In strong contrast, culture creation requires a long obedience over several generations, which requires a steady engagement with wider society through the callings of all believers in all their lives, which requires, strong, stable lives lived in common, which requires a vibrant worshiping, teaching and felowshiping community, which requires a faith that is true to Jesus above all rival claimants such as personal lifestyle, political party, economic imperatives and entertainment fashions.
In short, we must foster a robust discipleship with a faith worthy of our Lord--with a reach as high as the awe and majesty of God, as deep as the depths of the Scriptures, as rich as the stories and lessons of history, and as wide as the infinite varieties of the worldwide church. Unquestionably, culture creation requires time and perseverance. It is not a matter of harvesting mushrooms but of growing oak trees.
p. 63
...our aim should always be to advance teh kingdom of God rather than create culture. But on the other hand, Christian faithfulness will always have cultural consequences, if only as a by-product of Christians following the call of Jesus and aiming for higher and other things.
p. 64
What were the odds that a rural carpenter's son from an obscure backwater of the Roman Empire would outshine the pride and glory of the greatest emperor and the mightiest warrior captains of history? How likely was it that the birthday of a man viewed as a disgraced and executed provincial criminal would come to mark the year that for most of the world divides all history? As Christopher Dawson noted, from the perspective of a secular historian the life of Jesus "was not only unimportant, but actually invisible.."
And yet. And yet.
p.75
...when followers of Jesus live out the gospel in the world, as we are called to do, we become an incarnation of the truth of the gospel and an expression of the character and shape of its truth. It is this living in truth that proves culturally powerful.
p.85
Quoting G.K. Chesterton: A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
p. 86
The Christian, then, does not believe in modern revolutionary change that is effected from the outside only, for such change is always too shallow and does not last. But nor is the Christian ever content with merely being "present" in the world. The key to changing the world is not simply being there, but an active, transforming engagement of a singularly robust and energetic kind. And importantly for many Christians today, we must go deeper than a shallow, purely intellectual understanding of worldviews. What changes the world is not a fully developed Christian worldview, but a worldview actually lived--in other words, in Christian lives that are the Word made flesh again.
p. 87
(On hindsight enabling us to see where previous generation went wrong...)
We might be humbler, if not mortified, if we could hear what our grandchildren and their grandchildren will think of us someday--sometimes it is bad enough to know how our children view us now. For doubtless, we are "so twenty-first century," just as the Victorians were children of the nineteenth, and the Puritans of the sixteenth and seventeenth.
Faithful presence is not enough. It is merely the beginning. Jesus was not merely present in the world, but far, far more. He was intensely active; he taught extensively, he healed countless people from all sorts of sickness and disease, he delivered from the domination of evil spirits, he drove out moneychangers from the temple, he raised people from the dead, he confronted hypocrisy, and he set his face toward Jerusalem and his active choice to die. Like him, then, we must be not only present but active, and so dedicated to the world yet so dead to the world to which we are dedicated, that in some small way we too may strike a critical tension with the world that will be the source of the culture-shaping power that only the church an exhibit.
3 Principles in "Dynamics of the Kingdom" Ch. 5
-The ideas of leaders always outweigh the ideas of followers
Evangelicals have too often been populist to a fault. At times they have been disdainful of education and discipline, suspicious and resentful of leaders and elites, and have tended to put their faith in the opinions of the common person and in the power of mass movements. But this has been at their cost. Like stormy waves breaking on a great rock, their mass movements have at times been impressive, but they have left the rock--and the culture--unmoved.
-Citing Nathan Hatch's Democratization of American Christianity
**For more on this see Zeynep Tufekci: How the Internet has made social change easy to organize, hard to win
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo2Ai...
pg. 98-99
Saddest of all, this populism has become self-perpetuating at some levels for the same people who bemoan the hostility of the elites have bred shallow, vulgar and simplistic expressions of faith that few thoughtful people could ever take seriously--and which have little chance of changing anything, let alone the world.
-The second lesson to grow clearer is that ideas are more powerful when they are exerted and the center of a society, rather than the periphery.
p.100
-The third lesson we must take into account is that ideas spread best through networks, rather than through either individuals or institutions.
p. 104
Even in the grand age of leadership seminars, management studies and project management, and the countless bestsellers on the umpteen secrets of business success, it is the Spirit of God who leads the advance of the kingdom of God.
pgs. 108-109
...we live in an age when we take great pride in our purposes, our plans and our projects. Everything has to be "purpose filled," "intentional" and "by design." For most people, their achievements may fall short of their ambitions, but the illusion is still common that, like Friedrich Nietzsche, we can write the story of our lives according to the grand theme, "Thus I willed it." Add to this the mindset the capacities empowered by modern management, and the dream is inspired of how we can change the world through our own endeavors. And today the final touch is the fashionable discussion of how me must each think through the "legacy" that we wish to leave behind us when we die.
pgs. 109-110
Most of our lives are closer to the heroes of Hebrews 11. By faith these men and women rose to trust God and follow the visions God had given them with courage and perseverance, but they also died in faith without seeing the fulfillment of the promises and the fruition of their visions. At best they hailed them from afar in faith. But that was enough to make them strangers and exiles in the world of their times, and that was enough too for God to declare that he was not ashamed to be their God and to prepare a city for them. In other words, even the best and highest of our human endeavors usually have a single word written over them--incomplete.
p. 111
Put differently again, Jesus tells his followers to seek first God's kingdom, "and all these things will be added to you." we are to trust and obey God, and to follow his call in every inch of our lives, in every second of our time, and with every gift with which we have been endowed. And we are then to leave the result as well as the assessment to God.
p.112
Whether our prospects as Christians today look bright or dismal, whether the tide of modern culture is flowing our way or against us, whether we are strong in numbers or almost seem to be on our own, such external factors are all irrelevant. We must each follow our calling, pursue out utmost for his highest in every possible way and count unquestioningly on the dynamics of the kingdom of God, and then, knowing our own chronic ignorance and the probably incompleteness of our endeavors, trust the outcome to God.
p. 124
...it is also true that all Christian cultures are flawed, just as all of us as Christians are fallen. Only when we meet God face to face will we have become what he is making us to be, and only when God establishes his kingdom fully will we have a culture that is truly, completely and absolutely worth of the name Christian. In short, the golden age for the Christian always lies ahead, and until that day our highest endeavors must always be regarded with realism and a wry humility. Before we knew God we fell short of God's standards, and it is still grace that we need to rescue us and make us more what we should be. Once again, "not yet" and "incomplete" are written over even our best ideas and endeavors. We thank God for the different traditions and for the best of the great ages of faith that lie behind us, but our golden age lies ahead when the Messiah returns.
pgs. 144-145
Let it be clearly understood that our hope in the possibility of renewal is squarely grounded, not in ourselves, not in history and the fact that it has happened before, but in the power of God demonstrated but by the truth of the resurrection of Jesus. Ever since humans have reflected on the meaning of life in the face of death, we have raised our variations on the question, "Can these bones live?" (Ezek. 37) or "If a man die, shall he live again?" In Antigone, for example, Sophocles's great celebration of humanity, he speaks of the human as "clever beyond all dreams," but "there's only death that he cannot find an escape from." We may master nature, we may master each other, and we may sometimes even master ourselves, but we cannot master death.
But Jesus did. Like lightning in the pitch darkness of midnight, his resurrection flashes across the human landscape as the day death died, and the poet John Donne states well the human response now, "Death, be not proud." The risen Jesus stands as the Lord of life, and the lesser challenge of Christian renewal looks puny in the light of the greater triumph of the resurrection of Jesus.
From the Evangelical Manifesto:
pgs. 170-171
First, we Evangelicals repudiate two equal and opposite errors into which many Christians have fallen recently. One error has been to privatize faith, interpreting and applying it to the personal and spiritual realm only. Such dualism falsely divorces the spiritual from the secular, and causes faith to lose its integrity and become "privately engaging and publicly irrelevant," and another for of "hot tub spirituality."
The other error, made by both the religious left and the religious right in recent decades, is to politicize faith, using faith to express essentially political points that have lost touch with biblical truth. That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes "the regime at prayer," Christians become "useful idiots" for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form. Christian beliefs ar eused as weapons for political interests.
The politicization of faith is never a sign of strength but of weakness. The saying is wise: "The first thing to say about politics is that politics is not the first thing."
The Evangelical soul is not for sale. It has already been bought at an infinite price.
Amen & Amen
If I could I would highlight the entire last chapter that Guinness reprints of the Evangelical Manifesto, but as it is I will only mention a few salient points at the end of this review.
p. 14
Can the Christian church in the advanced modern world be renewed and restored even now and be sufficiently changed to have a hope of again changing the world through the power of the gospel? Or is all such talk merely whistling in the dark--pointless, naive and irresponsible?
Let there be now wavering in our answer. Such is the truth and power of the gospel that the church can be revived, reformed and restored to be a renewing power in the world again. There is no question that the good news of Jesus has effected powerful personal and cultural change in the past. There is no question too that it is still doing so in many parts of the world today. By God's grace it will do so again even here in the heart of the advanced modern world where the Christian church is presently in sorry disarray.
p. 23
We are at a truly Augustinian moment, for St. Augustine died in north Africa with the Vandals at the gates, and he had lived through the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in A.D. 410, the date that is the most celebrated milestone in the decline and fall of Rome's Western empire after eight hundred years of Roman dominance. As St. Jerome wrote famously, if melodramatically, "The light of the world was put out and the head of the Empire was cut off." Surely, it was widely felt, the end of all things was at hand.
Augustine's privilege and his challenge was to trust God and live faithfully at such a time of turmoil, breakdown and distress, and to articulate a vision of the kingdom of God that could form a pathway to cross the dark ages between the collapse of Rome in the West and the centuries-later rise of Christendom.
pgs. 25-26
The world to come will be shaped by whether the worldwide Christian church recovers its integrity and effectiveness and demonstrates a faith that can escape cultural captivity and prevail under the conditions of advanced modernity--or does not. After all, religion will always be decisive in culture, just as culture is in politics, and as the most numerous and diverse faith on earth, the Christian faith is bound to be influential in the future one way or the other--either through its faithfulness or its failure.
pgs. 27-28
Only God knows the outcome of the present state of affairs. He alone knows whether we are moving toward some bright new dawn of global affairs, or in W.B. Yeats's terms, "slouching toward Bethlehem," in a new dark age made "more sinister, and perhaps more protracted," as Churchill warned in the same speech, "by the lights of perverted science"--or whether we will simply muddle along somewhere in between. We do not know the outcome, so we have to act in faith through the chronic obscurity of the present. What we do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that we are called to "have no fear," and therefore not to indulge in what is currently the world's dominant emotion, fear. Nor are we to respond to the specter of crisis and decline with either nostalgia or despair.
pg. 28
We therefore face a common challenge as followers of Jesus in the advanced modern world. It is, I believe, that we trust in God and his gospel to move out confidently into the world, living and working for a new Christian renaissance, and thus challenge the darkness with the hope of Christian faith, believing in an outcome that lies beyond the horizon of all we can see and accomplish today.
pg. 29
Choose your own word. Call it renewal, call it reformation, call it restoration, call it revival, call it the simple but profound Jewish term return, or call it renaissance. What matters is that it is a movement that is led by the Spirit of God, which involves the people of God returning to the ways of God and so demonstrating in our time the kingdom of God, and not in word only but in power and with the plausibility of community expression.
pg. 31
The global era represents the most significant opportunity for the Christian church since the apostles and the most significant challenge for the church since the apostles.
pg. 35
For anyone who weighs the momentous significance of this situation, it highlights the three major tasks the global church must undertake over the course of the twenty-first century; to prepare the Global South, to win back the Western world, and to contribute to the human future. These tasks go far wider than the immediate issue of a Christian renaissance in the Western world, but it is an inescapable feature of the global era that no task anywhere in the world can afford to ignore the wider challenges elsewhere in the world. These three global tasks must therefore form the horizon of our thinking about the more local issues and challenges we face in the West.
p. 50
For many decades, my own concern has focused on a global issue that will lie beneath many of the other issues: how we are to live with our deepest differences, especially when those differences are religious and idealogical, and most especially when they clash over matters of common public life. In short, how are we to forge a global public square?
p. 55
As his [Jesus] full teaching makes clear and the rest of the New Testament amplifies, "Worldliness" and its opposite "other-worldliness," are the two extremes that Christians are called to avoid, and the challenge is to follow him in the more faithful and far more demanding position in between. Far from unfaithful, as we shall see, this creative Christian engagement with culture and with the world is a key source of power of the gospel in the church and of Christians in the world.
p.58
a culture is simply "a way of life lived in common."
p. 62
...some of the so-called radicalism is actually a shrunken version of faith, which is deficient in theology, unaware of history and lacking a robust understanding of calling--and therefore incapable of truly engaging society and creating culture.
In strong contrast, culture creation requires a long obedience over several generations, which requires a steady engagement with wider society through the callings of all believers in all their lives, which requires, strong, stable lives lived in common, which requires a vibrant worshiping, teaching and felowshiping community, which requires a faith that is true to Jesus above all rival claimants such as personal lifestyle, political party, economic imperatives and entertainment fashions.
In short, we must foster a robust discipleship with a faith worthy of our Lord--with a reach as high as the awe and majesty of God, as deep as the depths of the Scriptures, as rich as the stories and lessons of history, and as wide as the infinite varieties of the worldwide church. Unquestionably, culture creation requires time and perseverance. It is not a matter of harvesting mushrooms but of growing oak trees.
p. 63
...our aim should always be to advance teh kingdom of God rather than create culture. But on the other hand, Christian faithfulness will always have cultural consequences, if only as a by-product of Christians following the call of Jesus and aiming for higher and other things.
p. 64
What were the odds that a rural carpenter's son from an obscure backwater of the Roman Empire would outshine the pride and glory of the greatest emperor and the mightiest warrior captains of history? How likely was it that the birthday of a man viewed as a disgraced and executed provincial criminal would come to mark the year that for most of the world divides all history? As Christopher Dawson noted, from the perspective of a secular historian the life of Jesus "was not only unimportant, but actually invisible.."
And yet. And yet.
p.75
...when followers of Jesus live out the gospel in the world, as we are called to do, we become an incarnation of the truth of the gospel and an expression of the character and shape of its truth. It is this living in truth that proves culturally powerful.
p.85
Quoting G.K. Chesterton: A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
p. 86
The Christian, then, does not believe in modern revolutionary change that is effected from the outside only, for such change is always too shallow and does not last. But nor is the Christian ever content with merely being "present" in the world. The key to changing the world is not simply being there, but an active, transforming engagement of a singularly robust and energetic kind. And importantly for many Christians today, we must go deeper than a shallow, purely intellectual understanding of worldviews. What changes the world is not a fully developed Christian worldview, but a worldview actually lived--in other words, in Christian lives that are the Word made flesh again.
p. 87
(On hindsight enabling us to see where previous generation went wrong...)
We might be humbler, if not mortified, if we could hear what our grandchildren and their grandchildren will think of us someday--sometimes it is bad enough to know how our children view us now. For doubtless, we are "so twenty-first century," just as the Victorians were children of the nineteenth, and the Puritans of the sixteenth and seventeenth.
Faithful presence is not enough. It is merely the beginning. Jesus was not merely present in the world, but far, far more. He was intensely active; he taught extensively, he healed countless people from all sorts of sickness and disease, he delivered from the domination of evil spirits, he drove out moneychangers from the temple, he raised people from the dead, he confronted hypocrisy, and he set his face toward Jerusalem and his active choice to die. Like him, then, we must be not only present but active, and so dedicated to the world yet so dead to the world to which we are dedicated, that in some small way we too may strike a critical tension with the world that will be the source of the culture-shaping power that only the church an exhibit.
3 Principles in "Dynamics of the Kingdom" Ch. 5
-The ideas of leaders always outweigh the ideas of followers
Evangelicals have too often been populist to a fault. At times they have been disdainful of education and discipline, suspicious and resentful of leaders and elites, and have tended to put their faith in the opinions of the common person and in the power of mass movements. But this has been at their cost. Like stormy waves breaking on a great rock, their mass movements have at times been impressive, but they have left the rock--and the culture--unmoved.
-Citing Nathan Hatch's Democratization of American Christianity
**For more on this see Zeynep Tufekci: How the Internet has made social change easy to organize, hard to win
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo2Ai...
pg. 98-99
Saddest of all, this populism has become self-perpetuating at some levels for the same people who bemoan the hostility of the elites have bred shallow, vulgar and simplistic expressions of faith that few thoughtful people could ever take seriously--and which have little chance of changing anything, let alone the world.
-The second lesson to grow clearer is that ideas are more powerful when they are exerted and the center of a society, rather than the periphery.
p.100
-The third lesson we must take into account is that ideas spread best through networks, rather than through either individuals or institutions.
p. 104
Even in the grand age of leadership seminars, management studies and project management, and the countless bestsellers on the umpteen secrets of business success, it is the Spirit of God who leads the advance of the kingdom of God.
pgs. 108-109
...we live in an age when we take great pride in our purposes, our plans and our projects. Everything has to be "purpose filled," "intentional" and "by design." For most people, their achievements may fall short of their ambitions, but the illusion is still common that, like Friedrich Nietzsche, we can write the story of our lives according to the grand theme, "Thus I willed it." Add to this the mindset the capacities empowered by modern management, and the dream is inspired of how we can change the world through our own endeavors. And today the final touch is the fashionable discussion of how me must each think through the "legacy" that we wish to leave behind us when we die.
pgs. 109-110
Most of our lives are closer to the heroes of Hebrews 11. By faith these men and women rose to trust God and follow the visions God had given them with courage and perseverance, but they also died in faith without seeing the fulfillment of the promises and the fruition of their visions. At best they hailed them from afar in faith. But that was enough to make them strangers and exiles in the world of their times, and that was enough too for God to declare that he was not ashamed to be their God and to prepare a city for them. In other words, even the best and highest of our human endeavors usually have a single word written over them--incomplete.
p. 111
Put differently again, Jesus tells his followers to seek first God's kingdom, "and all these things will be added to you." we are to trust and obey God, and to follow his call in every inch of our lives, in every second of our time, and with every gift with which we have been endowed. And we are then to leave the result as well as the assessment to God.
p.112
Whether our prospects as Christians today look bright or dismal, whether the tide of modern culture is flowing our way or against us, whether we are strong in numbers or almost seem to be on our own, such external factors are all irrelevant. We must each follow our calling, pursue out utmost for his highest in every possible way and count unquestioningly on the dynamics of the kingdom of God, and then, knowing our own chronic ignorance and the probably incompleteness of our endeavors, trust the outcome to God.
p. 124
...it is also true that all Christian cultures are flawed, just as all of us as Christians are fallen. Only when we meet God face to face will we have become what he is making us to be, and only when God establishes his kingdom fully will we have a culture that is truly, completely and absolutely worth of the name Christian. In short, the golden age for the Christian always lies ahead, and until that day our highest endeavors must always be regarded with realism and a wry humility. Before we knew God we fell short of God's standards, and it is still grace that we need to rescue us and make us more what we should be. Once again, "not yet" and "incomplete" are written over even our best ideas and endeavors. We thank God for the different traditions and for the best of the great ages of faith that lie behind us, but our golden age lies ahead when the Messiah returns.
pgs. 144-145
Let it be clearly understood that our hope in the possibility of renewal is squarely grounded, not in ourselves, not in history and the fact that it has happened before, but in the power of God demonstrated but by the truth of the resurrection of Jesus. Ever since humans have reflected on the meaning of life in the face of death, we have raised our variations on the question, "Can these bones live?" (Ezek. 37) or "If a man die, shall he live again?" In Antigone, for example, Sophocles's great celebration of humanity, he speaks of the human as "clever beyond all dreams," but "there's only death that he cannot find an escape from." We may master nature, we may master each other, and we may sometimes even master ourselves, but we cannot master death.
But Jesus did. Like lightning in the pitch darkness of midnight, his resurrection flashes across the human landscape as the day death died, and the poet John Donne states well the human response now, "Death, be not proud." The risen Jesus stands as the Lord of life, and the lesser challenge of Christian renewal looks puny in the light of the greater triumph of the resurrection of Jesus.
From the Evangelical Manifesto:
pgs. 170-171
First, we Evangelicals repudiate two equal and opposite errors into which many Christians have fallen recently. One error has been to privatize faith, interpreting and applying it to the personal and spiritual realm only. Such dualism falsely divorces the spiritual from the secular, and causes faith to lose its integrity and become "privately engaging and publicly irrelevant," and another for of "hot tub spirituality."
The other error, made by both the religious left and the religious right in recent decades, is to politicize faith, using faith to express essentially political points that have lost touch with biblical truth. That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes "the regime at prayer," Christians become "useful idiots" for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form. Christian beliefs ar eused as weapons for political interests.
The politicization of faith is never a sign of strength but of weakness. The saying is wise: "The first thing to say about politics is that politics is not the first thing."
The Evangelical soul is not for sale. It has already been bought at an infinite price.
Amen & Amen
October 26, 2014
Subtitled “The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times,” the prolific author, speaker, and social critic Os Guinness pulls no punches about the bleakness of the times we live in. In his latest book entitled Renaissance, writes that:
The “barbarism” Guinness refers to is not just the temptation to raw power or animalistic lust, but the underlying “spirit of the age” and our susceptibility to its whisper. And indeed, it’s the moral “barbarism” of our age, our constant drift from True North that, Guinness asserts, has led to the decline of the Western Church.
While some dismiss the importance of Western civilization’s tether to its “Jewish and Christian roots,” Guinness sees the connection (or lack thereof) as central to the diagnosis of our spiritual plight. In fact, it is our disregard for God and desecration of Western tradition that has led to “decadence,” “desecration,” and “social chaos.”
A grim outlook indeed!
So while “the Western church was the single strongest source of ideas that shaped the rise of the modern world,” it has now become “culturally captive to the world to which it gave rise.”
While Guinness clearly writes from an Evangelical perspective, both wings of the Western church — the Left and Right — come under equal scrutiny in his assessment. In both cases, however, it is a move away from the plain, simple teachings of Jesus and an embrace of the “spirit of the age” which makes both the Evangelical and the Progressive contributors in our descent into “advanced modernity.”
Ultimately, though Guinness’s assessment is bleak, he seeks to summon hope in the reader, concluding that the Western Church needs nothing short of a new Reformation, one that breaks from the allure of secularism and the Church’s enticement with the spirit of the age. It is less about labels than it is a return to orthodoxy.
This is a relatively small book (170-some pages) but extremely dense. Each chapter ends with a prayer, reminding the reader that real, long-term change begins with the individual. It is as I move closer to Jesus and further from the enticements of “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” that hope arises, both in me and the world I inhabit. In this sense, Guinness’s central theme is simple, straightforward and hopeful:
“…all civilizations, whatever their momentary grandeur, have an ultimate flimsiness that is paper thin and cannot hold back the barbarism.”
The “barbarism” Guinness refers to is not just the temptation to raw power or animalistic lust, but the underlying “spirit of the age” and our susceptibility to its whisper. And indeed, it’s the moral “barbarism” of our age, our constant drift from True North that, Guinness asserts, has led to the decline of the Western Church.
“…at this juncture, the West has cut itself off from its own Jewish and Christian roots — the faith, the ideas, the ethics and the way of life that made it the West. It now stands deeply divided, uncertain of its post-Christian identity, and with its dominance waning in the global era.”
While some dismiss the importance of Western civilization’s tether to its “Jewish and Christian roots,” Guinness sees the connection (or lack thereof) as central to the diagnosis of our spiritual plight. In fact, it is our disregard for God and desecration of Western tradition that has led to “decadence,” “desecration,” and “social chaos.”
“Western cultural elites have disregarded God for more than two centuries, but for a while the effects were mostly confined to their own circles. At first, they disregarded God. Then they deliberately desecrated Western tradition and lived in ways that would have spelled disaster if they had been followed more closely. But now in the early twenty-first century, their movement from disregard to desecration to decadence is going mainstream, and the United States is only the lead society among those close to the tipping point.
Soon, as the legalization and then normalization of polyamory, polygamy, pedophilia and incest follow the same logic as that of abortion and homosexuality, the socially destructive consequences of these trends will reverberate throughout society until social chaos is beyond recovery. We can only pray there will be a return to God and sanity before the terrible sentence is pronounced: “God has given them over’ to the consequences of their own settled choices.”
A grim outlook indeed!
So while “the Western church was the single strongest source of ideas that shaped the rise of the modern world,” it has now become “culturally captive to the world to which it gave rise.”
While Guinness clearly writes from an Evangelical perspective, both wings of the Western church — the Left and Right — come under equal scrutiny in his assessment. In both cases, however, it is a move away from the plain, simple teachings of Jesus and an embrace of the “spirit of the age” which makes both the Evangelical and the Progressive contributors in our descent into “advanced modernity.”
“A striking symptom of the church’s problems in the West today is that fact that in a country such as the United States, Christians are still the overwhelming majority of citizens, but the American way of life has moved far away from the life of Jesus — which means simply that the Christians who are the majority are living a way of life closer to the world than to the way of Jesus. In a word, they are worldly and therefore incapable of shaping their culture.”
Ultimately, though Guinness’s assessment is bleak, he seeks to summon hope in the reader, concluding that the Western Church needs nothing short of a new Reformation, one that breaks from the allure of secularism and the Church’s enticement with the spirit of the age. It is less about labels than it is a return to orthodoxy.
“There are many traditions among the followers of Jesus — the Orthodox, Catholic, Evangelical, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Anabaptist and Pentecostal being only the main ones in the West. But an important fact has grown clear over the last generation. Those who are faithful and orthodox in each tradition are closer to the faithful and orthodox in other traditions than to the liberal revisionists in their own tradition. In other words, the closer we are to Jesus,k the less significant the labels that once divided us.” (emphasis mine)
This is a relatively small book (170-some pages) but extremely dense. Each chapter ends with a prayer, reminding the reader that real, long-term change begins with the individual. It is as I move closer to Jesus and further from the enticements of “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” that hope arises, both in me and the world I inhabit. In this sense, Guinness’s central theme is simple, straightforward and hopeful:
“Let there be no wavering in our answer. Such is the truth and power of the gospel that the church can be revived, reformed and restored to be a renewing power in the world again. There is no question that the good news of Jesus has effected powerful personal and cultural change in the past. There is no question too that it is still doing so in many parts of the world today. By God’s grace it will do so again even here in the heart of the advanced modern world where the Christian church is presently in sorry disarray.”
May 3, 2022
Such an important read.
This quote from the book gives the premise:
“We do not know the outcome (of the present state of affairs), so we have to act in faith through the chronic obscurity of the present. What we do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that we are called to have no fear, and therefore not to indulge in what is currently the world’s dominant emotion, fear. Nor are we to respond to the specter of crisis and decline with either nostalgia or despair….
Call it renewal, call it reformation, call it revival, call it the simple but profound Jewish term, return, or call it renaissance. What matters is that it is a movement that is led by the Spirit of God, which involves the people of God returning to the ways of God and so demonstrating in our time the kingdom of God…”
This quote from the book gives the premise:
“We do not know the outcome (of the present state of affairs), so we have to act in faith through the chronic obscurity of the present. What we do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that we are called to have no fear, and therefore not to indulge in what is currently the world’s dominant emotion, fear. Nor are we to respond to the specter of crisis and decline with either nostalgia or despair….
Call it renewal, call it reformation, call it revival, call it the simple but profound Jewish term, return, or call it renaissance. What matters is that it is a movement that is led by the Spirit of God, which involves the people of God returning to the ways of God and so demonstrating in our time the kingdom of God…”
March 6, 2016
Guinness is an optimist and he makes no secret of it. He argues that like Ezekiel, only God knows whether life can come from the dry bones of a post-Christian culture, but he retains an optimism that it is God’s nature to renovate his Church. The thread of his book lays out not only the crisis (hardly needs to be done these days), but how the dynamics of power and influence work as Kingdom meets kingdom… City of God meets City of Man. His encouragement is to see cultural influence as something organic that can be nurtured in human effort and grown in God’s power:
We must each follow our calling, pursue our utmost for his highest in every possible way and count unquestioningly on the dynamics of the kingdom of God, and then knowing our own chronic ignorance and probable incompleteness of our endeavors, trust the outcome to God.
The Guinness argument is not so much about how to more efficiently convert the nations to a particular faith. Rather, he argues that there is great hope for returning to a "Civil Public Square" in which all may engage to many of the best virtues (and without many of the worst vices) of Western Civilization.
The impulse the book generates in me is neatly encapsulated in a paragraph on page 86:
The Christian, then, does not believe in modern revolutionary change that is effected from the outside only, for such change is always too shallow and does not last. But nor is the Christian ever content with merely being "present" in the world. The key to changing the world is not simply being there, but an active, transforming engagement of a singularly robust and energetic kind. And importantly for many Christians today, we must go deeper than a shallow, purely intellectual understanding of worldviews. What changes the world is not a fully developed Christian worldview, but a worldview actually lived -- in other words, in Christian lives that are the Word made flesh again.
and later
Faithful presence is not enough. It is merely the beginning. Jesus was not merely present in the world, but far, far more.
The end of the book includes the full transcript of a document called, An Evangelical Manifesto. It is not the short version of Renaissance, but it debunks a populist characterization of an Evangelical viewpoint which is fundamental to understanding the hope and optimism that Guinness offers in Renaissance
We must each follow our calling, pursue our utmost for his highest in every possible way and count unquestioningly on the dynamics of the kingdom of God, and then knowing our own chronic ignorance and probable incompleteness of our endeavors, trust the outcome to God.
The Guinness argument is not so much about how to more efficiently convert the nations to a particular faith. Rather, he argues that there is great hope for returning to a "Civil Public Square" in which all may engage to many of the best virtues (and without many of the worst vices) of Western Civilization.
The impulse the book generates in me is neatly encapsulated in a paragraph on page 86:
The Christian, then, does not believe in modern revolutionary change that is effected from the outside only, for such change is always too shallow and does not last. But nor is the Christian ever content with merely being "present" in the world. The key to changing the world is not simply being there, but an active, transforming engagement of a singularly robust and energetic kind. And importantly for many Christians today, we must go deeper than a shallow, purely intellectual understanding of worldviews. What changes the world is not a fully developed Christian worldview, but a worldview actually lived -- in other words, in Christian lives that are the Word made flesh again.
and later
Faithful presence is not enough. It is merely the beginning. Jesus was not merely present in the world, but far, far more.
The end of the book includes the full transcript of a document called, An Evangelical Manifesto. It is not the short version of Renaissance, but it debunks a populist characterization of an Evangelical viewpoint which is fundamental to understanding the hope and optimism that Guinness offers in Renaissance
December 22, 2015
The best thing about this book was the Evangelical Manifesto reproduced at the end. On the whole, I found Guinness’s style too abstract and academic to hold my interest. I get that he sees hope for the survival of the Christian faith and that in itself is encouraging. But he uses subjective, emotion-charged language to decry the dark times and similarly subjective emotion-charged language to express his hope for the future of the church, without naming specifics — until he finally gets to the Manifesto. Two-and-a-half stars would be about right.
December 24, 2016
No fluff zone
There's a place for light reading, quick devotional thoughts, and snappy quips and quotes, but to really change and advance you need to be intentional about shaping your thinking, for all great advancements began with great thoughts and ideas.
Therefore, it is vital to expose yourself to great thinkers who both challenge and inspire you--Os Guinness is a good person to include on your short list. And this book would be a good place to begin.
There's a place for light reading, quick devotional thoughts, and snappy quips and quotes, but to really change and advance you need to be intentional about shaping your thinking, for all great advancements began with great thoughts and ideas.
Therefore, it is vital to expose yourself to great thinkers who both challenge and inspire you--Os Guinness is a good person to include on your short list. And this book would be a good place to begin.
May 14, 2017
The best way forward is to go back. Go back to our faith in Jesus Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to work through us. Go back evangelicals!
August 17, 2017
Certainly, Os Guinness sets this book up as his call for the restoration of the evangelical within Evangelicalism. He is at pains to make the point that he is not making an argument for the superiority of the Western Church; but he is optimistic that a restoration of the evangelical can renew the Western Church, and consequently, the West, if Christians regain their devotion and faithfulness to Jesus Christ. Essentially, the Church needs to be like Augustine's City of God--to be in the world but not of the world--in order for the Church to be effective in living out the gospel, thereby critiquing the City of Man through their deeds, testimony and words. In sum, this is a useful book for evangelicals to have if they would like to read up more on the issue of what it means to have a genuine, gospel-based model of Christian engagement with culture. Readers should not expect deep analysis of history but rather broad-stroke gleanings of the lessons of history in order to make his case about a gospel-based renaissance.
June 24, 2020
This book is highly prophetic. Not in the sense of future-telling, but in the vein of the Old Testament prophet who challenged and rebuked the culture that was becoming cold and abandoning God. I was challenged throughout, even as the book stayed in the theoretical level, thus forcing the reader to come up with their own personal applications. It would be an ideal book to generate discussion and friendly debate. Two of my favourite quotations were:
Page 43: “Ten million ignorant assertions, even when magnified and accelerated in a hundred million tweets and “likes,” still never add up to truth or wisdom, or what is right and good.”
Page 129, (The visible church) “has ended not surprisingly in, first, a suicidal dilution of the Christian faith, and, then, in a significant defection from the faith by those who were repulsed by such shallowness and folly.”
Page 43: “Ten million ignorant assertions, even when magnified and accelerated in a hundred million tweets and “likes,” still never add up to truth or wisdom, or what is right and good.”
Page 129, (The visible church) “has ended not surprisingly in, first, a suicidal dilution of the Christian faith, and, then, in a significant defection from the faith by those who were repulsed by such shallowness and folly.”
March 7, 2020
Toward the beginning I wasn't a huge fan of Guinness' curmudgeony style, thinking a not infrequent number of "Ok Boomer"s. But later I realized this guy is critical of everything, the Left and the Right, Catholics and Protestants included. A favorite moment was pp. 90-91, where he writes of the Reformed/Arminian dispute:
Few controversies among Christians are so fruitless as the perennial debate over God's sovereignty and human significance... Overall, it is quite clear that the general discussion of the issue has commonly been unproductive. Far too many hours have been wasted, far too much ink has been spilt, and because of the disagreements far too many have dismissed others as not being true Christians and have been dismissed by other Christians in their turn.
Few controversies among Christians are so fruitless as the perennial debate over God's sovereignty and human significance... Overall, it is quite clear that the general discussion of the issue has commonly been unproductive. Far too many hours have been wasted, far too much ink has been spilt, and because of the disagreements far too many have dismissed others as not being true Christians and have been dismissed by other Christians in their turn.
July 1, 2023
I enjoyed this book and was also motivated by it to more involved in seeking to make an impact on the world in which I live. Many Christians are disappointed and even discouraged by many secular trends that they see in our world, even in our own communities and churches. But we need to be reminded, and this book does, that the battle is not ours, it is the Lord's and as Jesus himself said" I will built my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" We are on the winning side; lets not sit down and bemoan the sad state of affairs. Let's do what God has called each of us to do to change our world by means of the gospel preached and lived out in our lives.
February 15, 2018
In this book, Os Guinness attempts to pull Christians back from the extremes of liberalism and conservatism to the center of "mere Christianity" or following Jesus and living like he did. Back to loving God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and MIND. His call to REAL evangelicalism or spreading the good news that Jesus brought to the world resonated with me. We need to make sure our focus is always on Jesus.
April 7, 2019
This book is excellent. The basis of the book is that the best days of religion are still ahead, regardless of the appearance of how things are right now. Guinness makes a strong case for the power of the Gospel and the continuation of spreading of God's word, even though it looks like evil is winning at every turn. Oh, to be sure, there are and will be struggles, but there is nothing the church hasn't faced before.
Read and study this book. It is excellent.
Read and study this book. It is excellent.
September 21, 2015
Summary: Against the doomsayers speaking of the darkness of the times, Guinness remains hopeful for a spiritual and cultural renaissance in the west, rooted in the power of the Christian message; and he charts the tasks of faithful witness that precede this and the contours of such a renaissance.
Renaissance. Often the ideas of renaissance and the Christian faith are placed in opposition to one another with enlightenment, high culture and reason on one side and faith and superstition on the other. Guinness begins this book with arguing that in fact, renaissance is a deeply Christian idea, signifying a rebirth, a renewal that is in fact at the heart of the message of the Christian faith. Thus, unlike some who decry what they see as a declining western culture and at the same time, the eclipse of western Christianity, Guinness remains hopeful for the possibility of spiritual and cultural renewal in the west, and the global impact of the Christian faith.
He sees the church as at an "Augustinian moment" where one age and civilization is passing and what is to emerge remains to be seen. In this moment, he sees Christians needing to come to terms with globalization, the challenge of embracing global Christian faithfulness instead of cultural captivities of North and South, and finally, a trust in the continuing sovereignty of God. In his second chapter, he goes on to further delineate what he sees as the global tasks of the church in this moment. One is to prepare (or rather warn off from the materialism and metrics focus of the North) the church in the South. This is one place where I would have liked Guinness to consider more the possibilities of the potential for the witness of the church in the Majority World to challenge the west, particularly in light of the second task he enumerates of winning back the western world. Finally, he speaks eloquently of concern for the human future.
The next two chapters consider the cultural power of Christianity. Chapter three shows how on one hand, Christianity is unnecessary to the creation of cultural goods, which may arise apart from Christian influence and ought to be affirmed by Christians. At the same time, he speaks of the unlikely cultural impact of the Jewish carpenter and the movement he left, and its undeniable impact in philanthropy, reform movements, the rise of the university, modern science, and human rights. He argues in chapter four that the secret of such cultural power is the unique tension within Christianity of being both in and yet not part of the world, to be both world-affirming, and world-denying.
The last two chapters then consider then the grounds for hopefulness when facing the challenges of the present time. Over against the current wisdom of scholarship that culture influence comes through leadership, through the 'centers' of society, and through networks, which Guinness does not dispute, he argues for the continuing power of the Spirit of God who leads unlikely individuals into culture-transforming roles, from bringing the gospel to Africa and Europe in the first century down to the present day. He argues for the "great reversals" where those least imagined might play the greatest role. And he argues that cultural renewal is a by-product of great ideas about God and his purposes. In chapter six, he then contends that the "golden age" is not some time in the past but yet before us, and not in the sweet by-and-by. Rather, he holds out hope that the power of the gospel, the Christian message, may indeed surprise us, that it is often darkest before the dawn, and that we go forward by first going back to first principles.
The book concludes with the "Evangelical Manifesto" a document signed by a number of evangelical leaders, in the drafting of which Guinness had a significant part. It restates the core marks of evangelicalism, repents from some of the cultural captivities of western evangelicalism and marks out the key tasks of faithfulness before this community.
Guinness has been one of those voices in my life who brings clarity to "understanding the present time" from his Dust of Death, which made sense to me of the culture of the Seventies while I was a student, down to the present day. And while I found myself in sympathy with nearly all that is written in this book, I also found myself wondering if it is speaking to those beyond my generation, and beyond the white, western evangelicalism of my generation. The index of names references those with whom my generation have been in conversation for forty years--Barth, Maritain, and McLuhan, to name a few.
I wonder if the author is also engaged with younger writers from Thomas Piketty to James K.A. Smith, and those speaking from the Majority World perspectives like Soong-Chan Rah. I raise this because the author's perspective is one I value, and one that should have a wider reach. I think this would be helped by a wider and more contemporary circle of discourse--not that he would concur with all of these ideas or writers, but that he would engage them. These and many others also care about the flourishing of human beings and cultures, and those who are Christians also see the renaissance Guinness so hopes for. Perhaps such a confluence of discourse might even be the beginnings of such a renaissance.
Renaissance. Often the ideas of renaissance and the Christian faith are placed in opposition to one another with enlightenment, high culture and reason on one side and faith and superstition on the other. Guinness begins this book with arguing that in fact, renaissance is a deeply Christian idea, signifying a rebirth, a renewal that is in fact at the heart of the message of the Christian faith. Thus, unlike some who decry what they see as a declining western culture and at the same time, the eclipse of western Christianity, Guinness remains hopeful for the possibility of spiritual and cultural renewal in the west, and the global impact of the Christian faith.
He sees the church as at an "Augustinian moment" where one age and civilization is passing and what is to emerge remains to be seen. In this moment, he sees Christians needing to come to terms with globalization, the challenge of embracing global Christian faithfulness instead of cultural captivities of North and South, and finally, a trust in the continuing sovereignty of God. In his second chapter, he goes on to further delineate what he sees as the global tasks of the church in this moment. One is to prepare (or rather warn off from the materialism and metrics focus of the North) the church in the South. This is one place where I would have liked Guinness to consider more the possibilities of the potential for the witness of the church in the Majority World to challenge the west, particularly in light of the second task he enumerates of winning back the western world. Finally, he speaks eloquently of concern for the human future.
The next two chapters consider the cultural power of Christianity. Chapter three shows how on one hand, Christianity is unnecessary to the creation of cultural goods, which may arise apart from Christian influence and ought to be affirmed by Christians. At the same time, he speaks of the unlikely cultural impact of the Jewish carpenter and the movement he left, and its undeniable impact in philanthropy, reform movements, the rise of the university, modern science, and human rights. He argues in chapter four that the secret of such cultural power is the unique tension within Christianity of being both in and yet not part of the world, to be both world-affirming, and world-denying.
The last two chapters then consider then the grounds for hopefulness when facing the challenges of the present time. Over against the current wisdom of scholarship that culture influence comes through leadership, through the 'centers' of society, and through networks, which Guinness does not dispute, he argues for the continuing power of the Spirit of God who leads unlikely individuals into culture-transforming roles, from bringing the gospel to Africa and Europe in the first century down to the present day. He argues for the "great reversals" where those least imagined might play the greatest role. And he argues that cultural renewal is a by-product of great ideas about God and his purposes. In chapter six, he then contends that the "golden age" is not some time in the past but yet before us, and not in the sweet by-and-by. Rather, he holds out hope that the power of the gospel, the Christian message, may indeed surprise us, that it is often darkest before the dawn, and that we go forward by first going back to first principles.
The book concludes with the "Evangelical Manifesto" a document signed by a number of evangelical leaders, in the drafting of which Guinness had a significant part. It restates the core marks of evangelicalism, repents from some of the cultural captivities of western evangelicalism and marks out the key tasks of faithfulness before this community.
Guinness has been one of those voices in my life who brings clarity to "understanding the present time" from his Dust of Death, which made sense to me of the culture of the Seventies while I was a student, down to the present day. And while I found myself in sympathy with nearly all that is written in this book, I also found myself wondering if it is speaking to those beyond my generation, and beyond the white, western evangelicalism of my generation. The index of names references those with whom my generation have been in conversation for forty years--Barth, Maritain, and McLuhan, to name a few.
I wonder if the author is also engaged with younger writers from Thomas Piketty to James K.A. Smith, and those speaking from the Majority World perspectives like Soong-Chan Rah. I raise this because the author's perspective is one I value, and one that should have a wider reach. I think this would be helped by a wider and more contemporary circle of discourse--not that he would concur with all of these ideas or writers, but that he would engage them. These and many others also care about the flourishing of human beings and cultures, and those who are Christians also see the renaissance Guinness so hopes for. Perhaps such a confluence of discourse might even be the beginnings of such a renaissance.
March 2, 2021
Os is a great writer. He pens clearly how the Gospel can still make a difference in our dark age. The Church can be revived again.
We may be in the dark about our times, but we are not in the dark about God. Whatever the future holds, we are walking in the light with our Lord, so followers of Jesus must have the courage and the faith to work for a new renaissance in our time.”
We may be in the dark about our times, but we are not in the dark about God. Whatever the future holds, we are walking in the light with our Lord, so followers of Jesus must have the courage and the faith to work for a new renaissance in our time.”
April 17, 2021
Os Guinness never fails to hit the difficult nails on the head. I needed to be reminded of the hope we have in Christ after this past year of pandemic and he delivers it in this book. As the back blurb of the paperback says, "So have courage. Take Heart. And let a thousand flowers bloom!" If dark times have you feeling down then pick up this book and read.
June 29, 2017
Well-said as all his writings are, this book raises some interesting insights about the future hope of the Church in adding good to our cultures while maintaining (and depending on) a faithful, righteous witness. Directs us to love God and our neighbor in insightful ways.
March 21, 2018
I really felt like this book would have been better as a robust article. The primary call to be faithful to Jesus Christ and to the Gospel is a great one, but one that I think could have been stated more succinctly.
February 17, 2021
Os Guinness contends that if we are to transform culture, we must start with reviving the Church.
He quotes Augustine's City of God so frequently, that I kept thinking that was the book I should have been reading.
He quotes Augustine's City of God so frequently, that I kept thinking that was the book I should have been reading.
February 21, 2024
Time Well Spent
Reinforces ideas and beliefs that I have believed but unable to express concisely. Brings insights to our present situation that are realistic and logical. Offers hope for the future.
Reinforces ideas and beliefs that I have believed but unable to express concisely. Brings insights to our present situation that are realistic and logical. Offers hope for the future.
October 28, 2017
Very good to read but certainly above my intelligence level
February 12, 2018
Great book from great Christian thinker. Once of those people who are able to see the reality of the times they live in, not an easy task.
March 29, 2018
A good and better alternative to The Benedict Option.
November 9, 2018
Tiene múltiples aspectos muy interesantes, típicos de los buenos análisis de Os Guinness. Pero es ladrilludito de leer, la verdad.
September 17, 2021
I have got to stop buying Os Guinness audio... This book was just SO GOOD! I really want a hard copy.
Read
April 26, 2022Excelkent
Read in 2022. I see it as prophetic as I look at today's issues, although written in 2014. It has come true.
Read in 2022. I see it as prophetic as I look at today's issues, although written in 2014. It has come true.
December 5, 2022
A good kick in the butt for evangelicals. Encouraging. His vision for the relationship between church and culture was pretty bang on I thought.
Read
July 5, 2023Good insights clothed in a tone I found grating. It wasn’t what I expected but if you are a voracious reader of theological nonfiction it may be worth your time.
October 8, 2023
For some reason, this book took me a ridiculous amount of time to finish reading. But despite any procrastination on my end, it was a very thought-provoking book that I'd definitely recommend.
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