Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity

Rating:
Summary: Understanding the World As It Really Is
Review: An evangelical Christian who works on Capitol Hill once told me that God put him there just so he could share the gospel with his colleagues. Sadly, he's not alone in thinking that God cares only about saving souls, and is uninterested in the legislative battles raging in Congress, much less the renewing the culture through the arts, academia, and entertainment.

True, most orthodox Christians think that God hates abortion and is not so thrilled about same-sex marriage. But beyond those "culture-war" issues, many of them have no idea that their faith has implications for all public policies, from welfare to transportation to taxation. They are privately spiritual, but publicly agnostic.

Nancy Pearcey's new book, Total Truth, was written to shake them up.

Her central thesis is that Christianity is not just religious truth, but truth about all of reality. It is a comprehensive worldview. As such, it is meant to straighten out God's creation which has been twisted by sin. This, Pearcey says, includes not just the Great Commission to bring others to faith, but a cultural commission to bring health to every aspect of human experience, from network television and Broadway plays to biology and astronomy.

Unfortunately, too many American evangelicals have bought into the lie that it is "true for me" or true about a slice of reality, but not true for everybody and true for explaining the world.

Pearcey seeks to uproot the historic anti-intellectual tendencies of American evangelicalism that have contributed to its banishment from the public square.
She traces the long tradition in American evangelicalism of emphasizing the spiritual dimension and denigrating the intellect. Some early American evangelicals like Geroge Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards managed to make Christianity a passionate, personal experience without compromising the life of the mind. Sadly, much of evangelicalism quickly devolved to a privatized faith that transformed one's personal life but was indifferent if not hostile to rigorous thought.

Even as evangelicals gained hearts, they surrendered their minds to secularism.

As Darwinism gained traction in academia, Christians further retreated to the realm of personal values. In the end, they were left with a "two-realm theory of truth" in which the upper story holds the private/spiritual/nonrational/noncognitive dimension, and the lower story the public/scientific/rational/verifiable. The upper story became "true for me," and the "lower story" simply fact. Challenging this bifurcation of reality is step one in liberating Christianity to shape every aspect of culture, argues Pearcey.

Step two is challenging the philosophical naturalism that masquerades as science.

Pearcey has spent years writing about the philosophical underpinnings of Darwinian macro-evolution. Her rigorous logic makes clear that until Christians challenge the naturalism that begins with the assumption the universe is closed and there is no God, they will fight a losing battle for the soul of the culture.

That may explain why Americans are among the most religious people on the planet, yet whose cultural elites in academia, media, and entertainment are among the most secular.

She closes the book by showing that true spirituality is rooted in a comprehensive Christian worldview. If Christianity really is the total truth about the world, then it is logical that the life of the spirit not be relegated to a private, mystical experience, but is necessarily open to facts, reason, evidence and wed to one's everyday activities.

Pearcey skillfully explains difficult concepts in plain language. Her formal education in theology and philosophy - in Germany, Canada, the U.S. -- combined with her conversational writing style, make her otherwise dense subject matter easily digestible. Perhaps this is so because she's a homeschooling mom. Or maybe because she's a former atheist who wrote a paper on "Why I'm not a Christian" when she was still in her teens and long before she learned of Bertrand Russell. Her grappling with philosophy has not been esoteric but a lived experience of great personal consequence.

Pearcey's work reflects the life and thought of her mentor, the late Francis Schaeffer, who hosted seekers at his chalet in the Swiss Alps in the 1960s and 1970s. After rejecting the faith of her parents and embracing the despair of nihilism and the drug culture, Pearcey was won over by Schaeffer's rigorous intellect and his passionate conviction that Christianity was meant to renew every part of the culture.

But if you're looking for a simple redux of Schaefer's work, look elsewhere. Pearcey advances well beyond Schaefer, both in the maturity of her thought and in her original work with source documents.

Total Truth is written with evangelicals in mind, but it should be read by orthodox Christians of whatever theological stripe who want to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the American religious tradition, dominated as it has been by evangelicals. It will help them see more clearly the flawed view of knowledge that has relegated Christianity to the private sphere and muted its witness in what seems to be a pervasively religious population.

The issue is not the number of Christians, but their ability to let their religious convictions shape their view of the world. For when Christianity is no longer just an affair of the heart but a total picture of the world as it actually is, its power is unleashed to transform culture from top to bottom.


Rating:
Summary: A Must-Read For Believers
Review: I have often lamented the overuse of the term "life-changing" amongst Christians. It is not unusual to hear people walk away from a particularly captivating sermon or conference saying "that changed my life!" The real measure and test of life change is time, for only in time will we really know what has made a significant impact on our lives. Having established that I do not use the term lightly, I would like to suggest that Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey may just be a life-changing book. As believers we collectively spend millions of dollars and countless hours reading about Christian living - making our homes better, making our families better, making our lives better, discovering our purpose, rediscovering our masculine soul or our feminine soul and so on ad infinitum, ad nauseum. There are some who love to supplement with the study of theology or church history, and those are great pursuits. But if we buy so many books and read so much, why do we dedicate so little time to examining and studying worldview? I do not mean to indict the reader and clear my own name, for in all the reading I have done, this is the first book that deals predominantly with that topic.

Total Truth is subtitled "Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity" and this is the task to which Pearcey dedicates the book. She shows how Christians have adopted a worldview that is bound and influenced by our culture, so that we now understand Christianity through a secular worldview. She teaches that the opposite needs to be true - that we need to see society through a distinctly Christian lens, allowing a Christian worldview to interpret all that we see, do and think. She says "This book will address [the hunger for a Christian worldview] and offers new direction for advancing the worldview movement. It will help you identify the secular/sacred divide that keeps your faith locked into the private sphere of 'religious truth.' It will walk you through practical, workable steps for crafting a Christian worldview in your own life and work. It will teach you how to apply a worldview grid to cut through the bewildering maze of ideas and ideologies we encounter in a postmodern world." (Page 17) In short, the purpose of the book is to help Christians free their faith from its cultural captivity and to see that Christianity is not merely religious truth, but is Total Truth - truth about the whole of reality. "The purpose of a worldview is to explain our experience of the world-and any philosophy can be judged by how well it succeeds in doing so. When Christianity is tested, we discover that it alone explains and makes sense of the most basic and universal human experiences."

As a devotee of Francis Shaeffer, Pearcey borrows heavily from his writing and ideas. Most notably, she understands, as did Shaeffer, that Christians have mimicked the world in adopting a two-level worldview which she calls a fact/value split. It can be represented as follows:

VALUES
Individual Preferences
---------------------
FACTS
Binding on everyone

In the upper level are values which are mere individual preferences and on the bottom level are facts which are binding on everyone. Facts represent knowledge drawn from and proven by science and in this way they are considered objective and rational. On the other hand, on the top level are values which are considered subjective and a product of tradition. Thus are not binding beyond the individual's conscience and are essentially irrational. They have little to say about reality. This split has pervaded all aspects of society.

The thesis of this book is "the key to recovering joy and purpose turned out to be a new understanding of Christianity as total truth - an insight that broke open the dam and poured the restoring waters of the gospel into the parched areas of life." The first step in recovering a Christian worldview is to understand the bifurcated worldview which is inherent in our postmodern world. Having understood that we have made false disctinctions between secular and sacred, we can begin integrating our faith into every area of life so that we bear a consistent witness throughout. Politicians are beginning to come to the realization that politics is downstream from culture. In order to change the politics of our nations, we must first influence the culture, and to do that we must reclaim a Christian worldview. "Ordinary Christians working in business, industry, politics, factory work, and so on, are 'the Church's front-line troops' in the spiritual battle. Are we taking seriously our duty to support them in their warfare? The church is nothing less than a training ground for sending out laypeople who are equipped to speak the gospel to the world." That is the subject of the bulk of the book - training and sending laypeople who can share the Gospel with the world. Pearcey continually exposes those areas that have been polluted by a secular worldview and explains how Christians need to reclaim them.

After Pearcey thoroughly deconstructed our society's postmodern worldview in the first few chapters of the book, I found I did not have as clear an idea as to how I could rebuild a Christian worldview. But perhaps this is because there are no easy answers - there is no happy W.O.R.L.D.V.I.E.W. acronym that will allow me to follow a 9-step program to worldview reconstruction. The key is to acknowledge the deficiency of holding a two-level worldview and by immersing myself in Scripture, allowing God to shape and mould me as He sees fit. A Christian worldview must necessarily flow from the study and application of God's Word. I need to understand and believe that Christian Truth is a unified whole, equally encompassing all of life.

In reading books written by intellectuals, rather than pastors and teachers, I have often found that their theology is shaped more by the Catholic intellectuals of days past than by the Protestant theology. This is not the case for Pearcey. She strikes a good balance of praise and criticism in her presentation of Protestantism, generally defending the actions and motives of the Reformers and believers of history. Similarly she praises various Catholic scholars (such as Aquinas) for contributions they made, but is necessarily harsh when discussing their shortcomings. Throughout the book, the author maintains this important balance. It was wonderful to see that Pearcey presents significant, deep theology that clearly aligns with the Reformed understandings of the Scripture.

I am in agreement with Al Mohler who said "Total Truth is one of the most promising books to emerge in evangelical publishing in many years. It belongs in every Christian home, and should quickly be put into the hands of every Christian young person. This important book should be part of the equipment for college or university study, and churches should use it as a textbook for Christian worldview development." Pearcey has crafted a masterpiece that is intellectually stimulating but still accessible and practical. It will challenge, motivate and change. I give it my hearty recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: Evangelical Drivel
Review: If you don't believe the Bible is the literal word of God, you won't want to read this evangelical rant. The author is touted as a Christian 'intellectual,' but she's really a propagandist. She cherry-picks the scientific data that supports her dogma and ignores the mountain of evidence that doesn't. A very slick, although verbose, political polemic.

Rating:
Summary: One of the Most Important Christian Books of the Last Decade
Review: It is impossible to convey the importance of Nancy Pearcey's _Total Truth_. In an age when Christians no longer espouse a unified Christian worldview (or would even know how to if they wished to), this book bursts on the scene and blows apart our complacency.

A former student of Francis Schaeffer and writing partner of Chuck Colson, Pearcey brings an academic's mind to the issue of how people think about reality, but without pompous language and impossible-to-follow philosophical noodlings. Her basic premise is that throughout time Man has viewed the worlds of the Natural and the Supernatural as two compartments with little or no connection. Plato, Aquinas, Kant, Marx, and Darwin have all made attempts at explaining how Fact and Faith inform each other, but all have been flawed and none have the perspective that Christianity can uniquely and perfectly fulfill. Only Christians can explain both Fact and Faith through the model of Creation, Fall, and Redemption, addressing all parts of reality with Total Truth.

What is genius about this book is not that it breaks new ground, but that it is methodical in laying out all its facts in a way that is easily comprehend by those not familiar with philosophy. Each section of the book is clear and concise. The first section outlines the importance of a coherent worldview and why this issue is so critical to the future of public discourse and right thinking, especially among Christians who have become accustomed to using their faith as the icing on a rather distasteful cake of disjointed, syncretistic thinking. The second part looks at the various epistemologies that have been prominent in history, while the third looks at what constitutes a truly Christian worldview. In this last section, the author even shows how some Christian ministries are run by worldviews that are not even remotely Christian. Here, her insights into how the world of business can be helped by leaders schooled in a unified Christian worldview is almost prophetic and desperately needs to be heard by those at the helm of modern American Christian thought.

The first two sections of this work are brilliant, while the third needs to be developed and laid out more systematically for those who may not have the tools to construct a unified Christian worldview on their own (whether due to lack of knowledge or the need to deconstruct their own flawed worldview before installing a new one.) Still, despite the few flaws, this book is essential reading for every Christian. The dual needs for a uniquely Christian worldview and the ability to combat the weakness of non-Christian worldviews cannot be underestimated. If the Church is to survive postmodernism and the cultural trends that assail us, right thinking is critical. Thanks to Nancy Pearcey that worthy goal is now more achievable.

A must for every Christian's personal library, you'll go back to it again and again. Don't wait; buy it today--your mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Rating:
Summary: Life Changing
Review: It is indeed rare when an author is able to explain such complex issues and their implications in an intellectually and spiritually challenging manner, yet also remain very readable and conversational.

Other reviewers have more than adequately reinforced the many admirable qualities of Total Truth. I will instead focus on a specific insight which has had an impact on my family immediately. Nancy Pearcey uncovers the insight that in the Colonial Period, men were integral as actively engaged fathers and leaders of virtue. The family worked together daily in a family industry. The benefits to father, mother and children were manifold.

During the Industrial Age, this dynamic changed. Women became responsible for "civilizing" men (which lead to the destructive mindset that excused and perhaps expected crude behavior from men) and became the primary educators of their children.
The family dynamic became disjointed and lost its force.

Our family's personal goal now is to recapture that family dynamic in which we can run a business together from home, and in which both my wife and I are responsible for educating and raising my son.

Kudos to Nancy Pearcey for a penetrating, insightful and challening book.

Rating:
Summary: Bloom with a View
Review: Somewhat like Allan Bloom, Pearcey deftly illustrates the closing of the American academic mind against the possibility of alternative worldviews. In her case, however, she posits a clear Biblical worldview which is as compeling as it is comprehensive.

Rating:
Summary: Very original...the ideas need to be refined though
Review: This book describes the dualism that is hurting our culture. Seperation between church and state, between "science" and meaning, men vs women.

You go to church you feel like one person...and you the rest of the week you go to church you feel like somebody else. Often in Christians this dualism manifests itself as an unhappiness with one's career. You want to serve God and the only way you feel you can really do this is through taking the dramatic step of becoming a missionary or a pastor.

The Truth (with a capital T) is that you can serve God as a police officer, accountant, teacher, etc. Nancy Pearcey does this by telling you to think critically about what god ordained that people such as police officers, accountants, and teachers do (because truth be told they are needed in any society). Moreover, Christianity can't be just an emotional "heart experience" but must be an experience of mind and heart. Unless you are willing to take that step to make your life a unified whole where you are serving God, at work, at home, with your heart and mind you're christian experience promises to be less than fulfilling.

There are other interesting aspects to the book like the author's analysis of changing gender roles (this one was a real eye opener and helped me understand both my parent's and grandparent's generation as well as women's liberation, prohibition, even the industrial revolution, it even helps explain why Karl Marx wrote the communist manifesto). Not to say the book doesn't ellucidate other historical phenomena (some which you most likely won't here about in a history textbook).

However, I am only giving this book 4 stars...because while the author describes our problems pretty well (and how we got here) as christians and as a society she only offers a few possible solutions which she needs to explain in more depth.

Rating:
Summary: Delves into complex theological and behavioral questions
Review: Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity questions the modern American cultural attitude of keeping religion a private matter. Claiming that Christianity's truth is best served by being brought into the public sphere to maximize its influence, Total Truth delves into complex theological and behavioral questions. Examining how feminism contributed to the privatization of Christianity, the power of evangelicalism, flaws in modern scientific theory, and more. While the ideas presented in Total Truth are strong, and sometimes appears to discount the unshakeable reality that America is and always will be a nation of plural faiths, the passion in the author's conviction to improve human life on physical and spiritual levels through the power of religious virtue is undeniable.


Rating:
Summary: She explains why
Review: When my oldest son was half-way through his first year in a Christian college, he called home upset. "Mom, didn't you tell us that every person in every profession is a missionary kind of?"

"Yes" I replied.

He responded, "I feel like a second-rate person here because I am interested in science and I don't want to become a missionary in another country."

This has been the sad plight of a number of students who are Christians, no matter what college or university they attend.

Nancy has shown why I was right. I like that! She thoroughly takes apart the idea that one's faith is a Sunday-only phenomenon and is, rather, the foundation of one's entire worldview -- how they view everything. She shows how other worldviews have (pretty successfully in many areas) tried to eliminate the Christian worldview by marginalizing 'religion.' She shows the danger. She shows the answer. She shows the necessity of being complete regarding one's faith.

I rarely recommend books. Too many are out there. I completely recommend this one, not only for adults, but even more especially for both high school and college/university students. One reads this book and one thinks; and one is encouraged.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating book on forming a Christian worldview
Review: With the kids back in school, you too can delve into your own studies by picking up Nancy Pearcey's TOTAL TRUTH: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity. This hefty tome is the ideological sequel to the bestselling HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE? that Pearcey wrote with Chuck Colson a few years ago. Whereas HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE? presented the case that America is "post-Christian" and that we need to eschew a solely personal faith and work to rebuild our culture with a biblical worldview, TOTAL TRUTH digs into the specifics of that culture and demonstrates what such a worldview might actually look like.

Pearcey is a devotee of the Swiss theologian Francis Schaeffer, and as such the foundation of her work is his assertion that modernity is built on a "two-story" view of reality with "facts" on the first floor and "values" upstairs. In such a paradigm, Christianity is banished upstairs, unable to interact with all that is empirically verifiable on the first floor. Pearcey contends that many Christians themselves live with this upstairs/downstairs mentality and don't realize how this dualistic mode of thinking keeps them from integrating their faith with the stuff of their everyday lives.

"The first step in forming a Christian worldview is to overcome this sharp divide between 'heart' and 'brain.' We have to reject the division of life into a sacred realm, limited to things like worship and personal morality, over against a secular realm that includes science, politics, economics, and the rest of the public arena. This dichotomy in our own minds is the greatest barrier to liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of culture today."

Pearcey defines her worldview as "a biblically informed perspective on all reality" and subsequently covers her bases, providing credible commentary on everything from stem cell research, to Rousseau's rebellion against the Enlightenment, to the impact of the industrial revolution on the function of the home and family unit.

"After the Industrial Revolution, the home eventually ceased being the locus of production and became a locus of consumption --- which means that women at home were gradually reduced from producers to consumers. Household industries with their range of mutual services were replaced by factories and waged labor. Instead of developing a host of varied skills --- spinning, weaving, sewing, knitting, preserving, brewing, baking, and candle-making --- women's tasks were progressively reduced to basic housekeeping and early childcare. Instead of enjoying a sense of economic indispensability, women were reduced to dependants, living off the wages of their husbands. Instead of working in a common economic enterprise with their husbands, women were shut off in a world of private 'retirement.' Instead of working with other adults throughout the day --- servants, apprentices, clients, customers, and extended family --- women became socially isolated with young children all day."

This interesting glimpse at the roots of the feminist movement is a good example of the illuminating context TOTAL TRUTH puts our cultural experience into. With Pearcey's mastery of such a broad range of discourse, it's no wonder that a number of programs are using TOTAL TRUTH as a textbook. But don't let that scare you off. Pearcey has a gift for making complex issues clear. This is a book that even a worldview novice can enjoy and benefit from. Class is in session!

--- Reviewed by Lisa Ann Cockrel