GOLDFISH don’t see water, and yet their existence is shaped by it. Glen Scrivener’s key claim is that in the same way, inhabitants of the Western world live in a culture profoundly shaped by Christianity, and yet they increasingly fail to notice or understand that spiritual heritage.

Scrivener writes in a breezy, accessible style that, none the less, analyses great swaths of Western intellectual and theological history with ease. His focus is on seven values that are central to a modern Western outlook: equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress.

He considers the way in which these values underpin cultures categorised by Joseph Henrich as WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic. These, Scrivener argues, are societies that risk overlooking the influence that Christianity has had upon them; they are cultures that want to cherish the values, without appreciating their source.

Contrasting the norms of the ancient world with deep-seated attitudes within the contemporary West, Scrivener demonstrates that Christianity originally presented nothing less than a “moral earthquake”. He points out, for example, that both Plato and Aristotle condoned infanticide, while it was early Christian hospitals that radically underlined the sacred value of every human life.

Scrivener deftly shows how key narratives of modern secular progress make little sense when divorced from their Christian roots. He writes that Martin Luther King’s “whole outlook would be unintelligible without his Christian framework”. When equality, compassion, and consent lose their Christian moorings, the result is societies of radical individualism, competitive victimhood, and a reductionist view of sex.

The claim is that this is a book written for three potential audiences — “nones” (those of no faith), “dones” (those who have left faith behind), and “wons” (those still seeking to live as faithful Christians). The commendations — from a who’s who of Evangelical figures — perhaps tell a different story. If the book was really aimed so much at “nones”, I would have appreciated some endorsements from appreciative agnostics.

I suspect that The Air We Breathe will largely be read by Christians, and it is a provocative text worthy of study by anyone wondering how far the Church should accommodate itself to shifting secular norms. A final word goes to Charles Spurgeon, quoted by Scrivener, on the dangers of what Spurgeon called semi-Christianity: “Be half a Christian and you shall have enough religion to make you miserable.”

The Revd Dr Christopher Landau is the director of ReSource, the successor organisation to Anglican Renewal Ministries.

The Air We Breathe: How we all came to believe in freedom, kindness, progress, and equality
Glen Scrivener
The Good Book Company £9.99
(978-1-78498-749-7)
Church Times Bookshop £8.99