Book Review
“Of making many books there is no end. . . “ Ecclesiastes 12:12 NRSV
How the West Really Lost God
by Mary Eberstadt, Templeton Press, 2013.
Reviewed by Earl Martin
Recently, while sharing supper with some friends, I mentioned I was beginning to read the book, How the West Really Lost God, indicating a new theory of secularization. One of my friends said, “Give us a summary of its content and meaning.” Now that I have completed a careful perusal of the book, I’ll try to honor the request. I am writing this also for friends who were not at the table, but who might be interested.
The author is Mary Eberstadt, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. It is not a book for fast reading. It offers a thorough and carefully researched treatment of various earlier theories of how and why secularization has transpired in the Western world during the past five decades. Eberstadt agrees to the roles played by the enlightenment, rationalism, the industrial revolution, urbanization and technological advancement. The trends that describe the remarkable decline of religiosity—Christianity in particular—is clearly cited for the Western world on both sides of the Atlantic.
However, beyond these traditional factors, she proposes a more significant cause in the demographic development of the decline of natural family. The theme is carefully delineated to show the corresponding relationship between religiosity and family. The matters of the falling rates of marriages and births and the increased rates of divorce, single parenthood, out-of-wedlock births and same-sex marriage parallel the diminishing presence of “the home of two biologically related parents” (19). In this way, the modern trends of decline of both religion and the natural family are a two-way cause-and-effect relationship. It means the faith factor interacts with the family factor and vice versa.
The author takes great pains in making a compelling argument that, “family and faith are the invisible double helix of society” (22).
The concluding chapters present future indications for both pessimism and optimism. In conclusion, Eberstadt affirms the ultimate resilience of Christianity. She writes, “The end of the story of Christianity in Europe and other parts of the West (USA) remains to be written, and that brighter days than these remain to come. Therein—and only therein—lies the case for optimism about the future of family and the faith” (191).
In offering this summary, I urge you to get and read the book in order to gain the advantage of its informative and insightful development of a significant theme.
Earl Martin is a man of the world, a scholar, missionary, missiologist, professor, and mentor.
