Every year I seem to come across new acronyms. How many of these might you recognise? DRABC. GIRFEC. SHANARRI. NIMBY. RASKI. NEET. WWJD.
It is now 250 years since 1776. I’ve just finished reading a book, ‘Remaking the World – How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West’ by Andrew Wilson, which was published in 2023.
The book has an unusual cover. As well as the title, the cover depicts several objects, including a quill pen, ‘Common Sense’ by Thomas Paine, a tricorn hat, a rose, a cylinder, gear and flywheel from James Watt’s steam engine, Captain Cook’s ship HMS Resolution, ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ by Edward Gibbon, and a Revolutionary War-era flintlock pistol.
I now need to re-read the book slowly. It is fascinating and absorbing. I’m very glad to have bought it. I buy very few books these days, as when retirement comes there will need to be a big book giveaway.
Wilson investigates seven major developments arising from events in 1776, globalization, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Enlightenment, the American Revolution, the rise of post-Christianity, and the dawn of Romanticism. There follows an unusual and memorable acronym. He demonstrates how political, philosophical, economic and industrial changes shaped the modern West into a ‘WEIRDER’ society – Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian and Romantic.
Andrew T Walker, commending the book, writes: “Toward the end, Wilson gives Christians a pathway to witness to a world that thinks it has eclipsed the claims of Christianity but remains unable to explain itself apart from it.”
Here are some key questions he tackles. What challenges and opportunities emerge from history: Westernization or Romanticism or Industrialization? What should we do about them? How should Christians act in an ex-Christian culture? What does faithful Christianity look like in the shadow of 1776? How did believers respond to what was happening around them? What can we learn?
The references to the musical ‘HAMILTON’, which I enjoyed seeing with some of our family in the Theatre Royal in Plymouth last year, ‘The West Wing’, the Harry Potter series, and the film ‘1917’ sustained my interest in what I might well decide is my book of the year.
Wilson does not suggest that the church of the 1770s gives us some silver bullet to transform the fortunes of the church today. But he does focus helpfully on the vital, perennial importance of grace, freedom and truth. The 1770s saw the publication of John Newton’s hymn ‘Amazing Grace’. Apparently that hymn has been recorded in nearly 13,000 versions, and is performed around 10 million times every year.
Grace was Newton’s theme in perhaps the most famous sermon outline in history: “I am not what I ought to be. Ah! How imperfect and deficient. Not what I might be, considering my privileges and opportunities. Not what I wish to be … I am not what I hope to be … not what I once was, a child of sin and slave of the devil. Though not all these … I think I can truly say with the apostle, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am’. (1 Cor. 15:10)
Andrew Wilson PhD is the teaching pastor at King’s Church London and a columnist for Christianity Today. He has degrees from Cambridge and King’s College London. Andrew T Walker PhD is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.
DRABC = Danger, Response, Airway, Breathing, Circulation
GIRFEC = Getting It Right For Every Child
SHANARRI = Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured, Active, Respected, Responsible, Included
NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard
RASKI = Rich And Spending the Kids’ Inheritance
NEET = Not in Education, Employment or Training
WWJD = What Would Jesus Do?
