Fallen Family

How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization by Mary Eberstadt

Templeton Press, 2013
(268 pages, $19.37, hardcover)

reviewed by C. R. Wiley

We can hope that Western civilization is in the early stages of awakening from a bad dream. Mary Eberstadt's new book may help with that. It is more a stirring nudge than a blaring alarm—in part because it is an accessible work of social science, not a moral treatise. Throughout, she reassures us that she is just looking for the truth—the truth being amoral and merely factual in this case. Apart from my own doubts about the possibility or desirability of knowing facts as such, anyone who favors life over death, or meaning over the void, cannot help but feel a moral stirring.

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C. R. Wiley is a pastor and writer living in the Pacific Northwest. He has written for many publications, his favorite being Touchstone. His most recent book, In the House of Tom Bombadil, is available from Canon Press. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.

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