Book Review: Strange New World
Peter is an Adjunct Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Westminster Presbyterian Seminary, UK.
How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution
By Carl Trueman
Crossway (2022), 204 pp, (£8.81 10ofthose)
In 2020 Carl Trueman published the 400-odd page book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Widely hailed as a momentous and timely work, it provided a detailed history of the intellectual developments that have revolutionised Western culture’s understanding of the nature of human beings. Today people accept (and legislate to protect) the claim that a man can be trapped in a woman’s body – Trueman’s explanation of how that came to be is vital reading – but many struggle to work through the lengthy book he published. So a revised, condensed book has been published to explain the vital insights to a wider audience.
The more concise book – Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution is a mere 200 pages and has no footnotes. Strange New World is a fresh book, which conveys Trueman’s insights in a more punchy way for its brevity. The new book gives more acknowledgment to the role of technology in spreading the impact of intellectual ideas, and even includes some reflections on the nature of historical causation – offsetting the critique of giving exclusive privilege to intellectual ideas in culture formation.
The first chapter introduces readers to the term “expressive individualism”, a term – coined by Robert Bellah – which suggests people in our culture so live as to express their radical core of individual feeling, performing on the stage of a world which is expected to recognise and affirm whatever is felt to be desirable or real within the subject. Trueman’s argument is that our culture is now one of radical expressive individualism “refracted through the ‘idioms of the sexual revolution.” (29) In such a culture a person’s inner desires and self-understanding take precedence over physical and biological realities. Hence the power of transgender ideology in our culture.
Chapters 2 through 5 outline the historical narrative of intellectual ideas that have made our culture one of expressive individualism. Descartes, Rousseau, Shelly, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Reich are discussed with verve, wit and fairness. Quotations from all are given, their significance noted – but much detail present in the larger book is passed over. Reading this section of the book one is reminded of earlier writers who served the church with similar concise historical studies of intellectual genealogies – Francis Schaeffer and David Wells most notably.
These chapters are not intended as “a watertight account of why we modern men and women think intuitively about the world” (108) as we do, but it more than meets Trueman’s goal of explaining how the revolutionary outlook of the majority of people in our culture is from their perspective “coherent and explicable.” (109)
Chapter 6 introduces some concepts that further help us understand our times, including “The Politics of Recognition” (115) and “Imagined Communities” (117). The role of technology in providing the contraceptive pill and the Internet are discussed. “If technology in the form of the pill helped to undermine traditional sexual codes, then in the form of the Internet it helps weaken the traditional narratives.” (119)
Chapters 7 and 8 explore the effects of the revolution. Firstly the way victimhood served to draw transgender activists into an illogical and tense alliance with homosexuals, and then in the challenges to freedoms once cherished – that of speech and religion.
The concluding chapter focuses on the Church – “Strangers in This Strange World.” Here Trueman calls us to admit the ways we have imported the world’s expressive individualism into our churches – we often put personal preferences and taste before doctrinal convictions. Here there are echoes of David Wells’ charge against the churches of embracing consumerism. The positive advice given to believers is gold dust – and very, very rarely heard in the UK. Trueman suggests we have all too often succumbed to a form of evangelism that reinforces the culture’s anti-God convictions of expressive individualism, as we appeal to felt needs and a consumer mentality. In contrast to this Truman calls on us to “see what ways we have compromised with the spirit of the age. Then, we need to repent.” (172) He calls for a renewed commitment to church that learns from the Ancient Church (173) and counter-intuitively commends not only Natural Law but also the vital need to teach not only on the controversial issues, but the whole counsel of God. People need, through the experience of gathered worship, the Psalms and confessional theology, to regain intuitions that counter the culture’s expressive individualism. Reading Trueman’s call of the Church back to biblical Christianity, one is heartened that his self-confessed “depressing” (169) narrative does not actually lead us to be pessimistic – but rather to embrace “Christian hope” which is “realistic.” (185)
This book is immensely important. Many in UK churches are trying to keep running the staffing, outreach, programming and services that since the 1970s have had their roots in the expressive individualism which is unquestioned (often enforced) in many schools, universities and workplaces. People need to understand how different biblical Christianity is from (rapidly falling) church attendance and consumer driven events. Deeply held biblical convictions are all but absent from the teenage generation ahead of us. Many readers will know those who have changed their views on sexuality matters when it became costly to hold to God’s Word in work or family. Very few churches are prepared for the world Trueman pulls the curtains back on, where freedom of speech and religion are not legally protected as they once were.
Every Christian should read this book or, if they prefer, the longer version. We will not keep alive our love for God, nor will we be faithful to our calling, unless we not only understand, but become different to, the world. This book helps with both in ways that few other resources do.
Strange New World includes three or four reflective questions at the end of each chapter which would work well for group discussions in a home group context. That can be supplemented with 10-12 minute video discussions and a separate study guide – advertised in the book and helpful for churches that want to read the book together. I would commend any church to do so.
Reviewed by Peter Sanlon
Adjunct Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology, Westminster Presbyterian Seminary, UK.
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