Pearcey's subtitle to the is book Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, and she doesn't hesitate to get right to the point. She argues that our culture's worldview splits reality into two spheres: the private sphere and the public sphere. In the public sphere belongs scientific knowledge--things we can really know for sure. In the private sphere belongs personal preferences, such as values and religious beliefs. The implications of this division are far reaching, but include two very important foundational starting points: 1) what belongs in the private sphere can't really be regarded as truth because we can't test the claims there scientifically, so there's no point in discussing what's really true, and 2) what belongs in the private sphere should not drift over to influence what happens in the public sphere.
The reason I love this book is because Pearcey identifies correctly the real issues for Christians when it comes to interacting with our culture. It pains me when I see Christians try to change our culture through legislation, litigation, or just plain-old shouting matches, as though we would be a Christian Nation again (if we ever were that to begin with) if we just won the right elections, passed the right laws, sued the right people, or gained enough public support. As Pearcey argues, the issue is not that people disagree with a Christian worldview. It's that our culture has a "grid" for looking at the world that believes a Christian worldview doesn't even need to be agreed with or argued against, because it belongs in the private sphere and should not influence the public sphere. The worst part, says Pearcey, is that Christians have also accepted this way of looking at the world, and so our faith is simply a privatized set of values that we try to keep separate from our public lives, such as our work.
For youth workers who would like a crash course in how to articulate a Christian worldview and follow Jesus in the marketplace of ideas, I highly recommend this book. Section 2 alone is a great resource for how to interact with and counter a naturalistic/materialistic worldview. It's definitely not a quick read, but studying one's way through Total Truth is well worth it.
