Strange New World by Carl Trueman Review
We don't deal much with controversial issues here, or we didn't until I reviewed Fault Lines by Voddie Baucham, on social justice and critical race theory. So, since we've already done that, let's review something that deals with controversy in the sexual realm: Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman.
The book and the author
It's a fairly short book, 186 pages, 204 with a glossary, notes and index. A glued paperback from Crossway.
Carl Trueman was born in 1967 in Dudley, England. He studied at Marling School in Stroud, Gloucestershire, at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and at the University of Aberdeen. He's a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, taught at Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, and now teaches at Grove City College. He's a professor, theologian, church historian, author, husband and father, and, though not everyone would call him this, I'd call him a philosopher.
What it's about
This is a concise version of Trueman's popular The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. It examines the historical, philosophical and technological factors behind identity politics today, from the Romantics to the New Left, technology and pornography, and offers a biblical perspective on personhood. His thesis, in a sentence: expressive individualism is now the default way we understand ourselves in the 21st century.
My pastor recommended it to me. I'd seen it at Reformation Heritage Books but never bought it, worried I'd find something to disagree with. Instead I agreed with it so much it was painful. It chastised me a little.
What I appreciated:
- It deals with contemporary issues not many books address, at least not in a way a Reformed believer would agree with, much in the same vein as Fault Lines.
- Trueman never shies away from the truth. Some Christian books, even Reformed ones, barely say things the way they are. Trueman doesn't care if you're offended, and I really appreciate that.
- Study questions at the end of each chapter help you think things through.
- A conclusion to every chapter. If something goes over your head (it did mine a couple of times), he wraps it all up for you.
- A glossary. You don't see that often, and there are some trendy words in here I didn't know.
What's in it
A foreword by Ryan T. Anderson and a preface, then: Welcome to This Strange New World; Romantic Roots; Prometheus Unbound; Sexualizing Psychology; Politicizing Sex; The Revolt of the Masses; Plastic People in a Liquid World; The Sexual Revolution and the LGBTQ+ Movement; Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; and Strangers in This Strange New World.
Would I buy it?
Yes. Just a heads up: it deals in very controversial waters, and it may offend you. It offended me. It cut me to the heart, and answered some things I had often wondered myself.
A few things I marked
- The modern self, Trueman says, achieves "authenticity" by acting outwardly in accordance with its inward feelings (p. 23).
- It should strike us as odd that the most private, intimate act between two people has become so central to public life (p. 71). In biblical times, sex was something human beings did; today it's considered vital to who they are, hence the whole notion of sexual identity and the ever-expanding letters of LGBTQ+. I shared that with my friends, and none of us had ever thought of it that way.
- Just as we're all Marxists now in some ways, the assumption that sex is happiness makes us all Freudians (p. 74). That one cut deep. We believe the lies we've been told.
- The sexual revolution didn't redefine modesty, he says; "it overthrew it completely" (p. 85). Even raising the question of a skirt's length today gets laughter at best and rebuke at worst. Modesty itself is now considered oppressive.
- Expressive individualism makes personal satisfaction the meaning of life, and technology has served that cause well (p. 96). If I can create myself, I'll think I give the world its meaning too, rather than being subject to its fixed nature.
- "Community" is now applied to categories that have nothing to do with nation, religion or family (pp. 120–121), which shows both the collapse of traditional belonging and the rise of countless new ways of imagining ourselves. People can now pick their communities, and so pick their identities.
Throughout the book Trueman never offers a solution. In the preface he says he's only pointing out that there's a problem. Of course, as Christians we know the solution. But at the very end (pp. 186–187) he gives a conclusive thought: suffering here and now may be terrible, but it's never meaningless, because it finds its meaning in the life, death, resurrection, ascension and return of the Lord Jesus Christ. We shouldn't despair. We need to be informed, know what we believe and why, worship God in a way that forms us as true disciples, and keep before our eyes the unbreakable promises of God in Christ. Neither hopeless despair nor naive optimism, but lament that sharpens our identity as the people of God and our hunger for the marriage feast of the Lamb.
To that I say amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!
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