God's word illumines the darkness of society. Groen van Prinsterer's Unbelief and Revolution is a foundational work addressing the inherent tension between religion and modernity. As a historian and politician, Groen was intimately familiar with the growing divide between secular culture and the church in his time. Rather than embrace this division, these lectures, originally published in 1847, argue for a renewed interaction between the two spheres. Groen's work served as an inspiration for many contemporary theologians, and as a mentor to Abraham Kuyper, he had a profound impact on Kuyper's famous public theology. Harry Van Dyke, the original translator, reintroduces this vital contribution to our understanding of the relationship between religion and society.

God's word illumines the darkness of society. Dutch politician and historian Groen van Prinsterer's Unbelief and Revolution is a foundational work addressing the inherent tension between the church and secular society. Writing at the onset of modernity in Western culture, Groen saw with amazing clarity the dire implications of abandoning God's created order for human life in society. Groen's work served as an inspiration for many contemporary theologians, and he had a profound impact on Abraham Kuyper's famous public theology. In Challenging the Spirit of Modernity, Harry Van Dyke places this seminal work into historical context, revealing how this vital contribution still speaks into the fractured relationship between religion and society. A deeper understanding of the roots of modern secularism and Groen's strong, faithful response to it gives us a better grasp of the same conflict today.

We have long been taught that the Enlightenment was an attempt to free the world from the clutches of Christian civilization and make it safe for philosophy. The lesson has been well learned. In today's culture wars, both liberals and their conservative enemies, inside and outside the academy, rest their claims about the present on the notion that the Enlightenment was a secularist movement of philosophically driven emancipation. Historians have had doubts about the accuracy of this portrait for some time, but they have never managed to furnish a viable alternative to it-for themselves, for scholars interested in matters of church and state, or for the public at large. In this book, William J. Bulman and Robert G. Ingram bring together recent scholarship from distinguished experts in history, theology, and literature to make clear that God not only survived the Enlightenment but thrived within it as well. The Enlightenment was not a radical break from the past in which Europeans jettisoned their intellectual and institutional inheritance. It was, to be sure, a moment of great change, but one in which the characteristic convictions and traditions of the Renaissance and Reformation were perpetuated to the point of transformation, in the wake of the Wars of Religion and during the early phases of globalization. The Enlightenment's primary imperatives were not freedom and irreligion but peace and prosperity. As a result, Enlightenment could be Christian, communitarian, or authoritarian as easily as it could be atheistic, individualistic, or libertarian. Honing in on the intellectual crisis of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries while moving from Spinoza to Kant and from India to Peru, God in the Enlightenment takes a prism to the age of lights.

Discusses the ideas and impact of 27 atheists, agnostics, and secularists whose ideas have shaped society over the last 200 years. In the opinion of many critics and philosophers, we are entering an age of atheism marked by the waning of Christian fundamentalism and the flourishing of secular thought. Through alphabetically arranged entries written by expert contributors, this book profiles 27 iconic figures of unbelief whose ideas have shaped American society over the last 200 years. Included are entries on influential figures of the past, such as Albert Einstein and Voltaire, as well as on such contemporary figures as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Each entry discusses the ideas and lasting significance of each person or group, provides sidebars of interesting information and illuminating quotations, and cites works for further reading. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography. Students in social studies and history classes will welcome this reference as a guide to the ideas central to the American separation of Church and State and to many of the political debates at the heart of society today. Each entry discusses the ideas and lasting significance of the person or group, provides sidebars of interesting information and quotations, and closes with a list of works for further reading. The volume ends with a selected, general bibliography. Students in history and social studies classes will welcome this reference as a guide to the American separation of Church and State and to the ideas central to contemporary political debates.

God's word illumines the darkness of society. Groen van Prinsterer's Unbelief and Revolution is a foundational work addressing the inherent tension between religion and modernity. As a historian and politician, Groen was intimately familiar with the growing divide between secular culture and the church in his time. Rather than embrace this division, these lectures, originally published in 1847, argue for a renewed interaction between the two spheres. Groen's work served as an inspiration for many contemporary theologians, and as a mentor to Abraham Kuyper, he had a profound impact on Kuyper's famous public theology. Harry Van Dyke, the original translator, reintroduces this vital contribution to our understanding of the relationship between religion and society.