Nancy Pearcey on Apologetics Training

"To be effective in equipping young people and professionals to face the challenges of a highly educated secular society, the church needs to redefine the mission of pastors and youth leaders to include training in apologetics and worldview. ... Pastors must once again provide intellectual leadership for their congregations, teaching apologetics from the pulpit. Every time a minister introduces a biblical teaching, he should also instruct the congregation in ways to defend it against the major objections they are likely to encounter. A religion that avoids the intellectual task and retreats to the therapeutic realm of personal relationships and feelings will not survive in today’s spiritual battlefield."

- Nancy Pearcey

Nancy R. Pearcy, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 127.

Book Review: Saving Leonardo by Nancy Pearcey

Saving Leonardo by Nancy Pearcey exposes secularism as a destructive and divisive force in the modern world and suggests means to address it. Pearcey is the well-known heir apparent to Francis Schaeffer in style and content. Having been a student of Schaeffer at L’Abri, she co-authored The Soul of Science with Charles Thaxton in 1994, then became widely known after co-authoring How Now Should We Live with Charles Colson in 1999 and more recently the widely successful Total Truth (2004). The book reviewed here, Saving Leonardo, consists of two sections. The first describes the growth of international secularism as a monolithic worldview especially focusing on its cultural affect. The second section traces the history of secularism contrasting Enlightenment and Romantic worldviews. Drawing on Schaeffer’s concept of a two-story worldview, Pearcey brings it into the twenty-first century illustrating how the fact / value spilt has infiltrated philosophy, the arts and popular culture. She states her purpose clearly, “The goal of this book is to equip you to detect, decipher, and defeat the monolithic secularism”[1] and that goal is met in admirable fashion. This presentation will give a broad overview and summary of the book offering several points of analysis along the way.

Sunday Quote: Nancy Pearcey on the Gospel

"The ultimate goal is to preach the gospel. But the gospel is not simple to those whose background prevents them from understanding it. Today's global secular culture has erected a maze of mental barriers against even considering the biblical message."

- Nancy Pearcey (Saving Leonardo, p.15)

[HT:JM]