The Post Christian Mind: Exposing Its Destructive Agenda [Paperback]

Harry Blamires (Author), J. I. Packer (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1999

This book attempts to clarify the immense gap now opening up between Christians and the culture of the world we live in. The author explores the kinds of views, attitudes and topics of discussion that fill the mental atmosphere around us, using them to define current secularist thinking and pinpoint preconceptions that are antithetical to the Christian mind.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Since the days when Harry Blamires sat amid the smoke of his tutor and friend C.S. Lewis, the world has changed--and not, he believes, for the better. British society no longer has at its foundation the Judeo-Christian system of belief. Traditional values are undermined continually, as we witness attacks (especially from the media) on cherished notions of family, morality, sexuality, and marriage. And the church's response? Blamires is withering as he castigates "trendy vicars" for pandering to the whims of the novel.

"What we need," he declares, "is a Christian backlash, a vigorous response to the new paganism of the contemporary world." He pulls no punches as he seeks to describe and expose what he terms the emerging "post-Christian mind." While many argue that tolerance is essential to a healthy multiculturalism, Blamires disagrees. "The need for living harmoniously in society along with people of other faiths has encouraged a pluralism which saps confidence in the imperatives of the Christian revelation."

As he lambastes the emerging "culture of rights" and critiques contemporary perceptions of democracy, freedom, the "body beautiful," and economics, the danger is that Blamires might sound like the old man in the pub who can't stop talking about the good old days. But read closer, and you will find many fresh observations from someone who believes strongly in, and has thought hard about, what he is saying. Whether you agree with him or not, it is vital to consider where we propose to derive our values and ethics in a post-Christian society. This is certainly an explosive place to start. --Brian Draper, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly

According to Blamires (former head of the English department at King Alfreds College, Winchester), the gulf between the modern mind and the traditional Christian worldview has never been greater. In an earlier book, The Christian Mind, Blamires mapped out the main tenets of the orthodox Christian faith and how they interacted with the world of the mind. In this follow-up, he explores the views and attitudes of modern secular society, pinpointing the preconceptions undergirding popular contemporary attitudes and showing how they represent positions antagonistic to the Christian faith. Analyzing such areas as marriage and family, discrimination, the human body, democracy and freedom of expression, Blamires charts the decline that occurs when traditional Christian morality is set aside. The result of this drift from tradition, he says, is disastrous for our civilization. We have reached the turn of the century and the post-Christian society isnt working. Its as simple as that. Blamires constructs his case by quoting from a variety of press clippings from U.K. newspapers. Focusing not only on trends that trouble him but also on the way they are reported, he aims much of his disgust at the popular media for furthering the relativistic mind-set. Blamires was a student of C.S. Lewis, and like his mentor, his highly readable arguments are spiced with memorable anecdotes and built on a firm foundation of common sense. Though a bit of a curmudgeon at times, Blamires gracefully delivers his thesis with wit and logic.

Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 209 pages
• Publisher: Vine Books (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569551421
• ISBN-13: 978-1569551424
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,975,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A deconstruction of the secularization of our age, June 20, 2000

By 

Daniel Felmlee - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Post Christian Mind: Exposing Its Destructive Agenda (Paperback)

Blamires parses what he calls the post-christian mind, the voice of the popular media, and examines the pieces to show that it is fundamentally antagonistic to the Christian point of view. He flips through newspapers and popular magazines and finds these anti-Christian trends and assumptions as the common prevailing theme. This book is great in that it gives one a more attentive ear when being exposed to pop journalism as well as gives insight into what your neighbor most likely believes, whether she knows it or not.

Blamires does a wonderful job of showing that the battle of a worldview is often in the definition of a word. He examines how words definitions have changed to format the post chritstian mind. The subject matter is contemporary(a downfall of his now somewhat dated although profoundly excellent book The Christian Mind) and his writing is compelling while not losing it's humor. I prefer The Christian Mind because it's aim is more applicable, showing how we should think rather than the destructive pattern of the thoughts of popular journalism. In this way I feel that Blamires falls into crankism, but on the whole I find this book invaluable.

25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Singularly Unimpressive, July 25, 2001

By 

Robert Knetsch "Wanna-be theologian" (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Post Christian Mind: Exposing Its Destructive Agenda (Paperback)

I know that if Blamires were to read this, he would want to accuse me of having a "post-Christian" mind, but I finished this book with a sense of discomfort and was not convinced that he wrote a book that was effective in analyzing our Western culture. Its not that I don't sympathize greatly with his points; indeed, the attack on the concept of family, the moral decay of society, etc. are discouraging at best and even frightening.

Nonetheless, Blamires style, instead of coming off as a "wise uncle" as J.I. Packer says, he sounds like a grumpy old man. Amidst some adequate attacks on the post-christain mind, Blamires fondly recalls the Victorian era, mourns the lack of using the King James Bible and the awful "pop-music" that pervades worship in the church today. To him, these are "given by God to English speaking people". Indeed, I am often frustrated by the desire to "modernize" music merely for the sake of attracting youth. But his simplification of what is happening here is far from accurate. This is by no means the sole reason why, for example, some music is made to sound more modern. Did he ever consider that the hymns he loves so dearly (again, as do I) were derived from "popular" tunes of the day? Moreover, some were based on the tunes of bar-songs, but given religious music! Moreover, those who started the writing of the King James Bible at the time were doing something very new and avant garde, precisely for the point of appealing to people who could not read the originals or Latin. As a Reformer, does he no know that his beliefs come from a host of "rebellious" thinkers who turned the theological world upside-down? Again, this is not to say that change for its own purpose is worthwhile; at the same time, change in itself is not always based on some "post-Christian plot" that Blamires so often makes it seem in this writing.

Aside from his anecdotal meandering and lack of point (I did not understand his point in the "Compassion" chapter, for example) the final issue I have with this book is that it is profoundly centred on morality without hardly mentioning the name of Christ! Moreover, few biblical passages are referred to; instead, it comes off sounding like a yearning for "the old times" or, as Blamires refers to it so often, "the times of our grandparents." Let us not forget that, for many of us, the times of our grandparents were the times of the First and/or Second World Wars. Things are not as clear as Blamires contends. Indeed, Tash is not Aslan, but Queen Victoria was no Aslan either.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Emperor Has No Clothes!, June 21, 2001

By 

A. Parker - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Post Christian Mind: Exposing Its Destructive Agenda (Paperback)

Blamires' concluding words tell the whole story, "The sea of faith is being contaminated by the great oil slick of media innuendo, insult and misrepresentation. A vast campaign is needed to clean up the mess." Just like beach contamination requires an organized army of volunteers to clean up. Christians need an army of voices who will say, "The emperor has no clothes!"

The world believes it's clothed in the splendor of human achievement and progress. We need to speak up and point out how our culture stands naked and ought to feel ashamed. Blamires points out just how far the post-Christian mind has gone.

Particularly poignant are some of the later chapters on 'Freedom of Expression,''Back-to-Nature,' and 'Denigration of Christians.' When Blamires reveals the mindset of critics who laud the hedonistic lifestyle of Oscar Wilde, and decry Gerard Manley Hopkins' foray into the Jesuits, he provides a stark picture of post-Christian values.

J.I. Packer, in the forward, likens Blamire's book to Chesterton's writing. Certain aspects do make the work seem like a later-day _Orthodoxy_, but Blamires lacks the biting sarcasm and the interesting quips that Chesterton pulled off in his critique of Western Civilization at the turn of the previous century. Still, his examples and stories weave a compelling contrast between post-Christian thought and the Christian mind that hold the reader's attention and make for a quick read.

The single weakness appeared to be his chapter on 'Economic Freedom.' He began to dig into issues behind commercialism, but did not continue to dig and left the reader at the surface level wishing he had scratched his thinking down a few more levels through the scrabble and into the stratigraphy below. Michael Novak tackles these economic issues at a deeper level whereas Blamires seems to have overlooked some obvious possibilities. He pretty much resigned us to being slaves to Madison Avenue but failed to consider that we can take a page out of the Amish book and ignore modern media altogether. He did not offer the consideration that Christians buy generic, unadvertised products or form cooperatives and manufacture and sell products that he decries as inflating costs through mindless, post-Christian advertising. He also ignores the possibility of increasing consequences for theft at the end of this chapter.

Despite the one chapter, the book is well worth acquiring and contemplating. You cannot go wrong by an expenditure of time on this work. If anything, it may be the deciding factor in mustering the courage to stand up and tell others, "The emperor has no clothes!"