SAVING LEONARDOA Call to Resist the Secular Assault on
Mind, Morals, and MeaningNew book by Nancy Pearcey, best-selling author of Total Truth,
goes on sale Sept. 1, 2010, published by Broadman & Holman
Feb. 11, 2010 -- Is secularism a positive force in the modern world? Or is it a destructive ideology that must be unmasked and resisted if human beings are to live as whole persons with dignity and freedom?
In Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning, Dr. Nancy Pearcey offers an unflinching analysis of the profound personal and social devastation wreaked by secular worldviews in every area of life. The assault is being launched from the classroom to the courtroom, from the talk shows to the television screen, from the pulpit to politics.
In this riveting account, Pearcey, a former agnostic, also exposes the stealth secularism that is transmitted through stories and images, where people are often unaware of its insidious impact on their minds, choices, and behaviors.
It is a colorful narrative, boldly executed, with more than 100 images from high art to popular culture, from books to films. What you read may change forever your outlook on the “hot button” political issues that dominate cable TV and talk radio, by offering a fresh and surprising diagnosis of the underlying ideologies that shape those controversies.
Saving Leonardo brings those ideologies to life with rich historical drama, illuminating the rise and fall of hopes and dreams as secular worldviews spin out their dehumanizing impact into our daily lives. It is a highly readable account that brings into sharp focus the ideas and the people—scientists, philosophers, artists, writers, film directors—who have woven secular themes throughout the entire fabric of modern culture.
What can be done? Having once been captured by secular worldviews herself, Pearcey understands them from the inside. She is an unerring guide to the fatal weak points where they can be exposed and overcome. She is also a trailblazer, pointing the way forward toward a humane worldview that is rationally defensible, life-affirming, and rooted in creation itself. As the American Founders themselves affirmed in the Declaration of Independence, human rights are unalienable only when a society respects them as endowments from the Creator.
In a culture where the center is deconstructed and character is disintegrating, Saving Leonardo offers a practical and inspiring program to resist secularism and recover freedom and dignity—one that no free-thinking person who cares about the future of his family, or his nation, can afford to ignore.
My student finished this book and I bought the next one at his request. Actually, he read it at least twice - once all the way through when I gave it to him last January and then almost every night. There is a one page chapter for each day of the year. It is interesting for a preteen. However, I would not recommend it as a substitute for daily Bible teaching. He just picks up the book and reads it alone, without his Bible.
