THE AIR WE BREATHE:
How we all came to believe in freedom,
kindness, progress and equality
By Glen Scrivener
The Good Book Company, 232 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 1 784 987 497
Perhaps one of the casualties of our Twitter-debating world is the patience to see beyond emotive headlines and engage a topic thoroughly and fairly. The Air We Breathe is a welcome tonic to this – a relatively short book that floods light into the darkness of modern debate.
Scrivener skilfully uncovers the Christian roots that underpin our Western value system, demonstrating that concepts like equality, freedom and progress all find their roots in Jesus. Writing to engage Christians, non-Christians and those burnt by Christianity, he manages to intrigue and engage without getting caught up in the often-toxic debate that surrounds these issues. For example, when discussing equality, he doesn’t address issues like marriage equality but rather where the idea of equality comes from. When God became man in Jesus, he demonstrated that we have inherent worth – an alien concept to the Roman world into which Jesus was born, and something that sparked a change in how His followers treated those society ignored.
One thing Scrivener does so well is demonstrate that it isn’t Christian moralising that has shaped the world, but the good has always flowed from the person of Jesus. Christians have built movements of compassion because Jesus Himself was full of compassion. There is an almost blinding spotlight on Him throughout, which continually draws readers in to see that we have ‘the kingdom without the king’ (Chapter 9).
Much to its credit, the book isn’t squeamish when confronting the darker side of Christian history, addressing issues in the church such as slavery, the Crusades and anti-Semitism. This adds to its credibility and highlights that while Jesus is perfect, His followers certainly are not: ‘Christians are not the heroes of this story… it is about Jesus’ (p.176).
I’d recommend this to anyone who is feeling the pressure of being told their Christian faith is backwards or unacceptable: this will encourage you that Christianity has an amazing story to tell the world. I’d also be confident to give it to a non-Christian not just for academic curiosity, but so they will be pointed to the eternally attractive Jesus behind the revolution.
