Lauren Ducommun

Book Review:
The Secular Creed: Engaging Five Contemporary Claims by Rebecca McLaughlin
The Gospel Coalition, 2021

“Black lives matter.”
“Women’s rights are human rights.”
“Transgender women are women.”

You don’t have to scroll or drive far to see these banners waved. But, the belief that human lives are valuable, that the oppressed and marginalized deserve justice, and that we should love those whose gender or race or culture is different from ours–they aren’t rooted in atheistic or secular beliefs.

“[W]ithout the God of the Bible, our ideals of human equality and justice have no foundation… From an atheist perspective, there’s no reason to believe in human rights, no basis for love across difference, and no meaning to right and wrong beyond our shared imagination at a certain time.”

So how do we sift through these secular claims, along with the belief that Christianity is a white male religion? Aren’t these good things to affirm?

“What if our failure to fight for racial equality while also upholding biblical sexual ethics allows that progressive wedding of ideas to stand unquestioned?”

Rebecca McLaughlin, who holds a PhD from Cambridge, gently walks us through these movements from a biblical and evidence-based perspective.