Know What You Believe and Why You Believe It.

“No one can understand the present crisis in the United States and the West without understanding the sixties.” So writes Os Guinness in the preface to a new edition of The Dust of Death, which he first wrote almost 50 years ago. On this program, Shane Rosenthal talks with Os about many of the themes he addressed in that book, and how this important cultural shift has affected both American culture, and American religion, down to the present day.

In response to the racial violence that he had witnessed back in the sixties, Os Guinness wrote that “Violence may be pragmatically successful in overturning an existing order that is corrupt, but it is utopian to imagine that the next order will be free of all such problems. All men are fallen.” He went on to ask, “What does it mean in daily life to love our neighbor, to forgive the man who has wronged us, to seek change by reconciliation and not by means of violent revolution?” On this episode, Shane Rosenthal continues his conversation with Os Guinness, author of The Dust of Death.

In his recent book Live Not by Lies, Rod Dreher tells the story of a Czech professor who began noticing a shift taking place in the States about a decade ago. “Friends would lower their voices and look over their shoulders when expressing conservative views. I grew up like this,” he said. According to Dreher, we’re witnessing the rise of a kind of “soft totalitarianism” that will, in his view, be closer to Huxley’s Brave New World than Orwell’s 1984. Shane Rosenthal talks with Rod Dreher about the thesis of his new book on this edition of White Horse Inn.

What is “woke capitalism,” and how is it changing contemporary American culture? What are the beliefs and values of this new ideology, and how do they differ from the beliefs and values of historic Christianity? Where did these ideas originate and why are they so attractive, particularly to so many young people, in our time? What will be the long-term effects of these new beliefs? Shane Rosenthal discusses these questions and more as he continues his conversation with Rod Dreher, author of Live Not by Lies.