Carl R. Trueman. Crossway, 2022. 190 pages.
An interview with Carl Trueman on this book can be downloaded as an Appie Podcast here, or watched on YouTube here. A short article by Trueman illustrating some of the ideas in this book can be read here.
This book is written for readers who find themselves shocked and confused at the sudden rise of LGBT+ causes within western cultures. Strange New World, by Carl Trueman, explains how our culture has changed to allow the present dominance of self-selected gender identity and the protected status of sexual authenticity. To do this, he uncovers the historical roots to these changes and shows how the present manifestations have in fact been several centuries in the making.
As he himself states: “The modern self is the fruit of a complicated confluence of cultural factors… I offer no easy answers, but I hope it provides a framework by which the reader is better able to understand, or be more self-conscious of, the modern western social imaginary that shapes us all… to respond to our times we must first understand our times” (p. 29).
Strange New World is a shorter, more introductory, and more practically oriented reworking of his earlier book Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (see my summary here). The newer book also makes clearer how it is that the writings of rarely-read thinkers from the past have made such an impact at a popular level.
To present a summary of what this book is about, I offer a paragraph on each of its nine chapters and invite readers to acquire a copy of the book for themselves. For everyone with an interest in the issue, it is a valuable read.
The opening chapter—Welcome to this Strange New World—introduces readers to four concepts that need to be understood in order to proceed with the rest of the book. People whose memories stretch back at least a decade may rightly wonder what on earth has just happened in recent times regarding issues of sexuality. As Trueman himself says, “You may not like [this strange new world]. But it is where you live, and therefore it is important that you try to understand it” (p. 20). These four concepts are:
The ‘Self’: The way we understand what defines a human person. Older generations will define this by external realities such as our relationships, nationality, sex, experiences etc, while more recently it has become common to define it by an individual’s personal internal feelings.
Expressive Individualism: The belief that one needs to be truly authentic to their innermost feelings in order to be happy and fulfilled, and that this is achieved by acting out one’s internal feelings.
The Sexual Revolution: Many will think this is to do with the loosening of socially acceptable sexual behaviors since the 1960s. Trueman expands this to include also the fact that new sexual behaviours are normalised and openly celebrated—not to mention that one’s sexual urges are made the defining feature of one’s identity which must be allowed to be expressed publicly and accepted by others.
The ‘Social Imaginary’: The way that a society collectively and unconsciously understands the world around them, together with how they ought to conduct themselves within it.
The chapter titled Romantic Roots looks at what Trueman understand to be the origin of our culture’s adoption of expressive individualism. He does this in two parts. In the first he identifies two early-modern philosophers (Descartes and Rousseau of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) who gave a heightened importance to an individual’s interior life and to the notion of an authentic human nature uncontaminated by the customs of human society. The second part looks at several poets, artists, and composers (notably Shelly, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Wollstonecraft) who developed their ideas and popularised them for much wider audiences, giving rise and expression to the cultural ethos which has been coined “romanticism”.
These figures, Trueman writes, “grant an authority to feelings, to that inner psychological space, that all human beings possess. And those feelings are first and foremost genuine, pristine, and true guides to who human beings are. It is only society, with its petty rivalries, its competitiveness, and its artificial sophistication, that twists perverts and distorts those feelings. That is a key move in the path to the modern self-made more compelling by the fact that it is expressed in an artistic form rather than in an philosophical argument.” (p. 46).
The following chapter—“Prometheus Unbound”—continues Trueman’s history by examining the impact of Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche on popular thought on religion. Both these men were European thinkers and writers of the nineteenth century.
Marx held that religion was humanly constructed. Religion, for Marx, “is a sign of intellectual weakness in its adherents and a means of social oppression for its proponents” (p. 58).
Nietzsche similarly held negative views about the effects of religion. He advocated an ethic that was in complete harmony with the now-widespread belief in the nonexistence of God: one of amorality, self-expression, and the disregard of moral codes.[1] This ethic Trueman sees exemplified in the playwright and poet Oscar Wilde.
The chapter also includes some observations of how these men’s thinking lies behind much of our contemporary society’s assumptions about religion and morality, and the miring of social institutions in cultural battles over these matters.
“Sexualizing Psychology, Politicizing Sex”. This chapter outlines the next stages in the development of the expressive individualist self. Early twentieth century psychologist Sigmund Freud posited that sexual urges lay beneath all human behavior and suggested that the role of civilization was to suppress those urges so that people put more energy into developing of society. Freud’s student, Wilhelm Reich, advanced the idea that the repression of almost every sexuality was the new political evil in place of Marx’s capitalist class, locating human identity within an individual’s sexual urges and affirming that the restriction of minority sexualities was an act of oppression which governments ought to prevent from happening by any parties within their jurisdictions.
“The Revolt of the Masses” pauses the history to explore an important question. Given how few people actually read the works of the thinkers mentioned above, how is it that their ideas have impacted western culture so deeply? Trueman proposes that the way we now relate to our physical world (i.e. “material factors”) plays an important role in facilitating change.
No longer are most modern people at the mercy of the environment: modern farming means we do not face the prospect of starvation, and modern medicine has nullified or mitigated the threat of disease. We are now used to changing the world around us more than being changed by it.
Religious pluralism, democracy, and the common breakdown of the family unit has eroded the authority and stability which the church, the state, and the family might have once wielded—not to mention the mounting critiques of these institutions over the past century or more.
Society no longer has an accepted common “larger good” that we allow to define us. The widely and easily available contraceptives have removed much of the “consequences” of sex, and pornography has normalized sexual practices once deemed deviant as well as made them increasing a part of public discourse. These and other factors have facilitated the cultural ideas promoted by the earlier figures discussed in this book.
Chapter six—“Plastic People, Liquid World”—takes the time to define some important concepts before proceeding to explore how our world is being reshaped by the new conception of the “self”. The first is the nature of personhood and identity in our time. The second is that of “recognition”, by which Trueman is referring to the way new people demand that their self-selected identities be approved and legitimized by others rather than merely tolerated. Following these the chapter discusses the way that the communities any individual might belong to is increasingly selected by them, as seen by the way people feel less affinity to their identity defined by their birth family and place of residence, and more to groups they identify with such as race or sexuality, as facilitated by the connections made through social and news medias via the internet. On this last point, Trueman writes: “when identity is grounded in psychology and the Internet allows for the indulgence of any and all means of thinking about that identity, the concept of community lacks any real solidity. People can now pick and choose their communities, and that means they can pick and choose their identities” (p. 121).
“The Sexual Revolution of the LGBTQ+” analyses “the confected and volatile nature” of that movement. Readers may be surprised to learn that the groups represented within the acronym are not natural bedfellows: Lesbian and Gay advocates did not share common goals until recent decades, and transgenderism conflicts with biologically-oriented elements within both of those (hence the emergence of recent slur term “TERF”). A further section in this chapter explores the underlying ideas within The Yogyakarta Principles (2006, named after the Indonesian city where they were formulated). This document has provided the guidelines for governments on how to subsume LGBTQ+ rights within human rights in general, and Trueman points out the way the trans-rights element has proven so contentious due to its conflict with the gender-binary that much of society is based upon.
“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. The eighth chapter exhibits how expressive individualism has reshaped the traditionally enjoyed liberties known as ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘freedom of religion’ (in the American context). This chapter outlines some of the underlying logic that has made these freedoms so problematic in contemporary society. This is perhaps most notable in the way that selfhood has become defined psychologically—the upshot of this is that an assault on one’s inner or psychological identity (e.g., by rejecting their stated gender or sexuality) can generate as much trouble as an assault on their physical person.
The final and concluding chapter—“Strangers in this Strange New World”—reminds Christian readers of our identification as “aliens and strangers in the world” (cf. 1 Peter 2:11) and suggests how we might respond to the changed society we live in. Trueman also points out that while readers may disapprove of the way our culture has turned, churches and Christians are nonetheless part of the way it is: Christians typically treat their church affiliation as a consumer choice and choose what suits their own happiness. His suggestions for response take cues from the early church in the ancient Roman world—a time he sees as similar in some respects to our own, when churches were regarded as socially subversive groups which ought to be conforming to the societies they lived in. In the final pages of the book, Truman reminds Christian readers of the importance of being thoroughly taught the broad framework of biblical faith, of worship that can transform our own instinctual perspective on the world, and that a particular focus on our theology of the human body and existence is the special need of our day.
Strange New World ends with this note:
“The world in which we live seems to be entering a new, chaotic, uncharted and dark era. But we should not despair. We need to prepare ourselves, be informed, know what we believe and why we believe it, worship God in a manner that forms us as true disciples and pilgrims, intellectually and intuitively, and keep before our eyes the unbreakable promises that the Lord has made and confirmed in Jesus Christ. This is not a time for hopeless despair nor naive optimism. Yes, let us lament the ravages of the fall as they play out in the distinctive ways that our generation has chosen. But let the lamentation be the context for sharpening our identity as the people of God and our hunger for the great consummation that awaits at the marriage feast of the Lamb.” (pp.186-187)
To finish, I would like to remind the reader of Truman’s words I cited near the beginning: “to respond to our times we must first understand our times”. As such, Strange New World must not be neglected by any who wish to make sense of and stand firm in the confusing cultural context we find ourselves in.
Carl Trueman’s Strange New World can be purchased from Fishpond for $33 (price as at September 2023).
[1] As I wrote this, I overheard my children listening to the popular song “Let it Go” from the film Frozen: “No right, no wrong, no rules for me: I’m free!”
Chris Northcott 