If you don’t have time to read Tom Holland’s weighty book Dominion which chronicles how Christianity shaped western civilization, then by all means, read The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. It capture the basic message of the former very well and approaches a similar theme on faith basis.

Scrivener is an Aussie who currently resides in the UK where he is an ordained Church of England minister. He directs Speak Life, an evangelistic ministry that combines his writing, speaking, and online media.

The Air We Breathe echoes a key statement from Holland’s book that “we’re all goldfish and Christianity is the water in which we swim.” And while many in the west are being influenced to believe our most holy faith is an anachronistic religion that is bigoted and irrelevant, Scrivener does an excellent job demonstrating how Christianity is the very foundation of modern western values.

The book takes on seven key values celebrated in our world: equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress, and shows how they all sprung from Christian soil. Scrivener writes: "The extraordinary impact of Christianity is seen in the fact that you don’t notice it. You already hold 'Christian-ish' views, and the fact that you think of these values as natural, obvious or universal shows how profoundly the Christian revolution has shaped you."

I especially recommend this book to anyone who wants to give an answer to a world that increasingly believes Christianity is no longer relevant and that society has progressed beyond those ancient beliefs and superstitions. Scrivener’s work will equip you to confidently defend the faith “once for all delivered to the saints.” You will not only come to better appreciate your own values but also be able to share how the teachings of Jesus make sense in today’s culture.

For example, skeptics and secularists regularly describe the Medieval Period as wasted time, asserting Europe was bogged down in a thousand years of “popes, monks, and inquisitors.” The late Carl Sagan call this period “a millennium gap, a poignant lost opportunity for the human species.” Christianity is depicted as a great restraint on human progress and if only it had never happened we would be a thousand years ahead of where we are now.

Not only does Scrivener effectively refute this lie, he shows how the Middle Ages gave us the “glories of medieval cathedral, the founding of universities, the establishment of parliaments, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, and the intellectual foundations for modern democracy. Far from being a “barren desert”, this time period became the seed bed for social and scientific progress.

I heartily encourage you readers to take advantage of this fine work.