The book that Made Your World review

Vishal Mangalwadi's book is an attempt to show us an outsider's perspective on just how blessed we are to have a culture that has been permeated with the Bible and with many generations' worth of Christian attempts to apply it correctly. Though the book is journalistic rather than doctoral, Mangalwadi displays formidable scholarship in this more-or-less systematic examination of areas of life from science and technology to charity and compassion, demonstrating clear historical evidence for the Bible's impact in each area. Now, I thought I already had a pretty good understanding of how the Bible has built the world I live in, but it didn't take me very long reading this book to realise that the half had not been told me.

In addition to the valuable scholarship, however, is another theme that runs through the book: the inability of cultures not permeated by Scripture to produce anywhere near the same level of civilisation. The Book That Made Your World would not be nearly so valuable as it is if it wasn't written by an Indian who has spent a great deal of his time investigating the history of India and its uneasy relationship with the West. Mangalwadi clearly loves his people, paying tribute to their greatness, but he pulls no punches in critiquing his culture's pagan roots. And he is able to draw both on study and on personal experience ministering to India's poor to explain--sometimes in gutwrenching detail--just why India (and the rest of the world) needs the Bible.

I didn't agree with every one of Mangalwadi's conclusions about Western history or theology (I would disagree that hierarchy within marriage was a result of the Fall, for instance), but overall I loved this book and would highly recommend it. The Great Commission tells us to teach all the nations what God has commanded of us in the Bible. This book is a mind-blowing examination of just how far that command has already gone--and a rallying-cry to take it even further, in hope and confidence that the power which once turned the world upside down, will continue to do it.

May God bring us back to His Word!

If you don’t know where to start reading your Bible, join thousands of people around the world and start reading- even today! Download your reading plan (for free!) at TotheWord.com

NOTE: I listened to this book on audible, but on the Goodreads app I could not find a way to change the edition to the audio book. It was wonderful.

It seemed that the reason that Western Europe developed the way it did while the rest of the world didn’t had been settled by Jared Diamond by simply saying it was ‘Gun, Germs, and Steel’, but Mangalwadi sort of disagrees. Then again, Mangalwadi is writing from the point of view of an outsider, and being an expert on India (namely because he happens to be Indian), he sort of raised the question as to why Western Europe developed whereas India has basically stagnated. Well, his answer was that it was because of the Bible.

Basically, Mangalwadi’s argument is that the Reformation, which resulted in ordinary people discussing and debating the Bible in their own language brought about the scientific revolution that raised Europe from a backwards peninsula to the centre of the modern world. This also resulted in the United States, a nation that he claimed was built upon Biblical foundations, becoming the world’s sole superpower. I do think he has a pretty good point, but a part of me feels that there is some revisionism occurring in this book, and the idea of the Bible being available in the vernacular isn’t the only reason.

One of the things that he seems to neglect is that Rome didn’t completely collapse in the aftermath of the barbarian invasions. The reality is that the Eastern Roman Empire survived for another thousand years, and it was the Venetian invasion that pretty much was the beginning of the end. The thing with the Eastern Empire is that the Bible remained in the common tongue, which was basically Greek, yet despite this, the Eastern Roman Empire eventually declined, and died. Further, after the Byzantines met the Rus, the Bible went up north where it appeared in their own language as well.

Sure, the fact that the church kept the Bible in Latin meant that only the church was able to read, and interpret, the Bible. However, while translating the Bible into the vernacular resulted in the German and English languages becoming codified, the reality is that it doesn’t matter if the Bible is written in your native language if you can’t read. As such, I would suggest that it had more to do with the Protestant churches going out and teaching people to read so that they could read the Bible for themselves, was the important factor. In fact, he even explores how an Indian tribe was transformed when they went out to learn to read the Bible, first in English, and then in their own tongue.

Sure, the act of becoming literate does play a huge role, but Mangalwadi suggests it is more than that, and he points to China and the Middle East as an example. However, I would argue that the reason that the Middle East went from being the centre of learning to what we have today (though that is changing) is due to the Mongol Invasions (and I’d also suggest that the Crusades didn’t help either). As for China, there was the issue that the conservatives took control of the government, and basically tossed learning out of the window.

Mind you, I’m not necessarily saying that he is wrong, because the Bible does form a basis of a functioning society, and I agree with him that our movement away from the Bible is resulting in a decaying society. Sure, I might not be a big fan of abortion, but there is much more to the issue, especially since it ends up being a bunch of males telling women what to do with their body. Sure, I do believe that life begins at conception, but I do not believe that I have the right to tell somebody what to do with their body, especially if the baby was placed into their body against their will. Also, don’t get me started on the fact that the only time the pro-lifers care about the baby is when it happens to be in somebody else’s body (though their argument is that at this stage the life is powerless and needs somebody to stand up for them).

What I do agree with Mangalwadi is that the problem is that we have stopped reading our Bible, and I am looking at Christians more than the secular world. Mangalwadi points out that our scientific discoveries came about because Christians decided to explore God’s creation. The problem is that many of the fundamentalist churches are so caught up with the debate over evolution that they are basically rejecting all of science (which is similar to what happened in China centuries ago when the conservatives took over). The same is the case with Climate Change, which they consider to be a left-wing conspiracy to kill babies (it’s always the babies) and are also crying about how the left seeks to destroy the sanctity of marriage (which they are doing a pretty good job of it themselves).

Yes, I believe that God does answer prayers, but I’m not all that convinced that ‘praying the gay away’ is all that easy to do, and this gets worse when they begin to use guilt to make people feel that the reason that they have these urges is because there is an unrepentant sin in their life (which is not true because God answers prayers even though we have unrepentant sins in our lives), or that God has decided that this person is not worth saving. It is not surprising that the problem most people have with Christianity are Christians. Yeah, it is interesting to note that the idea of predestination came about to say that it is God who determines who is saved, not the Pope, and it has pretty much been taken way out of proportion.

Okay, there is probably a lot more that I could write about this (especially when you consider Africa, where a number of countries have Christian populations of over 80%, but still deal with corrupt governments and a lack of education, while there are Asian countries where Christianity is in the minority, but are quite developed – though the argument with these countries is that they are either dictatorships, or have been through a period of dictatorship) but I’ll probably just leave it here. As I mentioned, the theory is quite good, and does support the idea of returning to the Bible, but there are quite a few holes in the thesis, and as the author points out, it is not just having a Biblical foundation, but being about to read it, debate it, and take it to heart.

So, let’s stop talking about killing babies, and praying the gay away, and return to the conversation of how we should be loving our neighbours as ourselves.

As a book Mangalwadi tries to provide an overview and generalist history of the West by arguing that the culture and principles created by the Bible are at the central core of Western civilization. Using a thematic approach, he reviews how the principles of the Bible have influenced and shaped the various social, political, economic and ideological pillars of Western Civilization. It is another work that contributes to the discussion on the decline of the West that has emerged as a topic of historical debate over the past decade or so. As such, it certainly adds positively to this conversation. Unfortunately, the book reads as though Mangalwadi feels he has 'the answer' to this debate in the area of civilizational decline and proceeds to hammer it home, page after page, with a very large hammer when the surgical application of a chisel might be a better approach.

Consequently, my first major criticism of this book is its focus on the Bible as the primary core of Western Civilization and all that is both great and poor about it. As any undergraduate student of the West would know, Mangalwadi has only got a third of the story. Here, I call on the thoughts of John Hirst in his tome 'The Shortest History of Europe'. In this succinct little book, Hirst effectively does exactly the same job as Mangalwadi, except in about 1/10 of the word count and with greater historical precision. Essentially, Hirst argues that Western civilization is anchored on three core pillars. If one of these is not present then we do not have this historical entity called 'The West'. Hirst's three pillars are Greco-Roman Learning, the Germanic influence and last, the Church. It is this third pillar where Mangalwadi's thesis best fits. Unfortunately, he falls for the typical Protestant Christian perspective of placing the Bible at the centre of the argument at the expense of all other influences, including the positive influences of Church tradition in integrating the cultural worlds of the other two pillars. Consequently, his argument becomes very repetitive as he tries to force the cause and effect of historical events into his very narrow historical thesis.

My second key criticism of this book is closely related. Throughout the book, it is obvious that he is very suspicious of post-modern methodology, even stating outright his own distrust of the methodology. Yet, despite this overt mistrust, the entire book is written in typical contemporary post-modern style. There is a trend in contemporary historical writing to place the historian within the history being written. The historian is situated within the historical narrative being uncovered thus using the insights which can be gained by being part of the story to advance a particular point of view. Mangalwadi uses this approach throughout his book, constantly referring to his experiences in Hindu India and how these experiences shape how he reads the biblical influence on Western development. He then uses his reflections on this situated experience to extrapolate his conclusions onto the history and place of the Bible in Western Civilization, conclusions which generally include a desire to return to more modernist approaches in reading the biblical text. This defensive style is established in the first pages of the book and become very quickly a significant problem in the style of the narrative. His historical methodological technique is one he overtly criticizes, yet it is one he shamelessly uses, primarily in a defensive manner, in order to argue for his narrowed understanding of the core of the West as discussed above.

This is what makes this book so problematic. It simplifies the historical complexity at the core of the West to the point of ignoring at least 2/3's of accepted historical interpretation on the development of Western Civilization. His historically situated approach actually contributes to this narrowed and culturally dislocated reading of the influence of the Bible in the development of the West. Overall, a book which had much potential to contribute much more than it does to the current debate on Western decline. Ultimately, however, it fails as a useful uncovering of the role that the Bible plays in the philosophical and cultural development of the 'soul' of the West through narrow historical perspectives and a flawed methodology.

His target audience is western Christians, especially American Christianity, who he thinks have abandoned historic Christianity. As a result the West is losing that which gave it stature and greatness, living by the Book.

This is a an important theme, and Mangalwadi's constant contrasts between Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam on the one hand, and Christianity on the other, are very important. Too often there is a flight towards these religions as the effects of neoplatonism take their toll on Western Christianity.

I did not give this book five stars because there is one area of weakness in Mangalwadi's thesis. When he speaks of the Christian influence in India under William Carey and others, he refers to British legislative programs influenced by Wilberforce and Shaftesbury, which were to have an effect throughout the British Empire, and therefore India.

While issues such as slavery, working conditions, etc., did need to be addressed, once the solutions for these is seen as a political issue, the road towards the Welfare State and totalitarianism are well under way. Only in later life did Shaftesbury begin to see the problem as the British schools were secularized by the National Education Act of 1870. But he was too late.

In selecting the political order as the vehicle of change, the use of physical power replaced the power of the Holy Spirit in the church. Changing people's minds leading to a change of activity through reading Scripture and the preaching of the Word was abandoned in favor of enforcing people's conformity through police power.

As a result the churches have been relegated to the back-blocks of cultural significance, and they have remained there to this day. Mangalwadi speaks favorably of the Victorian Evangelical's use of the legislative framework, but in so doing has missed the effective abandonment the church as the leading instrument of significant cultural change.

Yet, the West did not get to where it is today by legislative decree. It got there by priests, pastors and monks who insisted that men live by the word of God. As Mangalwadi so tellingly illustrates, it got there by adherence to a Book - the Bible. And this book is a clarion call to get back to basics.

This is not just a ‘three cheers for the Bible’ kind of book. Nor is it going to simply bolster the views of the hard-line fundamentalist, as the title may suggest. Rather, these are the words of a man who has come into the rich flow of wisdom, and truth. Indeed, he puts much emphasis upon the importance of “truth”. He has come to see in a very profound way how the wonderful benefits experienced by countries like Australia, America, England, Canada, Germany, France, and Scotland—to name a few, have flowed from a Bible-given understanding of the world, its purpose, of humanity and of its hope, and of God and his character as revealed in Jesus Christ.

This is a book for the benefit not only of individuals, but for musicians, for those who are troubled by the death of rock legends, like Kurt Cobain, or the enduring love of Johann Sebastian Bach.

It is a book for readers of history, ponderers of culture, and leaders of Nations. It is a rewarding read for those interested in why many nations have not succeeded. Why has poverty engulfed so many nations?

Mangalwadi addresses questions like:
‘Rationality: What made the West a Thinking Civilization?’.
‘Technology: Why Did Monks Develop It?’
‘Languages: How Was Intellectual Power Democratized?’
‘Caring: Why Did Caring Become Medical Commitment?’
‘The Future: Must the Sun Set on the West?’
I first heard Vishal Mangalwadi address a modest sized crowd of listeners in Adelaide, in October, 2011. I would like to have heard more from him. I would like more people to have been able to be there to hear him.

There are some You-Tube links: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nHV3j...

But I suggest you purchase the book, and have a read for yourself. I certainly have benefited from such an enjoyable read, and from a man who does evidently have a very keen intellect. And not only that, he does stack of original research – to find out if what he is being told is true. What a good idea.

He also wrote :
- The World of Gurus
- In Search of Self: Beyond the New Age
- Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto For Ailing Nations
- Legacy of William Carey: A Model for Transforming Culture
- Missionary Conspiracy: Letters to a Postmodern Hindu
- India: The Grand Experiment
- Quest For Freedom and Dignity: Caste, Conversion and Cultural Transformation
- Astrology

Chapter 1: Soul. Without God the West has lost its soul, its reason for existence. As an example of this Mangalwadi turns to music, arguing that music has classically been an expression of the soul and Western classical music was founded on the Christian view of the Creator. But modern music has become full of debauchery and a sense of purposelessness and meaninglessness, most dramatically expressed by the nihilistic and hedonistic tendencies of modern rock and the early deaths and suicides of several of its stars. Mangalwadi then expands more broadly to the tragedies that filled the 20th century as emblematic of the West’s losing its soul.

I don’t know how well the argument for the Christian foundations of classical music can be laid – though it is striking to see how much classical music seems founded on religious devotion. But in an age of rising suicide rates, rising depression, and an existential crisis especially within the educated sphere around “What is the purpose of human existence?”, it does feel that there is some truth to Mangalwadi’s words in this chapter.

Chapter 2: Service. Chapter is built around the idea that many outside of Christian influence cannot understand the Christian desire for service. It’s an autobiographcal story, not an argument, but it makes a decently strong point, especially to someone who has traveled around the world a bit and seen how weak the non-self-interested service movements are in some countries.

Chapter 4: Self. The West has generally has not been fatalistic or deterministic but believes in a greater purpose for humankind. Western society has acted out of a clear belief that beauty, good, truth, are objective realities to be pursued, not subjective illusions as some other cultural/philosophical systems have proposed. While the point is true, Mangalwadi doesn’t really make the argument that this comes from the Bible specifically and not something more general within JudeoChristian culture.

Chapter 5: Humanity. The value for individual life is rooted in the Bible. Here Mangalwadi makes a strong case….Christianity has led to the banning of infanticide, wife burning, elder killing, abortion, etc. in various places, along with Christianity often driving movements such as prison reform and the banning of the slave trade. While innumerable hypocrisies could be brought up (as can be for any human value), it is difficult to interpret history in a manner that doesn’t acknowledge that the Christian value for individual human life is distinct from that practiced by many other societies. And this supreme importance of the individual human life is rebelled against by certain modern non-Biblical philosophies, such as Nihilism, Marxism, and ideas which place animal life on the same level as human life. However, it must be noted that the value grew out of the Church (transformation of Rome, medieval theology growing into the modern West), and not the Bible abstractly.

Chapter 6: Rationality. Western and Eastern scholars alike agree that JudeoChristian faiths emphasize rationality more than others. Of course, the question becomes – did the Bible/Church drive the Western focus on rationality, or was it latent in the culture? Mangalwadi makes a rather strong argument here, but I don’t know enough of the history to know if he’s giving the whole picture. And the argument does not vie well with the modern phenomenon of fundamentalist Christians being anti-rational on many topics - which would be fine if Mangalwadi dismissed the right-wing fundamentalists as being contrary to the spirit of the Bible, but as we see later he does almost the opposite.

Chapter 7: Technology. Focused around the idea that the purpose of technology is to save the poor from the drudgery of labor. Easily one of the worst chapters in the book. His assumptions and cherry-picked examples are false from the beginning – in fact, non-technological societies CAN be good places for women and children, and the early Industrial Revolution made the lives of many of the poor even worse, not better. Abuse of technology can be devastating to the lives of the poor. Mangalwadi’s dismissal of the negative effects of technology on increasing worldwide pollution and environmental destruction is disingenuous; the claim, “Pollution kills far more people in technologically less advanced, non-Biblical cultures” is embarrassingly misleading. He ignores that some of the most “Biblical” Western cultures, such as the Anabaptists, were less technologically-focused than their counterparts. Or that Western technology has been used for war, colonization, and resource exploitation as intensely as it has been used for anything.

And for all his work trying to prove that technology is good for general welfare, he does almost nothing to show that technological advancement comes from the Bible…at best, he might be able to argue that technology and its use for good is a by-product of some of the other principles expounded upon in the book (rationality, education, science, service), but he makes no case that it flows from the Bible itself. This is one of several places in the book where he places undue emphasis on the single line in Genesis that humans should dominate the Earth, without any real evidence that this single line has been the root of our dominating behavior, or that such domination has actually been a good thing.

Chapter 8: Heroism. Another of the worst-constructed chapters in the book. This is sad because there IS a good case that Jesus redefined heroism, only the West has often ignored what Jesus did in favor of its own desires. He tries to contrast the Crusades (as a bad example) to the Iraq War (as a good example)…ignoring that the Crusades were explicitly Christian and the Iraq War certainly wasn’t, and you’d have to be quite naïve to believe that the USA attacked Iraq because of our altruistic feelings towards Kuwait. He speaks warmly of the anti-colonial global paradigm shift, only that shift happened quite recently, so what were all those Christian nations doing in the 15th-19th centuries? And he later praises the supposedly Bible-inspired American Revolution, ignoring that those Americans partook in revolution with the desire to further their boundaries, and eventually colonized all of North America.

The supposed “cleansing” of knightly chivalry through ritual is a weak argument, to the point that I have no idea why Mangalwadi even included it. Every instance of Christian support of the violent institution is twisted to try to imply that the Church was just, “trying to make it better”. Martin Luther is mentioned as a hero, but Mangalwadi trivializes the fact that he called for the princes to brutally and violently suppress the peasants when they revolted.

It could have been a much better chapter is Mangalwadi wasn’t so tied to his Religious Right political leanings. The idea of nonviolent resistance, the clearest Biblical example of Jesus’s heroism, which was picked up by many individuals and changed the course of history for many nations, is never once mentioned. Mangalwadi tries to claim a Biblical argument for Just War but not coercive Christianity, yet any argument for Just War from Jesus and the apostles is flimsy indeed, and Christians (including Mangalwadi’s Reformation heroes) continued to use violence to coerce Christianity until quite recently.

Chapter 9: Revolution. Not much of an argument, basically just Mangalwadi’s excuse to tell the story of the Protestant Reformers, his personal heroes. Uses “Live by the sword, die by the sword” to describe Rome and Islam, but ignores that it could just as easily describe Europe and America. That Biblical translation led to the Protestant Reformation is a decent argument as far as it goes, but I’m not sure it advances his broader point much.

Chapter 10: Languages. It is certainly true that Biblical translation led to huge literary advances in many languages around the globe, and on that note this chapter is sound. As a group, Bible translators have done more practical work for language than any other movement in history.

But why does he tie the whole chapter up with linguistically-based nationalism? It’s a weird turn, and betrays his right-wing leanings once again. The idea that Jewish nationalism is the source of modern nationalism is ridiculous. It was inherently ethnic (something he claims modern nationalism shouldn’t be), it reflected similar lines held by plenty of nearby nations, and it was specifically thrown out by the New Testament. He claims Biblical nationalism was not “culture- or race-centered” even though Old Testament nationalism clearly was.

Mangalwadi blames the Sunni-Shia dispute on lack of nationalism, even though the shared linguistic heritage of Sunnis and Shia is stronger than that of various Christian divisions! He glosses over the sometimes violent Protestant/Catholic, Catholic/Orthodox, Reformed/Anabaptist, Anglican/Puritan, and other inner-Christian disputes where “nationalism” was either ignored or used for evil, even though he uses some of those same disputes to further his ends in other chapters. He tries to claim that German nationalism failed because it wasn’t built on God, but German theologians of the time certainly pretended that it was. And other awful examples of nationalism (such as apartheid South Africa or the Confederate South) which were clearly built on supposed Christian foundations aren’t addressed.

The chapter starts with Margaret Thatcher being lionized as a conservative hero, in a wedged-in quote that does nothing for his broader point except to get cheers from fellow conservatives. That basically describes his leanings the whole time – right-wing Christians are pro-nationalism, so he tries to be pro-nationalism, and makes a really weak case to derive that point from the Bible.

Chapter 11: Literature. It’s undeniable that the Bible had a massive influence on Western literature. I don’t support every argument in the chapter, but the overall argument is too easy to make that there’s no point on harping over the specifics.

Chapter 12: University. The fact that the modern university was invented by Bible-believing Christians, not only in Christian countries but in India and elsewhere as well, is rather strong. In fact, a broader argument for the idea of “universal education” having a foundation in Christianity could also be made.

Chapter 13: Science. The idea that a Biblical philosophy was able to create sustainable and directed science was new to me, and despite my prejudice against the idea, I found it to be one of the better chapters. However, Mangalwadi’s own biases get in the way again, as he shows off incredible naivety and ignorance in climate change, evolution, etc. to appease the opinions of his American religious right peers. Thus, his constant need to apologize for moments in which the Church persecuted science (which, as he ably points out, were not due to a fundamental problem between Christianity and science but more specific cultural and political issues) seem quite ironic when he gives support to the exact faction of the Church most devoted to making those same mistakes today.

Chapter 14: Morality. This is the subject that most interested me, and to any objective observer it is a pretty easy case. Not that “Christian” nations are more moral than other nations, but that exposure to Biblical values makes any culture more moral than it was before. The history of Rome, Europe, and India are good test cases, and Mangalwadi uses them well. The John Wesley story is especially amazing. And a more overarching theme across culture – the corruption indices – does strengthen the case.

However, Mangalwadi doesn’t explain why “less Christian” New Zealand and Denmark are less corrupt than the “more Christian” USA, especially relevant as he gloats about American politics and morality throughout the book. Examining that question might lead Mangalwadi to some uncomfortable realizations about wealth, business/technology, and politically conservative ideology.

Chapter 15: Family. There’s a good argument here, and Mangalwadi makes well the argument that Christianity has been a strong positive buttress to the family and to women/children’s rights in general. However, I can’t just praise the argument he does make without noting that he ignores the objections. Celibacy is praised in the Bible, and Jesus in fact is celibate, but he ignores that. The Bible has been used to oppress women, even as most feminist movements arose from Christian nations, and he doesn’t adequately deal with that. While he does deal with churches that restrict women inappropriately, he walks a narrow and unconvincing line in terms of how women’s equality in the church really means. And, once again, fails to deal with the fact that is those churches aligned with the religious right he supports elsewhere which are the most likely to treat women in a manner he recognizes as wrong.

Chapter 16: Compassion. Not a tough argument to make on historical grounds. Mangalwadi argues that Christian compassion has transformed the character of nations, uses the realm of medicine specifically to show one place where Christian-inspired compassion has done great work, and makes his argument well. Yet again, however, it is sad to note that “compassion” is yet another positive Biblical value with which the Christian right which Mangalwadi lionizes appears to miss the mark so often and so poorly.

Chapter 17: True Wealth. Mangalwadi manages to make more here than I thought he could, but he’s still well off base. The Christian hope for a better future certainly has led to more production within societies than many alternatives (though I think his Japanese cultural history is in part inaccurate). But the massive pitfalls of wealth accumulation are completely ignored. If such civilizations had followed the Bible and Jesus, they would NOT have accumulated wealth in this way.

Chapter 18: Liberty. Ugh, this chapter killed me with its selectivity. Yes, the Christian hope does make fighting for liberty a reality, and there’s truth there from the Bible. But how do you gloss over the strong Calvinist lead to South Africa’s apartheid system in a chapter that starts with South Africa?!? How do you praise the Americans for the American Revolution, and ignore that the Revolution was fought in part to gain the right to defeat and subjugate the Native Americans on their frontiers? How do you ignore that the slave-owning American South viewed itself as the “Christian” region of the country, or that many of the most self-professing American Christians today still praise the Confederacy? The history he gives in this chapter is true, but he ignores far too much.

Chapter 19: Mission. Everything in this chapter is true, but from beginning to end it is just one anecdotal example. There is no doubt that there is a Biblical virtue to reach and help others that is unparalleled elsewhere (though not absent). But there are also awful stories. The chapter is weakened by its failure to include more examples on both sides.

Chapter 20: The Future. To the extent to which this chapter reflects Chapter 1 and the West having lost its soul, it is strong. But Mangalwadi’s own biases may prevent the very future he wants to secure. His almost limitless faith in globalization, nationalism, capitalism, wealth, technology, military….wait, am I talking about Mangalwadi or Modi? It’s stunning to see how many Modi-type ideas are being unconsciously reflected by Mangalwadi, simply in a different religious package. I pray the comparison gives him pause. To the extent to which the chapter simply represents the Christian hope, it is okay. I hope and pray that Mangalwadi can be exposed to a broader cross-section of Christian thinking and realize that not all right-wing ideas represent the Christian hope.

Appendix: The Bible. This is so misguided that Mangalwadi should have left it out. However, it does well to represent a consistent issue that occurs throughout the book.

Mangalwadi lionizes “The Bible” rather than Jesus and His Kingdom or the outworking of God’s Kingdom through His churches. Mangalwadi’s historical claims about the New Testament are quite off-base – when Jesus and his disciples taught about sharing the word of God, they were speaking of something that was already being shared, not a future book that was yet to be written and compiled. He ignores that canons were not uniform for the first two centuries, and yet the Church proceeded quite spectacularly without the Bible existing in anything remotely like its compiled form. Mangalwadi turns the Bible into a magic book, forgetting that even the Bible itself attests over and over that God sent us Jesus, not a list of books.

This demonstrates why throughout the book, Mangalwadi fails to give credit to Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Church for changing society, but continuously wants to place the credit in the hands of the book alone. It betrays more of a Koran-like understanding of a mystical Holy Book directly sent by God than the historic Christian understanding of the origin of the Bible and its place in Christian witness. If Mangalwadi had focused on how faithful obedience to the God of Jesus Christ had changed culture over time, he would have had a stronger and more nuanced book. Instead, his (inconsistent) focus on the physical text of the Bible has allowed him to jump around and cherry-pick whichever historical moments best support his case for whichever argument, while ignoring any part of the Christian witness which doesn’t fit into his neat boxes. As I’ve had to repeat too many times already, it’s a bias which he appears to gain from the American right-wing Reformed Christians which influence him far too much. If he would step outside of this narrow theological box, then the fullness of Biblical witness and the broader growth of the Kingdom of God may open up to him to a much greater degree.

This was worth the time to follow through carefully . A great narrator for a great book. It is exactly all the summary claims. I especially enjoyed chapter 17 and was so impressed by Cyrus McCormick's work ethic and his family that I'm going to try to find his biography. I read a negative review on Goodreads and can't believe we read the same book.

The book may look intimidating,but"The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization", breaks down each chapter, into the areas that the Bible has influence, but rather jump around in time,establishes a consistant timeline of events, showcasing how the Bible has evolved the world as we know it.

Mixed with commentary from the perspective of other religions and even secular sources,"The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization", I felt, was a well balanced look at the impact the Bible has made.

The author of the book is, Vishal Mangalwadi, who is described as an Indian philosopher, and some of the things that he shares with the readers are aspects such as, its influence in human rights, justice, heroism, optimism, compassion, capitalism, family,education, science and morality and offers some fascinating information, along with more background information on well known historical information.

This is not light reading, but its a thought provoking reading that would hopefully for many, encourage to dwell deeper on the influence that the bible has had.

Mangalwadi is an Indian and throughout the book he compares the way Eastern philosophy (and pagan philosophy in general) is at odds with the theology and philosophy of the West--particularly the Biblical worldview.

At every point, Mangalwadi shows that it is not geography, disposition, gifting, demography, or anything else--only the transformational power of the gospel that has transformed the world into what we know today. Even in a nation like India that is predominantly Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim, the transformational power of the Christian gospel has brought great fruit in education, democracy, and wealth.

He argues that it is only the Christian worldview that has brought these gifts, as no other worldview offers the kind of philosophy can explain the way the world has been changed.

This is a great book and I highly recommend it--especially as an introduction to the history of the West, and as an apologetic resource.

Christian worldview is important, and lots of Christian authors have written on the topic effectively. Mangalwadi adds to the worldview discussions in the realm of practicality. His thoughts on Christian worldview mostly come by way of personal testimony. I found that especially enlightening.

It is full of excellent examples of how the Bible sets people free to be human. I found the discussion of the lateen sail to be one of the best. You'll have to read it to find out what I mean.

I loved the way he drew me into his thought-world through Kurt Kobain. Excellent.

There are two areas of weakness in the book: 1. It's 400 pages long. Seriously, he could have written half the pages to say what he needed to say. With as easy to read as the book is, the length hurts its accessibility. 2. I was left wondering if he wasn't embellishing some of the stories he used as examples. They come across as somewhat propaganda-ish, and that's not what you want in a book like this.

Overall, 4 out of 5 stars. You should take the time to read it.

Instead, The Book That Made Your World examines a much more familiar theme—how the Bible influenced and accommodated the rise of Western civilization. But what makes it different, and unusually potent, is that its thesis is propounded by an Easterner who sees this historical influence as a good thing.

Author Vishal Mangalwadi was born and raised in India. But he is a Christian who seeks to reform his native land by employing the principles laid out in Hebrew scriptures and expounded upon by Europeans and Americans.

This unusual juxtaposition has much to do with why I found the work so engaging, even though many of the ideas it forwards I’ve encountered before.

For example, when Mangalwadi discusses how the biblical doctrine that human beings are made in God’s image fosters a regard for life and the worth of the individual, he does so in more than a purely academic sense.

Ideas that Make a Difference

Quite early in the book Mangalwadi recounts how he and his wife launched a ministry to India’s rural poor, and how their efforts were thwarted in part by values born of Eastern tradition.

He details how they struggled to persuade a neighbor to let them provide medical care for a younger daughter who was gravely ill. Ultimately, the girl died, because her parents did not regard her life worth the effort and expense of saving.

Mangalwadi writes, “Sheela’s parents starved her to death because they saw her as a liability.”

Not that Mangalwadi relies solely on emotionally charged anecdotes. He dives deep into history and philosophy, making the case that the Christian worldview fostered all sorts of society-boosting developments.

Among his many arguments:

• Medieval monks laid the groundwork for the rise of technology;

• Christian reformers inspired the common man to demand just government;

• The biblical model of the family elevated the place of women and eventually led to their empowerment.

But don’t think that Mangalwadi merely parrots more commonly known apologists from the Christian West. For instance, he doesn’t think much of the ancient Greeks and their populist democracies. And unlike C.S. Lewis, he is certainly no Neoplatonist.

It’s clear that what Mangalwadi desires is a way to apply the best of the Judeo-Christian ethos in order to benefit his own unique culture. And his book is most compelling when he recounts ways in which this has already happened.

When Learning Leads to Freedom

His chapter on language offers a prime example. Casting back to the 18th and 19th centuries, the author shows how it was mainly American and British missionaries who revived and refined native dialects into the national tongue of modern India. These proselytizers also built schools that developed into some of India’s first modern universities, an effort which gave rise to the Indian Renaissance and ultimately the drive for independence.

These missionaries, Mangalwadi declares, “wanted Indians to come to their college to begin cultivating their minds and spirits, to question the socioeconomic darkness around them, to inquire and find the truth that liberates individuals and builds great nations.”

And what is this truth? That the gospel of Christ offers not only spiritual redemption and reconciliation with God, it also points the way toward applying justice and mercy here on earth in the hope we might spend our brief sojourn together working in peace and dignity.

And is this grand vision even possible?

To illustrate that it is, Mangalwadi tells the story of his friend, Dr. Rochunga Pudaite, one of the Hmar people, former headhunters who inhabit the rugged uplands along India’s border with Burma.

Ro, as the author calls him, is the son of early converts to Christianity. With the aim of furthering the faith among their own people, Ro’s parents sent him off to school to learn to read, write, and study the Bible.

And study Ro did, first at Saint Paul’s College in Calcutta, then at Allahabad University (the author’s alma mater), and in Glasgow, Scotland, and Wheaton, Illinois.

Eventually he returned to his people with a version of the New Testament translated into Hmar. Ro also helped found an organization that has, Mangalwadi writes, “opened eighty-five schools, a college, and a hospital—all without any help from the government.”

Mangalwadi insists that the dramatic transformation of the Hmar is simply a microcosm of what applying biblical principles has achieved in the West—and what it can do elsewhere.

“The Bible generates hope for all people,” he declares. As for his friend, Ro, he adds: “The Bible set his imagination free to dream what his tribe ought to be—educated; free to interact with neighbors and enemies; able to overcome hunger, hate and disease; and ready to contribute to the world.”

Mangalwadi concludes: “This fascinating story … can be multiplied across every continent and country.”

Covering topics as widely spread as humanity, rationality, technology and heroism, the book demonstrates the way in which a Biblical view of humanity has influenced all aspects of life in the west and contributed greatly to the development of democracy and technology. Dimond’s excellent work says that the development of the west can be attributed to physical factors (the guns, germs and steel of his title). However, Mangalwadi demonstrates that human society is far more complex than this and that moral and spiritual factors have also played their part in the growth of the West and the impact of its civilisation on the world.

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‘[Mangalwadi’s] arduous research establishes the fact that the Bible and its worldview, contrary to current prevailing opinion, combined to serve as the single most powerful force in the emergence of Western civilization.’

In over 400 pages, Mangalwadi provides a sweeping series of historical narratives, entwined with his own personal experiences in India and the United States, which argue that features of Western civilization would not have occurred if it hadn’t been for the Bible. His outline of history includes the development of the valuing of humans as being higher than animals; the commitment to rationality; creative technology and its benefits; the formation of the concept of heroism based in humility and service; and the dramatic impact of the translation of the Bible into various languages. He also argues that literature, universities, and science would not have formed in the way they did without the Bible. For the author, the West is the best because of its higher ideals regarding morality, the family, compassion, true wealth, and liberty that transcend all other cultures because of the Bible’s influence. Ultimately, Mangalwadi wants to call the West back to a commitment to the Bible and its worldview to reverse what he sees as a rapid decline in relativistic morality and its consequential nihilism that results in despair. At the beginning of the book, the author holds up Kurt Cobain as an icon of modern culture arguing that his suicide was one of the rare occurrences when a nihilist genuinely followed through on their beliefs. Mangalwadi believes that this is the ultimate end of the West if it does not return to the Bible and its worldview.

There is no doubt that Mangalwadi is a good writer and very widely read. The fact that he is Indian and can make a comparison, from experience, between East and West provides for an interesting perspective. And his stories from his experience give a personal dimension that mostly enhances the history and philosophy that he surveys.

But there are some serious flaws in Mangalwadi’s argument. Firstly, reducing the entire development of the West to the influence of the Bible and its worldview is simplistic. While I am no historian, I am always suspicious when a single cause is offered for something. The world and history is surely more complex than that. For example, when he talks about the development of the wheeled plough, he argues that it only happened because of the biblical belief that toil was sinful (whereas work was part of God’s original creation). But as another reviewer has pointed out, farmers who are making a living from their work are surely going to look for more efficient ways of doing their work even if they did not subscribe to a “biblical” worldview! Mangalwadi also completely ignores a range of other influencing factors on the development of Western civilisation – the occurrence of plagues, growth in population, and a host of other historical events. For Mangalwadi everything is the result of the Bible and the adoption of its world view.

Secondly, Mangalwadi speaks of the worldview of the Bible. There is no acknowledgement in the book that the Bible has been the basis of multiple interpretations and “world views”. Mangalwadi presents what might be called the best of the Bible and the best examples of socio-cultural examples based on the Bible. But he fails to mention that the Bible has, for many people, been the basis of some very bad practices and used in support of genocide, slavery, and the “raping” of the environment.

Thirdly, Mangalwadi doesn’t mention any countries that have been successful without a basis in biblical theology or world view such as Japan and Singapore. How did they develop so well without a commitment to the Bible? And what about countries based firmly on a secular philosophy such as Sweden?

Fourthly, Mangalwadi completely dismisses any other religion or worldview has having much of value. But there is no sustained engagement with any of these alternatives. According to one Buddhist scholar who reviewed this book, Mangalwadi actually misrepresents Buddhism.

Overall, The Book That Changed Your World is an uncritical exposition of history. There are sweeping generalisations without any evidence being provided, selective use of the biblical text (on some occasions, no biblical evidence at all), and the equating of a romanticised view of the Bible (which is not as even in its presentation of God as Mangalwadi implies) that completely ignores the fact that Christians are just as prone to many of the social evils of our time as non-Christians (eg, teen pregnancy, divorce, domestic violence, child abuse).

In the end, The Book That Changed Your World is a work of apologetics rather than a scholarly and critical look at the relationship between the Bible and the development of Western culture. There is no doubt that the Bible has been influential – for good and for ill. While Mangalwadi’s book makes for an interesting read, it takes a too uncritical approach to history and the Bible to make it reliable. If one already believes that the Bible is solely responsible for the best in civilisation then this book will bolster that belief. But for a well-informed, educated believer, the evidence won’t be adequate to support the thesis as it is presented.

Acknowledgement: I found Jeff Swanson’s review very helpful, in particular, in parts of this review. I recommend it.

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