I have just finished reading Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey. The basic premise of the book is that throughout the centuries people’s worldviews and philosophies have been characterized by a split – a false dichotomy that divides truth into a lower storey that deals with public truth or facts, and an upper storey that deals with private truth or values. The main goal of the book is to promote a holistic worldview which embraces total truth and doesn’t divide truth into two classes. Along the way, some of the philosophies that come under scrutiny are feminism, materialism, and post-modernism. However, the bulk of the book deals with the implications of this division of truth into two categories in two worldviews that hold sway over large numbers of Americans (it is rather an American book.) – Darwinism, and Evangelicalism. The author looks at how this truth division is a foundation of Darwinism, not only as a biological theory, but also (and you might say especially) in the area of social Darwinism. She looks at examples from Dewey (he of the Decimal system we encounter in libraries), Pinker, and Dennett to show how this division is a foundational pillar of their theories. The chapters dealing with Darwinism also function as a sounding board for Intelligent Design. She says “Luther once said that if we fight on all fronts except the one actually under attack at the moment, then we are not really fighting the battle. And what is the point under attack today? Mainstream evolutionists may disagree with one another over the precise mechanism and timing of evolution (whether natural selection needs to be supplemented by other mechanisms); but they all agree that it happened by blind, undirected natural causes. On the other side of the divide, Christians may argue with one another over secondary questions like when God created the universe (whether it is young or old); but they all agree that the universe is the handiwork of a personal God. Thus the heart of the battle is whether the universe is the result of Intelligent Agency or of blind, noncognitive forces – and that’s where we must direct our energies. Christians need to bracket peripheral issues and focus on the crucial point of whether there is evidence for Intelligent Design in the universe.” I find this approach refreshing as it does away with a lot of the dogmatic parochialism that I hear on many sides of this argument and focuses on the real issue at hand. The other main worldview that has a large section devoted to it is evangelicalism. She looks at the roots of evangelicalism in the two Great Awakenings in America and notes how the revivalist style of preaching led to a focus on Christianity as something emotional and of the heart and an antipathy towards intellectual activity. Sort of the “Don’t think about it – just let God work in your heart” attitude. This strand of evangelicalism was prominent in the Baptist and Methodist, and later also in the Pentecostal churches (in the US) whereas another ‘bookish’ strand of evangelicalism arose in response to this, mainly in the Presbyterian church. She points out that both of these strands of evangelicalism fell, in different ways, to the fallacy of this division of truth. In particular – their disagreement was over which truth – the public truth/facts, or the private truth/values was the more important or real truth that should dictate how we order our world. She sums up her book much in the same place where she begins, by pointing out the difficulty of living an authentic Christian life in our workplace, neighbourhood, families, etc. But whereas at the beginning the incongruities were raised, at the end solutions and answers were given. A lot of her thinking has been influenced by Francis Schaeffer and her time under his tutelage at L’Abri. All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the formation of ideas throughout history or feels the incongruity of what they believe with how they live their Christian life.