
It is necessary for every African Christian to understand how Christianity is a worldview. This is because the prevalent understanding of the gospel considers it largely as confined to the personal sphere.
In my own journey, I have found a number of books helpful in elaborating how the Bible provides a unique perspective on reality centred in the gospel.
Here are a number of them:
1. How Now Shall We Live by Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey
A landmark volume jointly written by the late founder of the Prison Fellowship, Charles Colson, and the noted Christian worldview scholar and author, Nancy Pearcey, it explores the Christian worldview themes of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. Each theme is examined across different spheres of life: politics, economy, literature, family, among others. Throughout, it calls believers to ditch the dominant pietistic outlook and embrace the full biblical vision of the gospel as God’s redemptive power for transforming every sphere of life.
2. Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey
With her main focus on American church and society, Nancy Pearcey examines how a split view of life into dual sections of sacred/secular has limited the church’s witness. Beyond that it has fostered the advance of a secular worldview which has ended up holding the church captive to a godless culture. It has much to teach the Christian Church here in Africa.
3. Creation Regained by Albert Wolters
One of the pioneering introductions to a Christian worldview, Wolters’s book provides a basic and essential guide to the notion of ‘worldview’. It discusses the worldview categories of Creation, Fall, and Redemption, and shows how each one extends to every sphere of human life and society. Our call as Christians therefore is to be involved in the renewal and godly redirection of the ‘structure’ which God has embedded in every aspect of creation.
4. The Universe Next Door by James Sire
The book is subtitled ‘A basic worldview catalog’, and a catalogue (forgive my British spelling) it is. The late James Sire provides a definition of worldview as a commitment or orientation of the heart about the nature of reality. That understanding also provides us with the foundation on which we make our decisions and live our lives. He identifies seven questions which any worldview provides answers to, and he discusses the responses given by a number of worldviews, from naturalism to theism, from postmodernism to the New Age perspective.
5. The Transforming Vision by Brian J. Walsh and J. Richard Middleton
Another worldview classic, this book explores the problem of dualism which has plagued Christian thought for centuries and continues to render the Church ineffective against the onslaught of modern culture. They passionately call the church to grasp the wholistic view which the Christian worldview is and bring it to shape every sphere of modern life.
6. Truth and Transformation by Vishal Mangalwadi
Vishal Mangalwadi is an Indian scholar, writer and Christian activist who has had a lifetime of witnessing the practical implications of worldview in his home country. Writing against a similar background with African Christians, he discusses the transforming power of the gospel not only for individual lives, but on the culture of a society. Drawing on the remarkable (but largely ignored) role of the Christian worldview in shaping European countries and the United States, he calls the Church to recover a full gospel of the kingdom of God, just like Christ proclaimed it.
There are a whole lot more which I desire to read but have not been able to get. Listed are just those I have digested over the years.
Many popular bookstores prefer to carry titles of a different flavour, yet you might come across one or more of these in your area. If you live close to an ACTS bookstore, many of them will be available there. The ACTS (African Christian Textbooks) ministry does a great job in making such solid volumes available in Africa. I have been a regular customer at the one here in Lagos.
Asides from these, your best option might be to buy them online, probably through Amazon. I understand shipping costs could make the purchase more expensive. However, given the huge need and importance of these resources, it’s worth the investment.