The Air We Breathe

We live in a society where most people cherish equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress. And this includes millions who are unchurched—or even outspoken against Christianity!

In the remarkably fresh new apologetic resource, The Air We Breathe, author Glen Scrivener brilliantly shows how these pervasive beliefs actually spring from Christianity—not least, the early part of Genesis.

1½ min introductory video by the author

The Air We Breathe is an excellent book that will ignite thought-provoking conversations about Christianity, Jesus, and the Gospel. That’s good news in today’s ‘cancel culture’, where guilt abounds, grace is unheard of, and forgiveness is in very short supply! Highly recommended.

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232 pages, soft cover

The Air We Breathe

How we all came to believe in freedom,
kindness, progress, and equality

Today in the West, many consider the church to be dead or dying. Christianity is seen as outdated, bigoted and responsible for many of society’s problems. This leaves many believers embarrassed about their faith and many outsiders wary of religion. But what if the Christian message is not the enemy of our modern Western values, but the very thing that makes sense of them?

In this fascinating book, Glen Scrivener takes readers on a journey to discover how the teachings of Jesus not only turned the ancient world upside down, but continue to underpin the way we think of life, worth, and meaning. Far from being a relic from the past, the distinctive ideas of Christianity, such as freedom, kindness, progress and equality, are a crucial part of ‘the air we breathe’. As author Glen Scrivener says in his introduction: “The extraordinary impact of Christianity is seen in the fact that we don’t notice it”.

This is a book for both believers and sceptics—giving Christians confidence to be open about their faith and showing non-Christians the ways in which the message of Jesus makes sense of their most cherished beliefs.

Introduction (excerpt)

An older goldfish swishes past a couple of small fry.
“How’s the water, boys?” he enquires.
“Water?” they ask. “What’s water?”

Goldfish don’t see water. Goldfish see what’s in the water, they see what’s refracted through the water, but I assume (yes, assume—I haven’t done the proper investigations) that goldfish don’t see the water itself. And yet there it is. It’s their environment. Universal but invisible. It shapes everything they do and everything they see. But they don’t see it.

Here’s the contention of this book: if you’re a Westerner—whether you’ve stepped foot inside a church or not, whether you’ve clapped eyes on a Bible or not, whether you consider yourself an atheist, pagan or Jedi Knight—you are a goldfish, and Christianity is the water in which you swim.

Or, to say the same thing in a slightly different way, Christianity is the air we breathe. It is our atmosphere. It’s our environment, both unseen and all-pervasive. …

Over the next ten chapters we will pay attention to what, ordinarily, we take for granted. … In the [first] chapter I want to take us out of the familiar and place us in the ancient world—a world untouched by Christianity. … Next, we will sketch out some major landmarks in the development of the Christian story as we explore seven values that are central to the modern outlook. … At the end of the book there are two chapters reflecting on the implications of all this.

Table of Contents

About the Author

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232 pages, soft cover