The American Spectator

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p> strong> America's Secular Challenge: The Rise of a New National Religion br> by Herbert London br> (Encounter Books, 100 pages, $20) /strong> /p>

I'm picking texts for my seminary, worldview class in the spring, and I think that Herbert London's new book, America's Secular Challenge, should be in the mix:

1. It's wise. Not just clever. London gets it right basically: Pure secularism, our new "national religion," is a dead, and deadly, end.

2. It's sweeping. He moves artfully from natural science to the arts to economics.

3. It's informative. For instance, I didn't know that since 1933, one percent of American households have held 35% of the nation's wealth; that, in Germany, declaring bankruptcy will permanently disqualify you from membership on a corporation board; that companies who buy naming rights to stadiums have a high mortality rate (TWA, Enron, etc.); that the OSS (the CIA's forerunner) was staffed almost entirely by Yale men.

4. It models cultural literacy. E.D. Hirsch should love the apt citations of Tolstoy, Bellow, Newton, Leibniz, Frost, Dante, Orwell, Smith, Toynbee, Waugh, Chesterton, Paine, Aquinas, Hobbes, Grosseteste, and Mill.

5. It cherishes our linguistic birthright. Whether recalling Abraham Lincoln's expression, "the silent artillery of time," or reclaiming the venerable concepts, civitas and hubris, London shows his gratitude for the classic voice.

6. It reduces absurdities to absurdity. It marvels at the way that people can glory in multiculturalism (including defense of FGM) while bashing the culture of the West.

7. It's edgy. It takes nerve to quote Saul Bellow, when he says, "I will read the Zulus when they have produced a Tolstoy."

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