ENTER OUR BOOK GIVEAWAY HERE: https://www.aaronshamp.com/contest
Over the last several years, we have repeatedly heard or said that this is a culturally divided age. Politics, culture, and even evangelicals appear to be more and more polarized over key moral issues. Societal disruption and breakdown are present all around our country. However, we might forget that this past decade is not the only time that Americans have been divided. The 1960s counter-culture was also filled with confusion, chaos, and deep divisions.
Os Guinness returned to the podcast to discuss the re-release of his book The Dust of Death: The Sixties Counterculture and How It Changed America Forever. Os shares the story behind the book including his time at L’Abri with Francis Schaeffer. We discussed his analysis of the sixties counterculture and his position that he calls Christian Realism. Finally, Os helps us to think about how to move forward in this culture.
Os Guinness (DPhil, Oxford) is the author or editor of more than thirty books, including The Dust of Death, The Call, Fool's Talk, Carpe Diem Redeemed, The Magna Carta of Humanity, Last Call for Liberty, Impossible People, Unspeakable, and Time for Truth. A frequent speaker and prominent social critic, he has addressed audiences worldwide from the British House of Commons to the U.S. Congress to the St. Petersburg Parliament. He is a senior fellow at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and was the founder of the Trinity Forum.
Born in China to missionary parents, he is the great-great-great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, the Dublin brewer. After witnessing the climax of the Chinese revolution in 1949, he was expelled with many other foreigners in 1951 and returned to England where he was educated and served as a freelance reporter with the BBC. Since coming to the U.S. in 1984, he has been a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. He was the lead drafter of the Williamsburg Charter, celebrating the First Amendment, and has also been senior fellow at the EastWest Institute in New York, where he drafted the Charter for Religious Freedom. He also co-authored the public school curriculum Living With Our Deepest Differences.
Guinness has had a lifelong passion to make sense of our extraordinary modern world and to stand between the worlds of scholarship and ordinary life, helping each to understand the other—particularly when advanced modern life touches on the profound issues of faith. He lives with his wife, Jenny, in McLean, Virginia, near Washington, D.C.
Show Highlights
Os tells us about his trip to America in 1968 that opened his eyes to the sixties counterculture.
We hear about Os’s time at L’Abri in Switzerland with Francis Schaeffer.
We learn about Christian Realism and how it helps us to understand the times and live well in them.
Os points us to how evangelicals can move forward in cultural engagement.
Resources
Buy Os Guinness’s books that we discussed on this episode:
You can find a lot more from Os at his website.
Subscribe and Connect
Follow Aaron on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter at @aaronmshamp.
Support This Podcast
PayPal: https://paypal.me/AaronShamp?locale.x=en_US
Venmo: @AaronShamp
Cash App: $AaronShamp