A recent article in New York Magazine included this bombshell: “Roughly 30 percent of American women under 25 identify as LGBT. For women over 60, that figure is less than 5 percent.”
Now, I can’t find anyone who believes the number can really be that high. To acknowledge such a dramatic shift in such a short period of time would be nothing short of a world-changing revolution. But, we know about rapid-onset gender dysphoria among adolescents and teens. We’ve seen the prevalence of social contagion in our Instagram age. So, is such a revolution in human sexuality so unthinkable? This revolution may be sudden if it’s actually happening, but it’s no more dramatic than what we’ve seen unfold in the West in the last 60 years. Historian Carl Trueman covers that ground in his new book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway).
This is my pick for the most important book published in 2020.
Trueman locates the sexual revolution within a broader change in views of the self and identity. He joins me in this special extended episode of Gospelbound, to help church leaders understand what’s happening. I’ve heard Carl say that apologetics used to be about explaining the church to the world, but now it’s more about explaining the world to the church. That’s what he does in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which is my pick for the most important book published in 2020.
This episode of Gospelbound is sponsored by Crossway, publisher of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman.