The Book that Made your World : How the Bible created the Soul of Western Civilization. By Vishal Mangalwadi. Thomas Nelson, 2011 442 pages. £12 – ISBN 978 1 595 555 458
Christianity Today called the author ‘India’s foremost intellectual’.
He studied philosophy at Indian universities and ashrams and spent 6 months with Dr Schaeffer’s Swiss centre ‘L’Abri’ before returning to India to serve the rural poor.
In this magnum opus, Dr Mangalwadi analyses, in some depth and great detail, the influence of the Bible on virtually every facet of Western civilization – from politics and science to academia and technology.
Just as fascinating as the impact of the Bible on Western culture may have been (and still is), the author also helpfully draws comparisons with other civilizations – notably Chinese, Indian and Arab, for example, showing how these cultures failed significantly to make the progress plainly made by the West.
That someone not from the West (an outsider, so to speak), is able to deliver such a powerful endorsement of the Bible’s crucial impact on Western civilisation is a tribute to his wide-ranging reading and research and his most readable style.
It makes the book a compulsive read.