What do you think of when you think of the year 1776? As Americans, our minds immediately go to the

Declaration of Independence and the start of the American Revolution. And yet that year would prove

significant for a whole host of other reasons as well, sparking movements, innovations, and events that still impact us in

our day today, sometimes in surprising ways.

In fact, it's not an overstatement to say that understanding the year 1776 is essential

to understanding the post-Christian West in which we all live.

My guest is Andrew Wilson, and in our conversation, he explains why people in the West today,

including you and me, are unique in the history of the world.

He highlights why the idea of democracy was so transformative in the decades following

the American Revolution, how the forces of industrialization changed the way people thought about the world and their place in it,

and the complex ways that a Christian worldview both contributed to and confronted many of the key markers of Western thought over the past 200 years.

Andrew Wilson serves as a teaching pastor at King's Church London and a columnist for Christianity Today. He's the author of

several books, including Remaking the World, How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West from Crossway.

Let's get started.

Andrew, thank you so much for joining me on the Crossway podcast.

Thanks for having me. It's great to be with you.

So the title of your remarkable new book is Remaking the World, How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West.

So I want to jump in with the main question in just a few sentences.

How did the year 1776 actually create

the post-Christian West? How did it contribute to where we are today? So the year 1776 has a

whole bunch of remarkable developments taking place at the same time, which I think, and those

developments, I choose seven, and I think

...