C.S. Lewis Foundation Trustee Vishal Mangalwadi has just released his new book, The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization.

Our Founder and President, Dr. J. Stanley Mattson, has not only endorsed the book, he also wrote its foreword.  He compared it to Alexis de Toqueville’s “outside-looking-in” perspective, and praised Mangalwadi’s analysis, saying, “It is most refreshing to encounter this engaging and informed assessment of the Bible’s profound impact on the modern world.”

The book is about the impact of the Bible on Western culture and everyday concepts and ideologies that are too often taken for granted. The product description from Amazon reads:

In the 1960s many from the West went to the East in search of spiritual wisdom. The Book That Made Your World reverses the journey. Vishal Mangalwadi, an Indian philosopher, takes readers on a historical journey through the last millennium, exploring why and how the Bible reformed Europe and made the West a uniquely thinking civilization: technical and tolerant, scientific and free, just and prosperous.

Mangalwadi was motivated to write this book, as he writes in the prologue, as a response to the thought of Arun Shourie, whom he described as one of India’s “foremost public intellectuals.”  Shourie condemned Christianity in a lecture that was eventually expanded into two books, and argued that Christianity spread to India as part of a campaign of cultural imperialism and colonialism.  Mangalwadi argues, instead, that the Bible is crucial for understanding how the modern world was created–an accomplishment he attributes to the Bible itself.

Mangalwadi was featured recently on FoxNews.com, writing an opinion column about the relevance of the Bible to the 21st century. His book is also an important thematic reading for the 2011 C.S. Lewis Summer Institute. Those who are attending Oxbridge are encouraged to read it before making the trip across the pond. Those of you are not attending Oxbridge, you can register on our website.

The Book that Made Your World is set to be released on May 10. You can purchase it through the C.S. Lewis Foundation website, as well as our Oxbridge bookstore.