The case for Jesus: Greg Sheridan’s Christians
Greg Sheridan seems like he has been around forever. For almost 30 years he has been The Australian’s foreign editor and one of the country’s most influential journalists and commentators.
Yet he’s found time to write eight books including one where he has put his Christian faith into print, God is Good for You.
Now his latest work has just hit the shelves, Christians: the urgent case for Jesus in our world.
It’s a tremendous read in Sheridan’s compelling journalistic prose.
He starts his case by a rummage through the New Testament where he inspires us with stories from the past, primarily of Jesus but also of Mary, Peter, John and that “Lenin of the early church”, Paul.
He then moves to the present where he takes us on a walk with Christianity – or the lack of it – in today’s world, in literature, in popular culture, in politics – and in China.
Sheridan doesn’t gloss over the clerical sexual abuse scandals where he offers useful insights from church leaders on its causes and consequences.
The book doesn’t get lost in the depths of any of these difficulties and its great strength is its uplifting and affirmative tone.
It drives forward the key message that there is good news in the Good News of the Christian gospels; that the decline of Christianity in Western culture is not inevitable.
Sheridan shows that there’s still great cause for hope; that the growth of Christianity will come from many engines, including from the young, from those in Africa and Asia, from the Pentecostal movements, and from evangelical projects such as Alpha.
“Western culture deserves to have Jesus in it,” Sheridan says. “It should really have him at its centre.”
It’s a sentiment that many would already agree with. After reading Sheridan, it’s a sentiment, too, that many others will come to share.
Christians: the urgent case for Jesus in our world
By Greg Sheridan
Published by Allen & Unwin, 372 pages.
Copies are available at the Canberra Catholic Bookstore.
Ph: (02) 6239 9888
Well done, Greg Sheridan. Inspiring to see a public figure taking a strong Christian position.
Greg, the failure of the Church is it teaches a doctrine before it establishes a why. Jorden Peterson success in his biblical series is the why [value] to grab then hold the attention of young men and women in a way the Church has failed to do for a century. Another brick in the wall
What doctrine would that be, Gary? As my four children went though the Catholic school system, ‘God loves you’ appeared to be the only teaching they came home with. Not a bad’un….
But in the ever present hope that their parents loved them, too, this was hardly noteworthy, particularly as God in any way warranting attention as being qualitatively different from a human parent (as if that is half-way adequate), let alone worship, was not much explained.
I tried the extremist position: that if they found Sunday Mass tiresome, they were free to go to Mass during the week for a different experience.
As for ‘repent….’, repent what? Who said that?
SO much doctrine is unfashionable and unfathomable without much explanation and context.