The Secular Creed: Engaging Five Contemporary Claims

Rebecca McLaughlin. The Secular Creed: Engaging Five Contemporary Claims. Austin, TX: The Gospel Coalition, 2021. 107pp. $15.99.

Falsehoods that sound true are dangerous; falsehoods that sound true and noble are even worse. All people are made in the image of God and possess inherent dignity. Yet, many in the culture today build treacherous superstructures on the God-given foundation of human dignity. In her book The Secular Creed, apologist Rebecca McLaughlin identifies and analyzes the “creed” of modern Western secular society. She organizes her work around the prevalent yard signs that advertise modern truth claims: “In this House We Believe that: Black Lives Matter, Love is Love, Women’s Rights are Human Rights, Transgender Women are Women.” Each of these claims receives at least a chapter’s worth of analysis. McLaughlin describes her approach as, “examining each claim through the lens of Scripture and in the light of culture” in order “to disentangle ideas Christians can and must affirm from ideas Christian cannot and must not embrace” (2). Christians can and must affirm the dignity of all people, but they cannot and must not embrace worldviews that conflict with the clear teachings of Scripture.

McLaughlin approaches these issues in a posture of humility. She acknowledges that not all those who bear the name of Christ have lived faithfully to the biblical teaching regarding the equality of humanity and Christ’s lordship over all people. This is particularly evident in chapter 1, “Black Lives Matter.” She addresses the difficulty of racism in the history of American Christianity and traces a spectrum of responses to the motto “Black Lives Matter.” McLaughlin grounds racial equality in Scripture, concluding, “Ultimately, black lives matter not because progressive people have told us so, but because the equal value of every human, regardless of race, walks off the page of Scripture with the sound of a trumpet” (23). This is a core feature of her argument that human rights are predicated on a biblical worldview. This argument develops further in chapter 4, “Women’s Rights are Human Rights.” She opens the chapter with reference to modern narratives accusing Christianity of misogyny, which she counters with a historical and sociological analysis of the positive benefits of Christianity for women from the first century until today.

McLaughlin addresses LGBTQ+ issues in three chapters entitled “Love is Love,” “The Gay Rights Movement is the New Civil-Rights Movement,” and “Transgender Women are Women.” She argues against the idolization of love that privileges feeling over truth. In the face of those who wish to minimize the teachings of the Bible that make people uncomfortable, she asserts the answer is to become more biblical, not less. In the next historically informed chapter, McLaughlin tackles the assertions that Christians “are on the wrong side of history” and “The Gay Rights Movement is the New Civil-Rights Movement.” Neither assertion is as self-evident as assumed, and she shows that such facile comparisons fall flat. She writes, “the comparison people make between being born gay and being born black…don’t do justice to people in either group” (51). McLaughlin concludes with an examination of transgenderism which builds on her sustained argument, and can be summarized with her statement, “the slogan ‘Women’s rights are human rights’ is worthless if there are no human rights. Now, the problem intensifies. If transgender women are women, there’s no such thing as a woman either” (86). Simply put: the modern secular creeds make false assertions based on the true premise that all people bear equal human dignity.

This is a concise book meant to help Christians consider how to faithfully bear witness to neighbors deceived by the secular truth claims of the day. The short-form arguments are unlikely to immediately convince a homeowner who displays the yard sign mentioned above. This book, however, is a great resource to prepare Christians to engage their unbelieving neighbors with empathy and grace. McLaughlin rightly invites believers to practice “self-sacrificing, unrelenting love,” and she challenges her readers to not shout down progressives but to, “call them in with a Jesus song: his song of good news for the historically oppressed, his song of love across racial and ethnic difference, his song that summons men and women, married and single, young and old, weak and strong, joyful and hurting, rich and destitute, into eternal love with him” (107). The gospel brings a union with Christ and with His people to which no modern sloganeering can compare. Christians have a better answer, and it is our call to speak the truth in love to a lost and dying world.