Since my book Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization appeared in June this year, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the reception.
The book seems to have touched upon topics that, while not at the forefront on daily political debate, are on many people’s minds and underlie some of the bigger questions that are to be found just beneath the surface of many contemporary discussions in Western countries.
It turns out that subjects like the relationship between reason and faith, or the roles played by Judaism and Christianity in shaping the West, or the relationship between religion and the various Enlightenments since the late seventeenth century, are of deep interest to people of different backgrounds and from across the theological, philosophical, political and economic spectrum.
One of the many benefits for authors of doing interviews about their books and responding to people’s comments and critiques is that more space is opened up for wider conversations around a book’s themes and their implications for subjects that authors themselves may not have hitherto considered. That, after all, is one of the purposes of writing books: to stimulate discussion and reflection on ideas and their implications for how we understand the past and how the future may unfold.
To that end, I’d like to alert people to a presentation about Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization that I’ll be making on Tuesday, September 24, at the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. between 12pm and 1pm.
Details about how to register to attend can be found here. For those who can’t be there in person, the event is going to be livestreamed. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and to be signed by myself. I hope that many readers of Acton’s blog and supporters of Acton’s work are able to come.
