Author: Andrew Wilson
Full Title: Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West
Date: Sept 2023
Wilson kicks off the book with a bang to show us how 1776 really isn’t that long ago. He tells the story of President John Tyler, whose parents married in 1776, had him in 1790, and whose grandson was still alive when this book was published! He only passed in 2025. Faulkner was right, “The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.”
“The Past is never dead. It’s not even the past.”
This great book deserves much more than the summary I’m going to give, but here goes.
We have historical amnesia, barely know our great-grandparents, so we certainly don’t understand their world. The speed of change makes the past feel more distant than it really is. We doom scroll our devices, thinking “this year is the worst ever” without historical perspective. This amnesia brings us confusion, tribalism and conspiracy, and arrogance. By having a healthy memory of the past, it produces humility in realizing the sins and gifts of our ancestors and how much we owe them.
The core of the book, and the word you’ll hear a lot throughout, is the term WEIRDER. The world is more:
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Western
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Educated
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Industrialized
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Rich
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Democratic
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Ex-Christian
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Romantic
The point being, WE are the “weirder” ones in history’s timeline. Our instincts about work, government, sex, identity, morality, and rights are not the norms for most of human history.
The book goes into detail on how we got here by linking it back to events that all occurred in 1776. What a crazy year! We tend to think of 1776 as the year of all that was happening in America, but globally, there were intellectual, technological, political, and spiritual shifts.
While I love digging into this book because history is kinda cool, I’m more interested in helping the church thrive in a “weirder” world and this book will do just that.
Why 1776 matters for all of this
We usually think of 1776 as the year of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. Wilson doesn’t downplay that, but he zooms out to show that 1776 was also a year of massive global and intellectual change. In that one year you have:
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James Watt’s steam engine beginning to power the Industrial Revolution.
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Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations reframing economics and the “invisible hand.”
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Immanuel Kant outlining his Critique of Pure Reason in Königsberg.
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Edward Gibbon publishing Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
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Hume finishing the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
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Rousseau writing Reveries of a Solitary Walker and Klinger launching Sturm und Drang, the proto‑Romantic movement.
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Cook’s voyages reshaping the map and imagination of “the West and the rest.”
In other words, 1776 isn’t just muskets and minutemen; it’s a convergence point for the ideas and technologies that made the world more Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex‑Christian, and Romantic.
Wilson spends chapters 3–9 showing how each WEIRDER feature has deep roots, then uses 1776 as a key “hinge year” where those streams come together and accelerate.
Why I think this book is important for the church
I loved this book because I’m historically curious, but that’s not the main reason I’m commending it. I’m far more interested in helping the church thrive in a WEIRDER world, and this book is a huge help there.
A few reasons I think it’s worth your time:
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It gives you language for our moment. Instead of just saying “the culture,” you can name the seven features that actually shape your people’s assumptions: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex‑Christian, Romantic.
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It shows that many of our deepest cultural instincts—about the self, freedom, sexuality, rights, and authenticity—have a story. That helps us engage them with patience and clarity instead of fear or naivety.
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It reminds us that Christians have navigated massive upheaval before. Wilson highlights 18th‑century believers (Wesley, Haynes, Equiano, Rebecca Protten, Hamann, and others) who lived faithfully as the modern world was being born. They didn’t choose their moment, but they chose how to live in it.
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It pushes us beyond culture‑war reactions toward political and cultural discipleship—learning how grace, freedom in Christ, and truth shape our life together in a post‑Christian, postsecular West.
If you’re a pastor, a church leader, or just trying to make sense of why everything feels the way it does right now, Remaking the World won’t answer every question. But it will give you a clearer map, a deeper sense of where we came from, and some hopeful imagination for what long‑term faithfulness can look like on the far side of 1776.