What do you think?
Rate this book
The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity
From the author of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, an account of how the rejection of the imago Dei is unraveling Western culture and how we might recover what it means to be truly human.
As church attendance falls, suicide rates climb, and birth rates plummet, Christian pundits have suggested disenchantment and the loss of tradition are to blame for our spiritual malaise. But what if the problem is both much simpler and much more serious?
In Desecration of Man, theologian and ecclesial historian Carl Trueman argues that modern man's crisis of meaning stems from a rejection of a simple fact – that he was made in the image of God. Unmoored from the basic moral fact that secures human dignity, we violently disrespect our own minds and bodies through abortion, pornography, casual sex, gender transitions, and more--and in this disrespect we blaspheme against God himself, with devastating practical and spiritual consequences.
With gentle pastoral wisdom, deep insight into church history, and an impressive command of philosophical geneologies, The Desecration of Man speaks to those troubled by the spiritual sickness of our time and points toward consecration to a God who is alive and loving as a solution. The Early Church triumphed over Rome because it offered life in place of death. It is time for modern Christians to offer the same kind of vision.
As church attendance falls, suicide rates climb, and birth rates plummet, Christian pundits have suggested disenchantment and the loss of tradition are to blame for our spiritual malaise. But what if the problem is both much simpler and much more serious?
In Desecration of Man, theologian and ecclesial historian Carl Trueman argues that modern man's crisis of meaning stems from a rejection of a simple fact – that he was made in the image of God. Unmoored from the basic moral fact that secures human dignity, we violently disrespect our own minds and bodies through abortion, pornography, casual sex, gender transitions, and more--and in this disrespect we blaspheme against God himself, with devastating practical and spiritual consequences.
With gentle pastoral wisdom, deep insight into church history, and an impressive command of philosophical geneologies, The Desecration of Man speaks to those troubled by the spiritual sickness of our time and points toward consecration to a God who is alive and loving as a solution. The Early Church triumphed over Rome because it offered life in place of death. It is time for modern Christians to offer the same kind of vision.
7 pages, Audiobook
Published April 7, 2026
About the author
Carl R. Trueman
97 books580 followersCarl R. Trueman (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is the Paul Woolley Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary and pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Ambler, Pennsylvania. He was editor of Themelios for nine years, has authored or edited more than a dozen books, and has contributed to multiple publications including the Dictionary of Historical Theology and The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 188 reviews
May 17, 2026
While no book about “desecration” is going to be jolly fun, this was still a worthwhile read adding to the conversation started by Carl in earlier books and added to by Paul’s Kingsnorth’s thoughts on the machine.
There are some excellent points tucked away here and there.
My takeaway: the liturgy isn’t important just because it is beautiful, but because it reflects truth.
There are some excellent points tucked away here and there.
My takeaway: the liturgy isn’t important just because it is beautiful, but because it reflects truth.
May 10, 2026
This is one of the most penetrating critiques of modern culture to appear in recent years.
Trueman argues that the modern West has moved beyond simple “secularization” and “lack of enchantment” with reality into something darker: the active and aggressive “desecration” of the human being itself. The body, sex, fertility, even death are no longer treated as realities possessing inherent meaning, but as raw material to be manipulated according to individual desire and technological capability.
Trueman writes that modernity increasingly sees the human body not as “a given to be honored but a problem to be solved.” That sentence alone captures much of the spiritual crisis of contemporary civilization.
Now, Trueman is a theologian, so obviously the book is especially compelling to me as a catholic because it defends truths central to christian moral theology and sacramental vision: the unity of body and soul, the sanctity of procreation, the limits of human autonomy, and the irreducible dignity of the person made in the image of God.
However, the book has nothing to do with apologetics, and everything with anthropology: Trueman’s critique of surrogacy, pornography, euthanasia and the technological fragmentation of parenthood is presented as an anthropological analysis with this question at its very center: “What is man?”.
And what do our times THINK man is?
At the same time, the book avoids reducing the crisis to politics or culture-war rhetoric, although the topic of transgenderism is addressed (as it needed to be) in such a work, being such a radical and perfect example of “desecration of man”.
Trueman sees the roots of the problem in a deeper philosophical and spiritual transformation: the replacement of a sacred understanding of man with the modern cult of the sovereign self. As he puts it, “When human identity is detached from any transcendent order, freedom becomes the power to remake ourselves without limit.”
It’s true that many people today seem to kneel at altar of “I want to be myself”, which means “whatever I imagine I’d like to be”, and that’s the idea of freedom they have: freedom to do and to be whatever they like.
For Trueman, and for christianity, this does not liberate humanity, it massively destabilizes it. It takes away freedom instead of giving more of it.
The problem with most people is, they don’t understand this core concept because their thinking is too shallow. “Relax!” “Not such a big deal!” are the signs on the road to catastrophe.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its clarity. Unlike many academic works on similar themes, The Desecration of Man is concise, readable, and profound. Trueman writes with the sober tone of someone who believes that the stakes are genuinely civilizational … which they are.
I also loved the fact that, like other serious theologians, Trueman treats Richard Dawkins as the philosophical baboon that he is, bringing him up mainly to make examples of how to ridiculously misunderstand a point. I really hope that Dawkins will be handed over to the history of philosophy, if at all, as a misguided fool.
My only criticism of the book, which is not really a criticism but just a general thought, is that this is one of those books that is not gonna be picked up by anyone who is not already christian or christian-friendly, therefore it kind of preaches to the converted. Safe to say that Hollywood screenwriters won’t be reading it.
His answer to the problem of the desecration of man is essentially “consecration”: a return to Christian worship, doctrine, and moral formation, or what he calls creed, cult, and code.
Christians like me will agree with this diagnosis, as obvious as it is to us.
To me the main value of this book is that it articulates a diagnosis of modern western culture in an extreme lucid way, with examples and insights that I’ll keep going back to.
Still, this is an important and unsettling book. Trueman convincingly shows that the central question of our age is no longer merely whether God exists, but whether human nature itself possesses any sacred meaning that we are morally bound to respect.
His warning is that once man ceases to see himself as created in the image of God, he will inevitably begin to treat himself as manufactured and therefore more and more as a thing among others (see euthanasia).
Trueman argues that the modern West has moved beyond simple “secularization” and “lack of enchantment” with reality into something darker: the active and aggressive “desecration” of the human being itself. The body, sex, fertility, even death are no longer treated as realities possessing inherent meaning, but as raw material to be manipulated according to individual desire and technological capability.
Trueman writes that modernity increasingly sees the human body not as “a given to be honored but a problem to be solved.” That sentence alone captures much of the spiritual crisis of contemporary civilization.
Now, Trueman is a theologian, so obviously the book is especially compelling to me as a catholic because it defends truths central to christian moral theology and sacramental vision: the unity of body and soul, the sanctity of procreation, the limits of human autonomy, and the irreducible dignity of the person made in the image of God.
However, the book has nothing to do with apologetics, and everything with anthropology: Trueman’s critique of surrogacy, pornography, euthanasia and the technological fragmentation of parenthood is presented as an anthropological analysis with this question at its very center: “What is man?”.
And what do our times THINK man is?
At the same time, the book avoids reducing the crisis to politics or culture-war rhetoric, although the topic of transgenderism is addressed (as it needed to be) in such a work, being such a radical and perfect example of “desecration of man”.
Trueman sees the roots of the problem in a deeper philosophical and spiritual transformation: the replacement of a sacred understanding of man with the modern cult of the sovereign self. As he puts it, “When human identity is detached from any transcendent order, freedom becomes the power to remake ourselves without limit.”
It’s true that many people today seem to kneel at altar of “I want to be myself”, which means “whatever I imagine I’d like to be”, and that’s the idea of freedom they have: freedom to do and to be whatever they like.
For Trueman, and for christianity, this does not liberate humanity, it massively destabilizes it. It takes away freedom instead of giving more of it.
The problem with most people is, they don’t understand this core concept because their thinking is too shallow. “Relax!” “Not such a big deal!” are the signs on the road to catastrophe.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its clarity. Unlike many academic works on similar themes, The Desecration of Man is concise, readable, and profound. Trueman writes with the sober tone of someone who believes that the stakes are genuinely civilizational … which they are.
I also loved the fact that, like other serious theologians, Trueman treats Richard Dawkins as the philosophical baboon that he is, bringing him up mainly to make examples of how to ridiculously misunderstand a point. I really hope that Dawkins will be handed over to the history of philosophy, if at all, as a misguided fool.
My only criticism of the book, which is not really a criticism but just a general thought, is that this is one of those books that is not gonna be picked up by anyone who is not already christian or christian-friendly, therefore it kind of preaches to the converted. Safe to say that Hollywood screenwriters won’t be reading it.
His answer to the problem of the desecration of man is essentially “consecration”: a return to Christian worship, doctrine, and moral formation, or what he calls creed, cult, and code.
Christians like me will agree with this diagnosis, as obvious as it is to us.
To me the main value of this book is that it articulates a diagnosis of modern western culture in an extreme lucid way, with examples and insights that I’ll keep going back to.
Still, this is an important and unsettling book. Trueman convincingly shows that the central question of our age is no longer merely whether God exists, but whether human nature itself possesses any sacred meaning that we are morally bound to respect.
His warning is that once man ceases to see himself as created in the image of God, he will inevitably begin to treat himself as manufactured and therefore more and more as a thing among others (see euthanasia).
April 16, 2026
Our culture has, in Nietzsche’s words, killed God. Yet this comes at a high price, for now we must create not only our own systems of morality but also our own meaning. Those who kill God must themselves become gods: a weight we were never made to carry. Hence the clamoring for significance via radical expressive individualism we see today. The result of all this means that the ascendant heresies of the moment are anthropological. No longer do people debate whether Christ was divine or how exactly the hypostatic union works. Adrift from transcendental moorings, they rather debate whether men can become women, all the while ironically claiming that both categories are mere constructions. The only hope is a return to the creed, cult, and codes of revealed Scripture. It really is the only way out.
May 30, 2026
Yes sir. This is a must-read for Christians. Social diagnosis that gets close to home and ends on a hopeful note. It will challenge you, stoke your thinking, and help you to see our current moment in a better light. Not dense or dry, but straightforward, readable, and useful. I highly recommend it.
August 2, 2026
Dit boek is voor mij tot nu toe het beste boek van 2026. Sterke analyse van de huidige moderne (expressief individualistische) tijd. Het boek heeft mij overtuigd van het belang van inbedding antropologie in de theologie. Faire weergave van gesprekspartners en de lezer meenemend naar een concluderend slothoofdstuk over het belang van ‘creed, cult and code’ (in deze volgorde en onderling verbonden). Ethisch hier en daar tegenspraak oproepend (bijv. bij behandeling IVF), maar overall een geweldig boek. Bijvangst: Het inspireert mij tot het opzetten van een prekenserie over Bijbelse wijsheid.
March 10, 2026
3.5 stars, rounded up.
This is a solid, if not terribly thorough, diagnostic of what has gone so wrong with modern Western culture. Trueman identifies the issue not so much as one of disenchantment, which has proven a popular scapegoat of late, but of desecration: we used to believe that humanity is created in the image of God but no longer, thus forfeiting the foundation of a morality that treats others as valuable subjects rather than useful objects. This has resulted not merely in a loss of beauty and mystery (disenchantment) but in actual reveling in the ugliness of defilement and transgression(desecration). Man has not in fact succeeded in rendering himself godlike but rather has made himself nothing, reducing himself to something worse than dirt. We see the evidence of this in the growing popularity of euthanasia; the transformation of abortion from regrettable but necessary evil (“safe, legal, rare”) to commendable, casual, positive good; the gnostic alienation of the mind/feelings from the physical body; and the widespread use and approval of such things as IVF and surrogacy.
The remedy for such desecration, the commodification and worse of humanity, cannot be mere re-enchantment; it must be reconsecration. And this has “a definite shape”; it can only be accomplished through a return to Christianity in its fullness of “creed, cult, and code”.
One of the most salient and helpful parts for me was how Trueman traced the development of ideas leading us to where we are today — discussing Nietsche, Kant, Freud, Descartes, Simone de Beauvoir, Marx, Luther, Rousseau, Jonathan Edwards, Dawkins, and Scruton, etc along the way. And the single most incisive point for me was his explanation of how today identity is anchored in one’s feelings and desires, whereas for most of history, it was anchored in one’s community and behavior. Look around and you can see the dismal result of this almost everywhere.
But while I’m nearly in complete agreement with Trueman’s argument and perspective, I do think the book itself is underdeveloped. I think he fails to make a positive case for things he takes for granted. I agree with him that how we die, how we express sexuality, and how we build families and have children are all central to what it means to be human and therefore “sacred”, but I wanted him to explain why and how this is the case. Or even to explain what it means for something to be sacred. As is, I think his audience is very narrow: people like Dawkins and Scruton who want to preserve the morality or trappings of Christianity without assenting to its truth claims, as well as “Christians” who embrace the truth claims and aesthetics but refuse to actually abide by Christian morality. Such readers as these will certainly find themselves challenged by Trueman’s charge that Christianity must be believed and lived in its fullness in order to pull us out of the muck we’ve made for ourselves.
*ARC provided by NetGalley*
This is a solid, if not terribly thorough, diagnostic of what has gone so wrong with modern Western culture. Trueman identifies the issue not so much as one of disenchantment, which has proven a popular scapegoat of late, but of desecration: we used to believe that humanity is created in the image of God but no longer, thus forfeiting the foundation of a morality that treats others as valuable subjects rather than useful objects. This has resulted not merely in a loss of beauty and mystery (disenchantment) but in actual reveling in the ugliness of defilement and transgression(desecration). Man has not in fact succeeded in rendering himself godlike but rather has made himself nothing, reducing himself to something worse than dirt. We see the evidence of this in the growing popularity of euthanasia; the transformation of abortion from regrettable but necessary evil (“safe, legal, rare”) to commendable, casual, positive good; the gnostic alienation of the mind/feelings from the physical body; and the widespread use and approval of such things as IVF and surrogacy.
The remedy for such desecration, the commodification and worse of humanity, cannot be mere re-enchantment; it must be reconsecration. And this has “a definite shape”; it can only be accomplished through a return to Christianity in its fullness of “creed, cult, and code”.
One of the most salient and helpful parts for me was how Trueman traced the development of ideas leading us to where we are today — discussing Nietsche, Kant, Freud, Descartes, Simone de Beauvoir, Marx, Luther, Rousseau, Jonathan Edwards, Dawkins, and Scruton, etc along the way. And the single most incisive point for me was his explanation of how today identity is anchored in one’s feelings and desires, whereas for most of history, it was anchored in one’s community and behavior. Look around and you can see the dismal result of this almost everywhere.
But while I’m nearly in complete agreement with Trueman’s argument and perspective, I do think the book itself is underdeveloped. I think he fails to make a positive case for things he takes for granted. I agree with him that how we die, how we express sexuality, and how we build families and have children are all central to what it means to be human and therefore “sacred”, but I wanted him to explain why and how this is the case. Or even to explain what it means for something to be sacred. As is, I think his audience is very narrow: people like Dawkins and Scruton who want to preserve the morality or trappings of Christianity without assenting to its truth claims, as well as “Christians” who embrace the truth claims and aesthetics but refuse to actually abide by Christian morality. Such readers as these will certainly find themselves challenged by Trueman’s charge that Christianity must be believed and lived in its fullness in order to pull us out of the muck we’ve made for ourselves.
*ARC provided by NetGalley*
February 9, 2026
Poignant, powerful and persuasive. We are men and women made in the image of God. We are not objects to be used or manipulated. Our churches must be teaching these truths and her people must be living them out in a world that desecrates the image of God.
Consecration is the answer to the desecration of man.
“Anthropology is inseparable from theology…
We cannot believe the Apostles’ Creed, recite it in church on a Sunday, and then treat others with snarling contempt for the rest of the week.“
Consecration is the answer to the desecration of man.
“Anthropology is inseparable from theology…
We cannot believe the Apostles’ Creed, recite it in church on a Sunday, and then treat others with snarling contempt for the rest of the week.“
August 30, 2026
I already love Trueman's writing style, having read some of his other books, so of course I loved this one too.
This book basically takes the premise of Trueman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution and applies it to how our culture now understands the value of human life, choices, and relationships. What does it mean to be human? And how do we treat each other because of this?
Trueman shows the ways we've lost a sacredness surrounding life, sex, and death. He discusses how technology has changed things like birth control, abortion, IVF and surrogacy, euthanasia, eugenics, LGBTQ issues, porn, prostitution, the health care industry, even the way we hold funerals. As Christianity slowly sinks into the background of Western culture, we see the world become not only disenchanted, but desecrated. Trueman argues that authors like Richard Dawkins and Roger Scruton, in their acceptance of some parts of Christianity, are really just repackaging Nihilism.
The answer for Christians is to cling to, and pronounce, the historic and confessional truth claims of the Christian faith. We have to accept Christianity on its own terms. We are made in the image of God, and we are to treat each other like humans--not objects, as the world would have us do. Acting via a moral code and showing hospitality to local neighbors is how the early church changed the world.
Side note--I had never thought of our modern culture's obsession with sex as a symptom of the wider denial of death. Will have to chew on that for a while.
I'd also recommend Crisis of Confidence: Reclaiming the Historic Faith in a Culture Consumed with Individualism and Identity.
This book basically takes the premise of Trueman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution and applies it to how our culture now understands the value of human life, choices, and relationships. What does it mean to be human? And how do we treat each other because of this?
Trueman shows the ways we've lost a sacredness surrounding life, sex, and death. He discusses how technology has changed things like birth control, abortion, IVF and surrogacy, euthanasia, eugenics, LGBTQ issues, porn, prostitution, the health care industry, even the way we hold funerals. As Christianity slowly sinks into the background of Western culture, we see the world become not only disenchanted, but desecrated. Trueman argues that authors like Richard Dawkins and Roger Scruton, in their acceptance of some parts of Christianity, are really just repackaging Nihilism.
The answer for Christians is to cling to, and pronounce, the historic and confessional truth claims of the Christian faith. We have to accept Christianity on its own terms. We are made in the image of God, and we are to treat each other like humans--not objects, as the world would have us do. Acting via a moral code and showing hospitality to local neighbors is how the early church changed the world.
Side note--I had never thought of our modern culture's obsession with sex as a symptom of the wider denial of death. Will have to chew on that for a while.
I'd also recommend Crisis of Confidence: Reclaiming the Historic Faith in a Culture Consumed with Individualism and Identity.
April 10, 2026
Compelling, as usual and as expected. This is a wonderful culmination and summation of his former works, yet he does sharply elevate his assessment of secularism from mere disenchantment to something more sinister: desecration with "ecstatic enthusiasm." Providing a compelling diagnosis and remedy, he ultimately claims that there is no third way between ordinary Christianity and nihilism.
May 4, 2026
Easily five stars. This book is simply astounding. It is a relief to hear the truth spoken. Trueman, in the core of this book, states that in rejecting God, modern man has not (as they think) liberated himself; they have instead desecrated themselves, and the only answer is not re-enchantment but reconsecration through the creed, worship, and moral life of the local church.
The root cause is simple: modern man's crisis of meaning stems from a rejection of the fact that he was made in the image of God. Unmoored from the imago Dei, human dignity loses its foundation, and what follows is not merely confusion but self-destruction.
Trueman traces this desecration through three specific areas. On the sexual revolution, he argues that it has [and inevitably will keep doing so] reduced people, especially women, to objects that exist solely for the use of others. Pornography is his clearest example: it takes the mysterious, creative sexual act and commodifies it for third-party consumption, stripping it of personhood entirely. On reproductive technology, children become commodities to be bought and sold rather than gifts received. On death and mortality, the culture of desecration has rapidly embraced assisted suicide and euthanasia, treating the end of life as simply another arena for autonomous self-determination.
His proposed solution is what he calls creed, cult, and code, the true beliefs, practices, and morality of historic Christianity, as found within the local church. Re-enchantment alone is insufficient. The modern crisis of anthropology must find its solution among religious communities worshiping in local contexts, for it is in worship that human beings are brought into the presence of the God in whose image they are made. The answer to desecration is consecration, a full return to the living God through the life of the church.
The root cause is simple: modern man's crisis of meaning stems from a rejection of the fact that he was made in the image of God. Unmoored from the imago Dei, human dignity loses its foundation, and what follows is not merely confusion but self-destruction.
Trueman traces this desecration through three specific areas. On the sexual revolution, he argues that it has [and inevitably will keep doing so] reduced people, especially women, to objects that exist solely for the use of others. Pornography is his clearest example: it takes the mysterious, creative sexual act and commodifies it for third-party consumption, stripping it of personhood entirely. On reproductive technology, children become commodities to be bought and sold rather than gifts received. On death and mortality, the culture of desecration has rapidly embraced assisted suicide and euthanasia, treating the end of life as simply another arena for autonomous self-determination.
His proposed solution is what he calls creed, cult, and code, the true beliefs, practices, and morality of historic Christianity, as found within the local church. Re-enchantment alone is insufficient. The modern crisis of anthropology must find its solution among religious communities worshiping in local contexts, for it is in worship that human beings are brought into the presence of the God in whose image they are made. The answer to desecration is consecration, a full return to the living God through the life of the church.
October 24, 2026
The desecration of Man av Carl Trueman handler om hvordan det å avvise Gud er noe som er destruktivt for mennesket.
Han påpeker i innledningen at han ikke forsøker seg på apologetikk for kristen tro. Men jeg har ikke sett et bedre forsvar for et kristent menneskesyn enn det som har blitt skrevet her. Kanskje en av de viktigste bøkene som har blitt skrevet de siste årene.
Opplevde å få mange nye innsikter og en økt takknemlighet for Bibelens budskap om hva et menneske er. I tillegg utfordrer han og får leseren til å tenke bredt rundt menneskeverdet knyttet til temaer som kropp, seksualitet, kjønn, abort, pornografi, aktiv dødshjelp og (det jeg syntes var det aller mest interessante) døden.
Her er andre ting fra boken som jeg satt igjen med:
* Å være skapt i Guds bilde innebærer en telos - et mål og en mening med livet. Alle forsøk på å si at vi er frie til å skape vår egen mening vil være noe som paradoksalt nok nedgraderer mennesket, i stedet for å frigjøre det.
* Ekspressiv individualisme gjennomsyrer veldig mange aspekter av dagens samfunn. Eksempelvis at en del ser på det som akseptabelt at man kan gjennomføre aktiv dødshjelp hvis man opplever livet som ulykkelig, og at det er et valg man skal kunne ta selv uten påvirkning utenfra (som om valget ikke påvirker andre).
Eneste jeg savnet var at han sa mer om hvordan vi responderer på disse trendene. Han hadde noen sider mot slutten, men det kunne med fordel vært lengre.
Han påpeker i innledningen at han ikke forsøker seg på apologetikk for kristen tro. Men jeg har ikke sett et bedre forsvar for et kristent menneskesyn enn det som har blitt skrevet her. Kanskje en av de viktigste bøkene som har blitt skrevet de siste årene.
Opplevde å få mange nye innsikter og en økt takknemlighet for Bibelens budskap om hva et menneske er. I tillegg utfordrer han og får leseren til å tenke bredt rundt menneskeverdet knyttet til temaer som kropp, seksualitet, kjønn, abort, pornografi, aktiv dødshjelp og (det jeg syntes var det aller mest interessante) døden.
Her er andre ting fra boken som jeg satt igjen med:
* Å være skapt i Guds bilde innebærer en telos - et mål og en mening med livet. Alle forsøk på å si at vi er frie til å skape vår egen mening vil være noe som paradoksalt nok nedgraderer mennesket, i stedet for å frigjøre det.
* Ekspressiv individualisme gjennomsyrer veldig mange aspekter av dagens samfunn. Eksempelvis at en del ser på det som akseptabelt at man kan gjennomføre aktiv dødshjelp hvis man opplever livet som ulykkelig, og at det er et valg man skal kunne ta selv uten påvirkning utenfra (som om valget ikke påvirker andre).
Eneste jeg savnet var at han sa mer om hvordan vi responderer på disse trendene. Han hadde noen sider mot slutten, men det kunne med fordel vært lengre.
May 30, 2026
This is excellent.
Many in today’s culture desire to hold onto the values which are the result of Christendom, while attempting to eliminate or ignore this foundation. As if notions such as the inherent dignity of all persons, and the importance of honesty, compassion, and hospitality can be regarded as naturally self-evident, or can be somehow derived from the acceptance of secular humanism and expressive individualism. Instead, these values ultimately derive from the biblical idea that we are created in the image of God. They are the byproduct of a proper anthropology—being able to correctly answer the question, “What is Man?”
Nietzsche correctly understood that without God there is no basis for this set of values. He called it “slave morality.” He knew that after the death of God all that remains is the morality of power—to live as though we are our own gods. Today this manifests as expressive individualism and emotivism. Everyone should be able do whatever they want to and decide what they believe is right based on their feelings. Of course there is typically a caviat like “as long as you don’t hurt anyone else.” But why should this even be a limitation if we really are our own gods, and we can determine what is right and wrong? If there is no universal moral law? No perfect lawgiver?
Trueman shows that without a proper understanding of what people truly are, we become desacralized, our culture is desecrated, and our humanity degraded.
I give this book my highest recommendation.
Tom wrote a great review here
And now for the quote dump:
“All three types of desecration—the repudiation of human exceptionalism, the objectification of persons, and the move to self-creation—are an integral part of the modern project. All three have theological significance, in that they reject the notion that human beings are made in God's image. All three therefore involve desecration, for the repudiation of the divine image is a repudiation of the God whose image it is. And as we will see, that is exhilarating, as Nietzsche prophetically noted in the nineteenth century.”
[p 20]
“Expressive individualism is also iconoclastic because it involves an inherently critical position toward culture. It inclines us to suspect that society is always trying to squeeze us into its mold and make us inauthentic. In a culture where the expressive individual is the ideal, to be truly human is not first and foremost to conform oneself to the demands of society or one's obligations to others, something we often describe as involving self-control; rather it often manifests as the rejection of such duties. It sees traditional forms of external authority and social existence as intrinsically oppressive. Therefore, traditional religious institutions and teachings could be seen as less plausible, as hindering innovation, and as a negative, oppressive moral force.
“This provided fertile soil for the emergence of the notion of the transgressor as hero among artists and intellectuals in the nineteenth century. And given that the boundaries being transgressed were religious in origin, the path to seeing desecration as a moral imperative also emerged. Desecration of all that was once considered holy became a hallmark of that authenticity that expressive individualism craved.”
[p 54]
“What unites these disparate groups, at least in the minds of the Western radicals who marched in the streets of New York and London in 2023 and 2024, declaring the solidarity of people identifying as queer with Palestine? In the minds of Western radicals, what do Hamas, queer theory, transgender-ism, and other progressive ideas have in common? Simply this: the desire to overthrow what is and to demolish what previous generations considered authoritative, even sacred, whether it be the virtues of democracy, the right of Israel to exist, or the importance of biological sex.
“We should notice here that all this is consistent with the world of expressive individualism and technological flux, where the former sees the status quo as always potentially inhibiting, and the latter views it as a challenge or problem to be overcome. Critical theorists see the cultural status quo as oppressive. What they all therefore have in common is an impatience with, even a suspicion of, established objective categories. The expressive individual feels that these inhibit authenticity. The Tech Bro sees them as barriers to progress. The critical theorist sees them as a means of
d political control.”
[p 75]
“We might say that the sexual act gives men and women their most godlike, sacred power. The union of man and woman can lead to the conception of a new human being, something both mysterious and socially consequential. The bringing of new life into the world is never a matter of mere private concern to the couple involved. It expands the family structure, it places obligations on parents, siblings, grandparents. Sex has not always been regarded as important primarily for individual reasons, whether as a pleasurable recreation or a means of personal fulfillment. It is of far more significance than that: It is powerful in its outcomes, and communal in its consequences. This is one reason why the first licit sexual experience in cultures shaped by Christianity, for example, was typically preceded by a public, religious marriage ceremony. Sex and sexual relationships were not private matters, of concern only to the parties involved. The sacred and the communal combined to inaugurate the relationship within which sexual activity found its legitimate expression.”
[p 80]
“The turn to expressive individualism in Western culture set the inner space of feelings and desires in general at the core of personal identity. And in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sexual desire came to dominate the understanding of that inner space. Technology then liberated us from the natural consequences of sex. The expressive individual thus became the sexually defined individual. The most important feelings that modern men and women consider themselves to have are sexual ones. What the Freudian move does is make sexual desire and sexual expression key to what it means to be a fulfilled-an authentic-human being. And that helps us to understand another central element of the sexual revolution: its political nature.”
[p 89]
“Figures such as Christine Emba, Mary Harrington, and Louise Perry have all written books decrying the gospel of free and uncommitted sex that others of the more liberal and radical varieties regarded —and still regard—as the hallmark of the liberated, powerful woman in charge of her own body and her own destiny. When feminists start advocating for things that would once have been regarded as the bygone values of an age of dinosaurs—chastity, commitment, even celibacy outside of stable relationships—something significant is happening. And what is happening is the realization that, in the realm of sexual relationships as well as elsewhere, the dilemma identified throughout this book is exacerbated by the gospel of sexual liberation. The free, liberated individual strives to be an agent with personal significance but ends up feeling like an object of no significance at all.
“When sex is about what we can get out of it, then the other person is instrumentalized. My partner is significant to me to the extent that she gives me the experience that I want. I am therefore treating the other person as an object.”
[p 96]
“Sexual behavior is still important, as it always has been in human society, but now for a different reason: It is a key idiom of self-expression and authenticity. Hence the pressure for society at large to recognize the predilections and practices of various sexual minorities who deviate from traditional heterosexual norms.
“Second, even as society has moved to evacuate sexual acts of intrinsic moral significance, it has still retained special status for sexual crimes, and as Francis Beckwith has argued, most if not all of us intuitively know that sexual assault—precisely because it is sexual—is more serious than other types, even those involving nonsexual penetration.
“Third, the modern philosophy underlying the sexual revolution, that sex is about personal satisfaction, encourages us to see the other as an object. My partner only has value to the extent that she gives me what I want. Pornography is the most extreme example of this, substituting (in Scruton's terminology) a particular face for any body, but extreme as it is, pornography is simply the inevitable consequence of the logic of the sexual revolution.
The problem, of course, is that the first and third points stand in practical opposition to each other. Here we run into the dilemma that lies at the heart of the sexual revolution: That which promises to liberate us as individual agents, able to express ourselves and thus achieve authenticity, ends up creating a world where we are doomed to experience life as objects.”
[p 113]
“We have not disenchanted what it means to be human; rather, we have desecrated humanity.
“The answer to desecration is consecration. And so the question now becomes: How do we reconsecrate our humanity? This is where those intellectuals looking toward religion are at least moving in the right direction. But the problem is not solved by living as if Christianity were true. That would be to indulge in Plato's "noble lie" and to retreat into that nihilism that [Nietzsche’s] Madman exposed so ruthlessly. It is solved by acknowledging that Christianity is true and living accordingly.”
[p 187]
“The code and the cult only really make sense when grounded in the creed. And then we can add a third category: those who claim adherence both to the creed and to the cult but who eschew the code. Certain groups within the broader church who connect Christianity to political positions that advocate racial segregation, for example, or the use of violence to achieve political ends, fall into this category. I noted in chapter 3 that the spirit that negates is alive and well, even among some who claim to be conservative Christians. They may honor creed and cult, at least in theory, but when they indulge in the same kinds of attitudes and behavior that characterize our culture of desecration—whether comparatively trivial online crudity directed at critics or, more seriously, a Nietzschean obsession with power—they deny the code. They dehumanize their opponents and thus desecrate the image of God that those others represent. They too therefore indulge in desecration and form part of the problem.”
[p 190]
“Today, the struggle is over anthropology. The creedal aspect of church life must therefore respond to this with a robust proclamation of what it means when the church declares men and women to be made in the image of God. That question, "What is man?," is the question of our time. And no teaching so stands in opposition to the modern myth of the autonomous, unencumbered self as the notion that we have an intrinsic nature connected to our status as creatures made in God's image. What responsibilities does that place upon us? What does it mean for our bodies? How should it shape the way we interact with others, both inside and outside the church? The major challenges of our day are ethical, and ethics rest upon that deeper question of what it means to be human. Nietzsche was right: To slay God is to slay human nature. Humanists are beginning to wake up to that fact, and they need to either take the Christian creed seriously in all of its fullness or rise up to the Nietzschean challenge of self-creation whose results they already look upon with horror. There is no "exclusive humanist" third way.
[p 193]
Many in today’s culture desire to hold onto the values which are the result of Christendom, while attempting to eliminate or ignore this foundation. As if notions such as the inherent dignity of all persons, and the importance of honesty, compassion, and hospitality can be regarded as naturally self-evident, or can be somehow derived from the acceptance of secular humanism and expressive individualism. Instead, these values ultimately derive from the biblical idea that we are created in the image of God. They are the byproduct of a proper anthropology—being able to correctly answer the question, “What is Man?”
Nietzsche correctly understood that without God there is no basis for this set of values. He called it “slave morality.” He knew that after the death of God all that remains is the morality of power—to live as though we are our own gods. Today this manifests as expressive individualism and emotivism. Everyone should be able do whatever they want to and decide what they believe is right based on their feelings. Of course there is typically a caviat like “as long as you don’t hurt anyone else.” But why should this even be a limitation if we really are our own gods, and we can determine what is right and wrong? If there is no universal moral law? No perfect lawgiver?
Trueman shows that without a proper understanding of what people truly are, we become desacralized, our culture is desecrated, and our humanity degraded.
I give this book my highest recommendation.
Tom wrote a great review here
And now for the quote dump:
“All three types of desecration—the repudiation of human exceptionalism, the objectification of persons, and the move to self-creation—are an integral part of the modern project. All three have theological significance, in that they reject the notion that human beings are made in God's image. All three therefore involve desecration, for the repudiation of the divine image is a repudiation of the God whose image it is. And as we will see, that is exhilarating, as Nietzsche prophetically noted in the nineteenth century.”
[p 20]
“Expressive individualism is also iconoclastic because it involves an inherently critical position toward culture. It inclines us to suspect that society is always trying to squeeze us into its mold and make us inauthentic. In a culture where the expressive individual is the ideal, to be truly human is not first and foremost to conform oneself to the demands of society or one's obligations to others, something we often describe as involving self-control; rather it often manifests as the rejection of such duties. It sees traditional forms of external authority and social existence as intrinsically oppressive. Therefore, traditional religious institutions and teachings could be seen as less plausible, as hindering innovation, and as a negative, oppressive moral force.
“This provided fertile soil for the emergence of the notion of the transgressor as hero among artists and intellectuals in the nineteenth century. And given that the boundaries being transgressed were religious in origin, the path to seeing desecration as a moral imperative also emerged. Desecration of all that was once considered holy became a hallmark of that authenticity that expressive individualism craved.”
[p 54]
“What unites these disparate groups, at least in the minds of the Western radicals who marched in the streets of New York and London in 2023 and 2024, declaring the solidarity of people identifying as queer with Palestine? In the minds of Western radicals, what do Hamas, queer theory, transgender-ism, and other progressive ideas have in common? Simply this: the desire to overthrow what is and to demolish what previous generations considered authoritative, even sacred, whether it be the virtues of democracy, the right of Israel to exist, or the importance of biological sex.
“We should notice here that all this is consistent with the world of expressive individualism and technological flux, where the former sees the status quo as always potentially inhibiting, and the latter views it as a challenge or problem to be overcome. Critical theorists see the cultural status quo as oppressive. What they all therefore have in common is an impatience with, even a suspicion of, established objective categories. The expressive individual feels that these inhibit authenticity. The Tech Bro sees them as barriers to progress. The critical theorist sees them as a means of
d political control.”
[p 75]
“We might say that the sexual act gives men and women their most godlike, sacred power. The union of man and woman can lead to the conception of a new human being, something both mysterious and socially consequential. The bringing of new life into the world is never a matter of mere private concern to the couple involved. It expands the family structure, it places obligations on parents, siblings, grandparents. Sex has not always been regarded as important primarily for individual reasons, whether as a pleasurable recreation or a means of personal fulfillment. It is of far more significance than that: It is powerful in its outcomes, and communal in its consequences. This is one reason why the first licit sexual experience in cultures shaped by Christianity, for example, was typically preceded by a public, religious marriage ceremony. Sex and sexual relationships were not private matters, of concern only to the parties involved. The sacred and the communal combined to inaugurate the relationship within which sexual activity found its legitimate expression.”
[p 80]
“The turn to expressive individualism in Western culture set the inner space of feelings and desires in general at the core of personal identity. And in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sexual desire came to dominate the understanding of that inner space. Technology then liberated us from the natural consequences of sex. The expressive individual thus became the sexually defined individual. The most important feelings that modern men and women consider themselves to have are sexual ones. What the Freudian move does is make sexual desire and sexual expression key to what it means to be a fulfilled-an authentic-human being. And that helps us to understand another central element of the sexual revolution: its political nature.”
[p 89]
“Figures such as Christine Emba, Mary Harrington, and Louise Perry have all written books decrying the gospel of free and uncommitted sex that others of the more liberal and radical varieties regarded —and still regard—as the hallmark of the liberated, powerful woman in charge of her own body and her own destiny. When feminists start advocating for things that would once have been regarded as the bygone values of an age of dinosaurs—chastity, commitment, even celibacy outside of stable relationships—something significant is happening. And what is happening is the realization that, in the realm of sexual relationships as well as elsewhere, the dilemma identified throughout this book is exacerbated by the gospel of sexual liberation. The free, liberated individual strives to be an agent with personal significance but ends up feeling like an object of no significance at all.
“When sex is about what we can get out of it, then the other person is instrumentalized. My partner is significant to me to the extent that she gives me the experience that I want. I am therefore treating the other person as an object.”
[p 96]
“Sexual behavior is still important, as it always has been in human society, but now for a different reason: It is a key idiom of self-expression and authenticity. Hence the pressure for society at large to recognize the predilections and practices of various sexual minorities who deviate from traditional heterosexual norms.
“Second, even as society has moved to evacuate sexual acts of intrinsic moral significance, it has still retained special status for sexual crimes, and as Francis Beckwith has argued, most if not all of us intuitively know that sexual assault—precisely because it is sexual—is more serious than other types, even those involving nonsexual penetration.
“Third, the modern philosophy underlying the sexual revolution, that sex is about personal satisfaction, encourages us to see the other as an object. My partner only has value to the extent that she gives me what I want. Pornography is the most extreme example of this, substituting (in Scruton's terminology) a particular face for any body, but extreme as it is, pornography is simply the inevitable consequence of the logic of the sexual revolution.
The problem, of course, is that the first and third points stand in practical opposition to each other. Here we run into the dilemma that lies at the heart of the sexual revolution: That which promises to liberate us as individual agents, able to express ourselves and thus achieve authenticity, ends up creating a world where we are doomed to experience life as objects.”
[p 113]
“We have not disenchanted what it means to be human; rather, we have desecrated humanity.
“The answer to desecration is consecration. And so the question now becomes: How do we reconsecrate our humanity? This is where those intellectuals looking toward religion are at least moving in the right direction. But the problem is not solved by living as if Christianity were true. That would be to indulge in Plato's "noble lie" and to retreat into that nihilism that [Nietzsche’s] Madman exposed so ruthlessly. It is solved by acknowledging that Christianity is true and living accordingly.”
[p 187]
“The code and the cult only really make sense when grounded in the creed. And then we can add a third category: those who claim adherence both to the creed and to the cult but who eschew the code. Certain groups within the broader church who connect Christianity to political positions that advocate racial segregation, for example, or the use of violence to achieve political ends, fall into this category. I noted in chapter 3 that the spirit that negates is alive and well, even among some who claim to be conservative Christians. They may honor creed and cult, at least in theory, but when they indulge in the same kinds of attitudes and behavior that characterize our culture of desecration—whether comparatively trivial online crudity directed at critics or, more seriously, a Nietzschean obsession with power—they deny the code. They dehumanize their opponents and thus desecrate the image of God that those others represent. They too therefore indulge in desecration and form part of the problem.”
[p 190]
“Today, the struggle is over anthropology. The creedal aspect of church life must therefore respond to this with a robust proclamation of what it means when the church declares men and women to be made in the image of God. That question, "What is man?," is the question of our time. And no teaching so stands in opposition to the modern myth of the autonomous, unencumbered self as the notion that we have an intrinsic nature connected to our status as creatures made in God's image. What responsibilities does that place upon us? What does it mean for our bodies? How should it shape the way we interact with others, both inside and outside the church? The major challenges of our day are ethical, and ethics rest upon that deeper question of what it means to be human. Nietzsche was right: To slay God is to slay human nature. Humanists are beginning to wake up to that fact, and they need to either take the Christian creed seriously in all of its fullness or rise up to the Nietzschean challenge of self-creation whose results they already look upon with horror. There is no "exclusive humanist" third way.
[p 193]
October 4, 2026
Classic Trueman. He will be remembered 100 years from now as one of the best in-situ diagnosers of the modern West’s ills (if not its coroner).
At the outset, the chapters seemed somewhat disconnected. I wondered how Trueman would weave together pornography, abortion, euthanasia, transhumanism, and the various ways modern society has come to treat the human body and human dignity.
But if we reject God, we must also reject that we were made in God’s image. And once the imago Dei is gone, there is no obvious stopping point for the desecration of man. The body becomes material to manipulate, human dignity something we arbitrarily manufacture for ourselves, and even the definition of humanity becomes pragmatically negotiable. No aspect of human life is safe.
I also appreciated the greater emphasis in this book on the “so what now?” compared to his others. And thankfully it wasn’t a Wilson & co. push for Christian Nationalism. Trueman’s answer is honestly more demanding: the church must recover a distinctly Christian understanding of what it means to be human and then live with our neighbors as though it is actually true.
Though certainly not the cheeriest read of the year, it left me with a peculiar sense of thankfulness: “There but for the grace of God, I would still be.”
At the outset, the chapters seemed somewhat disconnected. I wondered how Trueman would weave together pornography, abortion, euthanasia, transhumanism, and the various ways modern society has come to treat the human body and human dignity.
But if we reject God, we must also reject that we were made in God’s image. And once the imago Dei is gone, there is no obvious stopping point for the desecration of man. The body becomes material to manipulate, human dignity something we arbitrarily manufacture for ourselves, and even the definition of humanity becomes pragmatically negotiable. No aspect of human life is safe.
I also appreciated the greater emphasis in this book on the “so what now?” compared to his others. And thankfully it wasn’t a Wilson & co. push for Christian Nationalism. Trueman’s answer is honestly more demanding: the church must recover a distinctly Christian understanding of what it means to be human and then live with our neighbors as though it is actually true.
Though certainly not the cheeriest read of the year, it left me with a peculiar sense of thankfulness: “There but for the grace of God, I would still be.”
September 12, 2026
Outstanding!
June 18, 2026
Found this one randomly on Spotify and did not realize I would be needing a submarine for the depths we would be going to in Desecration Of Man. This critique of modernity is insightful as it is impactful. When we remove God from the social imaginary, we don’t find liberation, we find desecration.
April 22, 2026
Just superb. Better than ‘Rise and Triumph,’ equal parts clarifying, heart-breaking, and beautiful.
“My argument has been that modern man’s attempts at [self-deification] have led not to his deification but his desecration. In shattering the moral limits, the obligations, and the teleology that originally rested on an understanding of man as the divine image, we have paradoxically reduced ourselves…we have desecrated humanity.” (187)
The answer? Consecration through our creed (renewed commitment to Christian teaching on God and man), cult (individual and communal practices of embodied worship), and code (reimagine of our practices of life in modern world).
“My argument has been that modern man’s attempts at [self-deification] have led not to his deification but his desecration. In shattering the moral limits, the obligations, and the teleology that originally rested on an understanding of man as the divine image, we have paradoxically reduced ourselves…we have desecrated humanity.” (187)
The answer? Consecration through our creed (renewed commitment to Christian teaching on God and man), cult (individual and communal practices of embodied worship), and code (reimagine of our practices of life in modern world).
April 23, 2026
Trueman uses Nietzsche’s Madman to explore the vacuum at the heart of resurgent cultural Christianity.
Those who wish to retain the moral and ethical building blocks of the West without connection to a living faith are definitionally nihilists- they possess the courage to kill God but not the courage to achieve godhood through independently derived moral values.
One cannot act as if Christianity is true - one must believe that Christianity is true.
Those who wish to retain the moral and ethical building blocks of the West without connection to a living faith are definitionally nihilists- they possess the courage to kill God but not the courage to achieve godhood through independently derived moral values.
One cannot act as if Christianity is true - one must believe that Christianity is true.
April 27, 2026
The central issue of our age is anthropology. The central question is: what is man? And there are essentially two - and only two - answers. Nietzsche’s Madman calls us to a life without limits, boundaries, and purpose - i.e. desecration. But it will cost us our humanity in the process. Christ, on the other hand, calls us to a life of faith (creed), worship (cult), and obedience (code) in community (church) - i.e. a life consecrated to God. There is no third option - all else is nihilism.
This is an excellent follow-up to Strange New World, and though it covers some familiar territory (e.g. expressive individualism), it is more prescriptive and less historically focused than its predecessor.
This is an excellent follow-up to Strange New World, and though it covers some familiar territory (e.g. expressive individualism), it is more prescriptive and less historically focused than its predecessor.
April 27, 2026
I don’t know the last time I finished a book in a single week. Between Ivan and Alyosha consuming what felt like the entirety of my intellectual bandwidth for all of Lent (and into the first few weeks of Eastertide) and keeping Lochie alive required whatever ten brain cells I had left. Lately, I haven’t read nearly as much as I usually do. I’ve gone from finishing one or two books a week to struggling through one or two books a month. It seems Dostoevsky and parenthood have formed an unholy alliance against my Goodreads goal and I am very much not on track to hit my numbers.
“The Desecration of Man” felt urgent. It demanded immediate attention. It needed to be read in as few sittings as possible. Not because the material is enjoyable, in fact it was grotesque and made me want to turn away many times. But because the issues it addresses are so pressing.
In the way we’ve come to expect from Trueman, he identifies cultural realities many of us can sense but struggle to put into words. Then he names them with remarkable clarity and tackles them head on. He never minces words when confronting massive cultural problems. And he speaks with academic clarity and pastoral care.
Before going any further, two acknowledgements are necessary. First, shoutout to the Colson Center for giving away free copies of this book. Without that, this book probably would have sat on my reading list for a few more months.
Second, shoutout to Spotify for carrying the audiobook, narrated by Trueman himself. Parenting Lochie has forced me into far more audiobook supplementation than I would normally admit. But this message felt pressing enough for me to set aside my literary snobbery for a moment. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Trueman’s central argument is simple. Our society has desecrated what it means to be human. Many of the circles I inhabit diagnose our cultural moment with words like “disillusionment”, “disembodiment”, and “disenfranchisement”. Those words describe something real. People feel detached from institutions, communities, and even their own bodies in our postmodern, postliberal world. I mean my own philosophy of ministry document says that “I aim to reenchant the faith for a disillusioned people.” But Trueman argues those words don’t go far enough! So he offers a better one “desecration.”
Modern society hasn’t merely drifted into disenchantment. It has actively desecrated the Image of God. We no longer treat humanity as sacred, given, and dignified by divine design. Instead, we treat the self as endlessly malleable raw material that we can reconstruct according to personal desire. Trueman argues that we have turned the self into a commodity to be bought, sold, and traded.
And so Truman sets society against two men. One is Jesus Christ and the other is Nietzsche's Mad Man. And this is where Trueman shines. He shows that our debates over sexuality, abortion, pornography, gender ideology, and transhumanist dreams do not exist in isolation. They all flow downstream from a deeper question. What is a human being? Is it the image bearer of the a loving divine, or is it a commodity to be traded on the market?
And if humanity amounts to nothing more than biological matter animated by preference and protected by consensus, then of course we turn our bodies into tools. Of course we self author our identities. Of course we treat limits as things to be beat into submission. And of course we treat inconveniences as death itself.
A world that no longer sees people as sacred eventually starts treating people as disposable. That thought should chill us! We learn the world is fallen two pages into the Bible. And anyone who has ever turned on the news for 5 seconds instinctively knows this. When my dad died, someone had to identify his body. Someone had to look at his dead corpse and say this is the man who was in life known as Enzo McEwen. And too often we think of the problems of the secular world as something that is far off. My Christian community doesn’t struggle with this, how can it affect me? But Trueman makes us look at the corpse. He forces us to look at a problem we have refused to acknowledge for far too long. This is a dead society which in life was hurting but at least governed by basic ideals of Christendom.
What I appreciated most about this book, however, is that Trueman refuses to end in cultural despair. He doesn’t sit in nostalgia for a world that never existed, like so many conservative commentators are tempted to do. And he doesn’t call Christians to become angry culture warriors yelling into the internet void, which is refreshing because the internet already has plenty of those and none of them seem particularly happy. Instead, he calls the church to consecration.
The answer to a desecrated world is a church that takes worship seriously. A church that forms people through liturgy, sacrament, doctrine, discipline, and ordinary embodied faithfulness. Christians won’t defeat modern fragmentation by posting better takes online. We resist by becoming people shaped by Word, sacrament, prayer, and community. By becoming holy.
That may disappoint people searching for a grand political strategy. But Scripture has always favored ordinary means. Bread, wine, water, preaching, and prayer. God seems remarkably unbothered by our desire for flashier solutions.
And if I’m honest, I see the need for that reminder everywhere around me. I see young men drifting between nihilism and outrage, discipled more by podcasts than pastors. I see marriages buckling under the weight of expressive individualism. I see parents terrified that faithfulness alone won’t be enough to prepare their children for the world they’re inheriting. I see churches tempted to mirror the culture’s panic rather than offer a distinctly Christian peace.
And if I’m really honest, I can see traces of the same impulses in my own heart. The temptation to confuse cynicism with discernment. The temptation to believe one more article, one more podcast episode, or one more perfectly crafted argument will somehow steady a world that feels unstable. It won’t. Christ will.
Christ still builds His church. Christ still saves sinners. Christ still sanctifies ordinary saints through ordinary means. And Christ still reigns over a world that often looks like it has forgotten Him. The world may mock, distort, and desecrate the image of God in man, but it cannot erase it. And the same Christ who restores all things is still restoring people.
And as we wait for the King to make all things new, may we remember that our bootstraps cannot save us. Our political strategies can not save our fallen world. A million hours of Johnathan Haidt’s content cannot lift us out of despair. Only our sovereign God can. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Amen.
“The Desecration of Man” felt urgent. It demanded immediate attention. It needed to be read in as few sittings as possible. Not because the material is enjoyable, in fact it was grotesque and made me want to turn away many times. But because the issues it addresses are so pressing.
In the way we’ve come to expect from Trueman, he identifies cultural realities many of us can sense but struggle to put into words. Then he names them with remarkable clarity and tackles them head on. He never minces words when confronting massive cultural problems. And he speaks with academic clarity and pastoral care.
Before going any further, two acknowledgements are necessary. First, shoutout to the Colson Center for giving away free copies of this book. Without that, this book probably would have sat on my reading list for a few more months.
Second, shoutout to Spotify for carrying the audiobook, narrated by Trueman himself. Parenting Lochie has forced me into far more audiobook supplementation than I would normally admit. But this message felt pressing enough for me to set aside my literary snobbery for a moment. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Trueman’s central argument is simple. Our society has desecrated what it means to be human. Many of the circles I inhabit diagnose our cultural moment with words like “disillusionment”, “disembodiment”, and “disenfranchisement”. Those words describe something real. People feel detached from institutions, communities, and even their own bodies in our postmodern, postliberal world. I mean my own philosophy of ministry document says that “I aim to reenchant the faith for a disillusioned people.” But Trueman argues those words don’t go far enough! So he offers a better one “desecration.”
Modern society hasn’t merely drifted into disenchantment. It has actively desecrated the Image of God. We no longer treat humanity as sacred, given, and dignified by divine design. Instead, we treat the self as endlessly malleable raw material that we can reconstruct according to personal desire. Trueman argues that we have turned the self into a commodity to be bought, sold, and traded.
And so Truman sets society against two men. One is Jesus Christ and the other is Nietzsche's Mad Man. And this is where Trueman shines. He shows that our debates over sexuality, abortion, pornography, gender ideology, and transhumanist dreams do not exist in isolation. They all flow downstream from a deeper question. What is a human being? Is it the image bearer of the a loving divine, or is it a commodity to be traded on the market?
And if humanity amounts to nothing more than biological matter animated by preference and protected by consensus, then of course we turn our bodies into tools. Of course we self author our identities. Of course we treat limits as things to be beat into submission. And of course we treat inconveniences as death itself.
A world that no longer sees people as sacred eventually starts treating people as disposable. That thought should chill us! We learn the world is fallen two pages into the Bible. And anyone who has ever turned on the news for 5 seconds instinctively knows this. When my dad died, someone had to identify his body. Someone had to look at his dead corpse and say this is the man who was in life known as Enzo McEwen. And too often we think of the problems of the secular world as something that is far off. My Christian community doesn’t struggle with this, how can it affect me? But Trueman makes us look at the corpse. He forces us to look at a problem we have refused to acknowledge for far too long. This is a dead society which in life was hurting but at least governed by basic ideals of Christendom.
What I appreciated most about this book, however, is that Trueman refuses to end in cultural despair. He doesn’t sit in nostalgia for a world that never existed, like so many conservative commentators are tempted to do. And he doesn’t call Christians to become angry culture warriors yelling into the internet void, which is refreshing because the internet already has plenty of those and none of them seem particularly happy. Instead, he calls the church to consecration.
The answer to a desecrated world is a church that takes worship seriously. A church that forms people through liturgy, sacrament, doctrine, discipline, and ordinary embodied faithfulness. Christians won’t defeat modern fragmentation by posting better takes online. We resist by becoming people shaped by Word, sacrament, prayer, and community. By becoming holy.
That may disappoint people searching for a grand political strategy. But Scripture has always favored ordinary means. Bread, wine, water, preaching, and prayer. God seems remarkably unbothered by our desire for flashier solutions.
And if I’m honest, I see the need for that reminder everywhere around me. I see young men drifting between nihilism and outrage, discipled more by podcasts than pastors. I see marriages buckling under the weight of expressive individualism. I see parents terrified that faithfulness alone won’t be enough to prepare their children for the world they’re inheriting. I see churches tempted to mirror the culture’s panic rather than offer a distinctly Christian peace.
And if I’m really honest, I can see traces of the same impulses in my own heart. The temptation to confuse cynicism with discernment. The temptation to believe one more article, one more podcast episode, or one more perfectly crafted argument will somehow steady a world that feels unstable. It won’t. Christ will.
Christ still builds His church. Christ still saves sinners. Christ still sanctifies ordinary saints through ordinary means. And Christ still reigns over a world that often looks like it has forgotten Him. The world may mock, distort, and desecrate the image of God in man, but it cannot erase it. And the same Christ who restores all things is still restoring people.
And as we wait for the King to make all things new, may we remember that our bootstraps cannot save us. Our political strategies can not save our fallen world. A million hours of Johnathan Haidt’s content cannot lift us out of despair. Only our sovereign God can. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Amen.
August 7, 2026
Only reason not 5 stars is because some of what was related was a retelling of the ideas of expressive individualism that Strange New World is based on. The end chapters about the church and death were very thought provoking. Highly recommend.
May 17, 2026
Probably my favorite of the Trueman books I’ve gotten to read.
He hits the nail on the head when he says that society’s rejection of God cannot be explained simply by a disenchantment with the supernatural (as the failure of re-enchantment efforts clearly show) but is better explained by desecration: the ecstatic transgression of that which has historically been sacred. Man is thrilled by the idea of stepping into the God-vacuum in a world where God seems less and less plausible. However, as Trueman demonstrates with alarming examples from the casual desecration of the once-sacred realms of sex, reproduction, and even death, this approach fails to elevate man into godhood and ironically reduces persons to objects.
In his proposed solution, I found it very refreshing to see an academic turn not to arguments to win over the intelligentsia, but instead to more incremental day-to-day changes to transform the intuitions of the matches. It’s not just that this approach reads better. It’s the one that will actually work.
Much of the book is a best-of with Trueman, be it his expositions of expressive individualism or his importance of the church’s creed, code, and cult to a proper anthropology, but what I enjoy most is how he shows how empty the code and the cult are if not upheld by the creed. If man is not made in the image of God, then we have no given nature, limits, obligations, or ends, and we’re left with a void of meaning we cannot fill. However, if man is made in the image of God, we have an incredible dignity and responsibility that fills life with joy and purpose.
“Christianity does not claim to be true because it justifies our cultural preferences and delivers the results we desire. It claims to be true because Christ, God incarnate, is risen from the grave.”
He hits the nail on the head when he says that society’s rejection of God cannot be explained simply by a disenchantment with the supernatural (as the failure of re-enchantment efforts clearly show) but is better explained by desecration: the ecstatic transgression of that which has historically been sacred. Man is thrilled by the idea of stepping into the God-vacuum in a world where God seems less and less plausible. However, as Trueman demonstrates with alarming examples from the casual desecration of the once-sacred realms of sex, reproduction, and even death, this approach fails to elevate man into godhood and ironically reduces persons to objects.
In his proposed solution, I found it very refreshing to see an academic turn not to arguments to win over the intelligentsia, but instead to more incremental day-to-day changes to transform the intuitions of the matches. It’s not just that this approach reads better. It’s the one that will actually work.
Much of the book is a best-of with Trueman, be it his expositions of expressive individualism or his importance of the church’s creed, code, and cult to a proper anthropology, but what I enjoy most is how he shows how empty the code and the cult are if not upheld by the creed. If man is not made in the image of God, then we have no given nature, limits, obligations, or ends, and we’re left with a void of meaning we cannot fill. However, if man is made in the image of God, we have an incredible dignity and responsibility that fills life with joy and purpose.
“Christianity does not claim to be true because it justifies our cultural preferences and delivers the results we desire. It claims to be true because Christ, God incarnate, is risen from the grave.”
Read
July 14, 2026A popular level summary rehash, clarification and application of the insights from Trueman's earlier (rather dense) "Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self" with some attempt to integrate other analyses of related matters and a lot more application.
Helpfully summarises the modern approach to life as "desecration": our society desecrates most parts of life and even desecrates our very humanity. If you want a one-stop christian critique of much mainstream modern culture including identity politics, the sexual revolution, abortion and transgenderism this is helpful, and probably a significant improvement on Trueman's previous popular level work "Strange new world".
A couple of striking helpful additions to Trueman's earlier work:
a) the consideration of how this desecration is a miserable fulfilment of the commission of Nietzsche's madman
b) a critique of some like Dawkins and Scruton who try and preserve some of the legacy of Christianity without its truth (Nietzsche's critique lands on them, they are building on nothing)
By way of application:
Trueman focuses on the importance of the Creed, Cult and Code of Christianity: in order to avoid nihilism or desecration we need to affirm the truth of christianity (Creed), practise the worship of christianity in way that forms us and our lives (Cult) and live out the ethics of christianity (Code).
His focus on the importance of the Cult permeating through our lives is helpful - there is a significant argument here for the pedagogical value of developed and consistent liturgies and even a church calendar.
Weaknesses:
Trueman says next to nothing about the raising of children, multi-generational discipleship or the building of christian institutions, these ought to be a key part of a healthy applications of the truths he has presented.
Additionally he argues that much of the online right and "christian nationalists" perform a form of desecration by using similar destructive tactics to the left and similarly neglecting the full orbed truth of christianity; these allegations included no specific examples and I'm unsure who they were aimed at. This was probably the weakest part of the book. I'm unsure that any significant advocate of "christian nationalism" would recognise the positions he critiques here, maybe he was aiming at twitter anons but that's no what he said. Additionally in this context he make the common mistakes of (a) conflating christian political aims with establishmentarianism and (b) suggesting that no christian political goals can be sought until a majority of the society is christian.
Helpfully summarises the modern approach to life as "desecration": our society desecrates most parts of life and even desecrates our very humanity. If you want a one-stop christian critique of much mainstream modern culture including identity politics, the sexual revolution, abortion and transgenderism this is helpful, and probably a significant improvement on Trueman's previous popular level work "Strange new world".
A couple of striking helpful additions to Trueman's earlier work:
a) the consideration of how this desecration is a miserable fulfilment of the commission of Nietzsche's madman
b) a critique of some like Dawkins and Scruton who try and preserve some of the legacy of Christianity without its truth (Nietzsche's critique lands on them, they are building on nothing)
By way of application:
Trueman focuses on the importance of the Creed, Cult and Code of Christianity: in order to avoid nihilism or desecration we need to affirm the truth of christianity (Creed), practise the worship of christianity in way that forms us and our lives (Cult) and live out the ethics of christianity (Code).
His focus on the importance of the Cult permeating through our lives is helpful - there is a significant argument here for the pedagogical value of developed and consistent liturgies and even a church calendar.
Weaknesses:
Trueman says next to nothing about the raising of children, multi-generational discipleship or the building of christian institutions, these ought to be a key part of a healthy applications of the truths he has presented.
Additionally he argues that much of the online right and "christian nationalists" perform a form of desecration by using similar destructive tactics to the left and similarly neglecting the full orbed truth of christianity; these allegations included no specific examples and I'm unsure who they were aimed at. This was probably the weakest part of the book. I'm unsure that any significant advocate of "christian nationalism" would recognise the positions he critiques here, maybe he was aiming at twitter anons but that's no what he said. Additionally in this context he make the common mistakes of (a) conflating christian political aims with establishmentarianism and (b) suggesting that no christian political goals can be sought until a majority of the society is christian.
August 25, 2026
This book was excellent up until the last five pages. Mr Truman decided to end his great book slamming Christian Nationalists with a very broad brush stroke, and many (incorrect) generalizations. It left such a bad taste in my mouth.
Besides the last five pages, this was a much needed, important examination of how Christians should view sex, IVF, surrogacy and Euthanasia. Protestants must come up with a robust, biblical view of anthropology and all the topics/cultural issues that flow from it.
Besides the last five pages, this was a much needed, important examination of how Christians should view sex, IVF, surrogacy and Euthanasia. Protestants must come up with a robust, biblical view of anthropology and all the topics/cultural issues that flow from it.
October 7, 2026
As even the title shows, this is an invitation to bring the most important thinkers from the past 100 years to dialogue with him. It started off strong with a (subtle?) dig at Chesterton and got better as went--taking Nietzsche seriously and looking at the issues that deicide presents.
April 23, 2026
What is man? What does it mean to be human? If we’ve killed God and find ourselves dancing on his grave, we’re profaning what was once considered sacred and, with the vacuum that’s been created, self-creatively making deities of ourselves. But what if, as the wise man said, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end of that way is death”?
And what if we’re not objects? What if we’re subjects afforded dignity by being created in the image of God? What if God is not dead, and the only shot we’ve got at the pursuit of truth and beauty and goodness is God-glorification for our joy as taught in the historic, orthodox Christian faith?
How can we rediscover what it means to be men and women of whom God is mindful, who dwells among us and crowns us, “in Christ” with glory and honor?
Trueman reveals to creatures that there is a Person more significant than ourselves — the Creator that made us.
What if we can move from desecration to consecration?
Through Creed, and Cult, and Code, Trueman argues that slowly, as a culture, we can find our way back to exclaiming, “O Lord our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth!”
And what if we’re not objects? What if we’re subjects afforded dignity by being created in the image of God? What if God is not dead, and the only shot we’ve got at the pursuit of truth and beauty and goodness is God-glorification for our joy as taught in the historic, orthodox Christian faith?
How can we rediscover what it means to be men and women of whom God is mindful, who dwells among us and crowns us, “in Christ” with glory and honor?
Trueman reveals to creatures that there is a Person more significant than ourselves — the Creator that made us.
What if we can move from desecration to consecration?
Through Creed, and Cult, and Code, Trueman argues that slowly, as a culture, we can find our way back to exclaiming, “O Lord our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth!”
May 13, 2026
Simply excellent. I will return.
June 23, 2026
Fantastic! Highest recommendations!
May 20, 2026
Really really good! This volume serves as a conclusion of sorts (though Trueman likely and hopefully has more to say) of the themes of a couple of his recent books, namely, Strange New World and Crisis of Confidence. Here he lays out an argument for how and why the West has desecrated mankind and he sets it up with a concise yet brilliant contrast of Nietzsche’s Madman and the New Testament’s Christ.
If God is dead as the Madman claimed, then the Apostle Paul is right: Christians are to be most pitied. But if Christ is risen then His claims to be The Truth must cause us to bow and believe … and act accordingly to His way.
Powerful read!
If God is dead as the Madman claimed, then the Apostle Paul is right: Christians are to be most pitied. But if Christ is risen then His claims to be The Truth must cause us to bow and believe … and act accordingly to His way.
Powerful read!
August 16, 2026
A helpful diagnosis of the modern culture’s values and rejection of God. As always, Trueman does an excellent job blending anthropology and philosophy to make his argument. My biggest takeaway is the cultural critique that individual expressive “freedom”, which in this case, is a rejection of God, does not always liberate society but ultimately destroys it.
June 11, 2026
Five star rating because this is such an important cultural commentary. The premise is that if we don’t believe in God, we become our own God’s. Trueman leads us through numerous examples of how society has adopted the Madman approach which I think are important to carefully consider.
This book was better than my enjoyment of it. There were a lot of words I had to look up and a lot of long, hard to understand sentences. I’m sure a second reading would reveal even more insights.
This book was better than my enjoyment of it. There were a lot of words I had to look up and a lot of long, hard to understand sentences. I’m sure a second reading would reveal even more insights.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 188 reviews