Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-249) and index

Introduction -- Faith, reason, and freedom : a view from the present -- The gospel of unbelief -- The age of freedom -- The mythology of the secular age : modernity's rewriting of the Christian past -- Faith and reason --

Hart outlines how Christianity transformed the ancient world in ways we may have forgotten: bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the "Age of Reason" was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason's authority as a cultural value. Hart closes the book in the present, delineating the ominous consequences of the decline of Christendom in a culture that is built upon its moral and spiritual values.--From publisher's description