One would not expect a teaching pastor in a large and thriving London congregation to have the time to pen a volume that has been described by historian Thomas Kidd as “an intellectual tour de force and a model of Christian scholarship.” The focus is on a single year, 1776, and seven developments arising from events during this year: Globalization, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution, the beginnings of post-Christianity, and Romanticism. More than any other year 1776 made us Westerners who we are today. Wilson weaves a whirlwind story from fascinating and even “weird” facts. For example, there still lives today a 95-year-old gentleman whose father’s grandfather, tenth U.S. President John Tyler had been a college roommate of Thomas Jefferson! The cultural and technological change across these three generations was staggering.

In the last third and the “heart” of the book are the stories of individual Christians including John Newton, Hannah More, William Wilberforce, Johann Georg Hamann and Rebecca Protten (a former slave turned Moravian missionary). These Christians were part of a vast movement of awakenings and revival in the 1770s and their lives offer a “metacritique of the Enlightenment” while pointing “the way to a post-secular future.” In telling this grand narrative, Wilson’s purpose is to “teach us about living as Christians in our WEIRDER world”: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian and Romantic.

There is no going back to an unretrievable past. But the message of the grace of God turns WEIRDER ways upside down. Remaking ends with the pastoral encouragement to be faithful and obedient and a reminder that genuine revival comes from God’s initiative. This is a book that I will recommend again and again.