Alternative Culture: The Last Christian review

[The following post is dedicated to my friend Abigail]

The Last Christian..... in America
The daughter of missionaries, Abigail Caldwell, returns to the United States in 2088 after the tribe she was working with perishes to a pandemic. However, she finds that there are no Christians in the United States due to the advent of brain transplants. Inspired by a message from her late grandfather, she takes it upon herself to bring the gospel to her homeland.

What I liked
I admire the way the author imagines the decline of Christianity in the Western World. He attributes the regression due to the rise of evolutionary theory and lack of counter-culturalness. He also imagines the moral decline of the country with the loss of marriage institutions and lowering of the sexual age.

In reality, despite the hopes of the New Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, it is unlikely that religious belief will disappear in the near future. If anything, the number of cultural/nominal religious people are decreasing, while the number of practising religious people are increasing (McGrath, 2004).

I also liked the way Abigail innocently describes Christianity to a sceptical audience on live television, and the process in which her understanding of her faith changed. From relying so much on her own efforts, she slowly had a reformation of her heart and trusts God instead.

What could have been improved
I am quite surprised by one factual error, considering that the author did some research in Papua New Guinea. He mentioned that that there was no reputable neurological centre in the country, which would be pretty unlikely, since there is a famed neurological disease, kuru, which is endemic to the country.

Another aspect I thought was not well written was plot device in which the author links the soul to the brain. I wished it was better explained, because it seems to run contrary to the author's theology which he links faith to a relationship, rather than a state of mind.

My theological review
Despite its convenient deus ex machinma, I enjoyed this easy-to-read science fiction novel. I give it a 70/100.


Before I end this reveiw, I would like to do the author a favour by adding his video of Abigail Caldwell in the link below:

abbysmessage

References

McGrath, A. (2004) The Twilight of Atheism