These resources are prepared for people who have listened to John Allan's lectures on "Facing the Modern World" at Torchbearer Bible Schools throughout Europe. It's usually the case that we don't have enough time to deal with all the salient points properly; let's face it, the subject is pretty huge! So if you're interested enough to study further, these notes should help you.

When we do the whole series, the lectures begin with a thumbnail sketch of the main movements in thought and culture since the days of Rene Descartes. You'll find extra resources for that here.

Then we go on to look at four people who have massively influenced the way people think today: Darwin, Marx (see right), Freud and Sartre. Resources online? No problem - just click here.

We also look at four contemporary writers who have had thought-provoking things to say about our present-day world conditions: Peter Berger, Marshall McLuhan, Alvin Toffler, Christopher Lasch. (Tauernhof students, you heard about only the first two of those...) Click here to study further.

And using all this as a basis, we go on to look at five strategies which people adopt to cope with "living in the box" - the world shut in on itself which we've created since the Enlightenment. We'll add resources for these five strategies sometime reasonably soon. Watch this space!