In his latest book, The Gathering Storm, Albert Mohler seeks to warn us about the impending tempest building up in Western culture. He borrows the title and the argument from the first volume of Churchill’s massive work on the Second World War. In the 1930’s Churchill was a political outcast, a lone voice warning about the destruction that the Nazi Party were capable of. Mohler, an admirer of Winston Churchill, writes, “One great question has always vexed me. How could Winston Churchill’s prophetic warnings about the rise of the Nazi threat have been so right, and yet so ignored, for so long? That is one of the great perplexities of the twentieth century.” It is this ignorance of the developing situation at the start of the twenty-first century, which prompts Mohler to write The Gathering Storm. 

The Western world faces a different kind of storm – secularization. The cultural shift of the recent years permeates every sphere of our culture, and is about to produce an earthquake. And while these developments are in plain sight, Mohler, like Churchill, understands that not everyone can see them. “When the storm of secularism thunders on the horizon, it often seems unassuming, undaunting, a mere change in the weather.” In this book, Mohler seeks to aid the reader in grasping the true potential of the coming storm. 

Writing from a Christian context, Mohler says, “I see a gathering storm that already presents itself as a tremendous challenge to the faithfulness of the Christian church. Actually, this storm has been on the horizon and working its way through history for over a century now, but in our own day with a dramatic strengthening and acceleration. This is the gathering storm of the secular age.” He is not limiting the coming difficulty to the Church, however, but is careful to observe the destructive outcome for the society at large. This storm is about to swipe across the whole Western culture. 

What does Mohler mean by secularization, and why does he perceive it so destructive? He describes it as the process of gradually abandoning the Christian worldview, which served for centuries as the moral standard of Western civilization. In The Gathering Storm, Mohler identifies as the main accelerator of secularization the recent sexual revolution, which goes beyond passively drifting away from Christian principles, but actively, and aggressively, demands a new morality. 

In the opening chapter, Mohler begins by tracing the secular mindset through the Enlightenment. “What began as a parlor game of the philosophers has now become the ideological engine of society.” And this ideology aims to redefine every area of life. “The gathering storm we face threatens nothing less than a regime change—to inaugurate a new empire under the guise of human freedom and autonomy. ” This shift inevitably results in alarming implications for society in the Western world. Derailing from the truth, civilization in the West finds itself at a breaking point.

In the remaining chapters, Mohler considers in detail several areas where this storm has been particularly destructive: the church, sanctity of human life, marriage, family, and gender. He then considers the gloomy future for coming generations.  He points out that recent statistics reveal that young adults are predominantly liberal and progressive. This is no doubt to have some serious ramification on the future public life of America.

While a major part of The Gathering Storm is devoted to the negatives, exposing the destructive developments in Western culture, with especially alarming consequences for religious liberty, Mohler concludes with the positive by encouraging Christians not to panic. “We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We face the truth and see reality. We are concerned, aware, diligent, discerning, caring, and sometimes, even heartbroken. We see the gathering storm for what it is, and we dare not deny it.” Instead, we go into the storm, armed with three main Christian virtues: faith, hope and love. 

Albert Mohler is certainly qualified to launch such a warning. As an avid observer of news and events from a Christian worldview, he understands all the nuances of the impeding storm gathering on the horizon. Furthermore, Mohler, whom the Time magazine described as “the reigning intellectual of the evangelical movement in the U.S.” is a gifted writer, something evident in this book. While he deals with many complexities of our current cultural climate, Mohler succeeds to communicate his message in a language accessible to the general public. In that vein, I join Mohler in his urgency to grasp our present reality, and encourage you to read The Gathering Storm.