A Look at How Cultures Have Changed

Transforming Worldviews, by Paul G. Hiebert
It had been some time since I read any Hiebert. I looked forward to receiving this book, but was rather disappointed with it in the end.
I found a few things helpful. As a critique of western or North American culture and its weaknesses and biases, I found it to be good.
As a rule, if there is a chapter titled the same as the book, that is the chapter to read first. This stands true in the book under consideration. It may have been a better book if he had just left it at this chapter. There is a great discussion there on the use of rituals being beneficial to the transformation of world views, something Lutheran pastors might take to heart in consideration of the Liturgy. However, this chapter is at the end of the book, and one might not get there if one does not know better than to read the rest of it.
The first chapter and its investigation of the concept of “Worldview” was interesting.
His investigations of non-western worldviews might leave one to think there are the worldviews of those in India, and then the modern western worldview, and not much else worth considering.
The chapters between the first and the last suffer from tedious length, and a penchant for quoting the same material numerous times.
Rather than being “An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change.” It is more an account as to how cultures have changed, with very little reflection as too what actually brought that about.
Added to this he lets his own baptistic, or Anabaptistic theological biases show through in a way that makes a Lutheran want to puke, in that he tends to equate conversion with change in behavior. One does not actually have to give up smoking or drinking to be a Christian. Paul considered the Corinthians to be Christians because they were baptized, (1 Cor. 6) even though many of them were guilty of sexual immorality. For sure he chastised them for their sins. But he never ceased to address them as saints. He would not think a person to be ready for baptism because they had given up on tobacco, but because they are sinners in need of forgiveness.