My childhood church supported a missionary family in Nigeria. This relationship first stoked my interest in places beyond the Christianity that I knew in America. Now, after sojourns in countries vastly different from my own, I believe the need grows for American Christians to learn even more about the non-Western world.

The phrase “the West and the rest” became popular following the publication in 1996 by Samuel P. Huntington of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. Richard K. Betts discussed this book and two others in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine

Betts states: “The sacred concepts of freedom, individualism, and cooperation are so ingrained in U.S. political culture that most people assume them to be the natural order of things, universal values that people everywhere would embrace if given the chance.”

We no longer can make such assumptions, if we ever could. Best that Christians grow in understanding of the changed world we live in, one that may not be as respectful of our ideals as in the past. We may have to work harder to prove the worth of those ideals.