Futureproof: How to live for Jesus in a culture which keeps on changing

Author: Stephen McAlpine

Publisher: The Good Book Company

Year: 2023

Reviewed by Mark Powell

Stephen McAlpine is one of Australia’s most prolific and popular Christian bloggers. While not everyone will agree with him on everything all of the time—who does that kind of thing with any author?ֿ—what he writes is always stimulating and definitely worth taking the time to read. It is with some degree of interest then that I discovered that he is just about to publish his second book, Futureproof (The Good Book Company, 2023).

I was fortunate enough to receive an advanced copy to review, and my hope is that what follows will be of help to those who are interested in purchasing the book themselves when it is officially released in the coming months.

Futureproof is actually the sequel to McAlpine’s first book, Being the Bad Guys (The Good Book Company, 2021). As McAlpine explains:

My last book, Being the Bad Guys, was designed to explain how we got to where we are today. Futureproof is designed to explore where we are going in the future and what to do about that now.

Without giving too much of the content of the book itself away, McAlpine suggests the following way forward and structures his argument accordingly:

• Out Purpose the Culture
• Out Relate the Culture
• Out Last the Culture
• Polarisation
• Technology
• Culture Wars
• Ecology

Each one of these chapters is both provocative as well as thought-provoking and interesting. However, it did seem like the last one on ‘ecology’ was a bit of an ‘addendum’. I think I would have put it somewhere else and made the last chapter about the culture wars, but that’s only a minor quibble.

I thought it best to summarise seven strengths which are evidenced throughout the book, and then briefly consider one thing which could have strengthened the book (please read all of the positives first, and avoid the temptation of jumping down to my only reservation).

Excellent Writing

McAlpine is clearly an experienced wordsmith who has one of those rare talents of writing not only in a clear and compelling way but also with a carefulness which makes him very easy to read. Not a sentence is wasted, and the reader is drawn along by McAlpine’s engaging style and well-chosen words. I read the book in two sittings, with my only break coming to make a cup of tea. All of which is to say, it’s produced in such a way that it’s hard to put down!

An Aussie Perspective

It’s unfortunately rare in today’s Christian publishing world to read an author who writes from a uniquely Australian perspective without coming across as cringe. There are some notable examples though, Mark Sayers being one of them. But Futureproof is littered with examples from not only modern-day culture, but illustrations from everyday life which Aussies will be familiar with. That said, it will also have a broad appeal to people in the UK or America; it doesn’t suffer from being parochial.

Politically Neutral

Without being a self-conscious centrist, McAlpine straddles the political spectrum in such a way that it is hard to pigeonhole him. This is obviously a strength and maybe to others a frustration. Especially when commenting on contemporary concerns, it is increasingly tempting—and all too easy—to position oneself in a certain tribe. But McAlpine is just as easy in talking about abortion as he is about climate change, and this is refreshing. 

Well Read

Another aspect which I really appreciated about Futureproof is just how well read McAlpine is. The book is littered with references to Carl Trueman, Tim Keller, Charles Taylor, Robert Putnam, Robert Bellah, Douglas Murray, Jonathan Haidt, Daniel Sih, Mark Sayers, Sam Allberry and Tara Isabella Burton. All of them are interacted with in a way which takes the best of their arguments and applies their insights to the topic at hand. It shows the depth of McAlpine’s own thinking and reflection.

Culturally Relevant

Throughout Futureproof McAlpine shows that he has an enviable grasp of this cultural moment. Even though he is middle-aged, he is familiar with the impact that Andrew Tate is currently having on young men, as well as more academic public figures such as those mentioned above. There was a statement McAlpine made at the beginning of his book though, which really stuck in my mind, and it is a good example of his understanding of the world in which we now live and how it has radically changed is such a short space of time.

Think about this: Elizabeth only became queen because her uncle, Edward VIII, abdicated so that he could marry the love of his life, the divorced American socialite, Wallis Simpson. Elizabeth’s father—and ultimately Elizabeth herself—only ascended the throne because the marriage of the king of England to a divorced woman was a bridge too far. The Church of England would not countenance it because Simpson’s ex-spouse was still living.  

Yet now? The new king, Charles, divorced Princess Diana. He married his lover, the equally divorced Camilla Parker Bowles, whose ex-husband still lives. But there were no formal objections to Charles taking the throne—neither from Parliament nor from the Church of England.

Things have changed, and changed a lot. And of course, by the time you are reading this, things will have moved on apace. Change will have been our only constant. And clearly not always change for the better.

Biblically Faithful

By far the greatest strength of the book is its grounding in Scripture. Time and time again McAlpine points the reader back to the biblical text. This is done really well in that it is not only appropriately applied, but it is also presented as the ultimate answer to the various problem which he has previously explored. In this way McAlpine is analysing the culture first but then showing that its telos (end goal)is to be found in the truths revealed in God’s Word. And this is excellent.

Gospel Centred

Following on from the previous point, McAlpine shows how Jesus is the answer to it all. Yes, the culture is becoming increasingly secular and pagan but this doesn’t mean that we should lose heart. Indeed, McAlpine consistently points the reader back to the hope which we have in Christ Jesus and His victory over sin, Satan and death. In this sense, Futureproof is profoundly Christological. And this works well on both an evangelistic as well as apologetic level.

My Only Concern

With so many strengths you might well ask, so what’s the problem? It’s really that I only wish McAlpine had given us more! I didn’t disagree with anything, and I really appreciated both the theological and cultural analysis, but I felt like at times it could have been much more expansive. The book is only 156 pages long and I think he could have easily been expanded that out by another hundred.

This is obviously both a weakness and strength of the book, depending on how much you like reading. Many will probably appreciate the shorter chapters. And because McAlpine is such a good writer, it is easy to digest the whole work in under two hours. What’s more, he never loses the reader’s interest because as he finishes with one topic he is off onto the next.

But Futureproof’s chapters do tend to feel at points like extended blog entries. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing– again, McAlpine is an extremely gifted thinker and writer—but in my opinion, more research and analysis would have strengthened the overall work.

I hope in the future he does this. His writing is such a unique, as well as important, contribution to what it means to serve Christ in the world today, and to do so in a way which is cognizant of the cultural challenges, but also confident in the comfort which is ultimately to be found in Christ.