There are signs that the tide is turning for Christian faith in the West, after years of dominance by secularism, materialism, naturalism, determinism and humanism, fuelled by the rants of the ‘new atheists’ like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. This book documents the change. It is:
The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers are Considering Christianity Again by Justin Brierley (Tyndale House, 2023)
The author is best known for his Unbelievable? podcasts, in which for many years he has interviewed a wide range of scientists, philosophers and influencers of popular thought, many of them committed atheists. His book draws on some of those interviews to highlight a clear trend away from atheism and towards an embracing of Christianity. In particular, it shows the now evident bankruptcy of the ‘new atheism’ that not long ago expected to see the death of all serious Christian faith.
It shows, too, how the whole outlook and heritage of Western society leans on the Christian story and how those who openly reject that story still unwittingly depend on its residue in society to make any sense at all of their alternative, and ultimately unworkable, philosophies. And it look frankly at the dark side of the church’s history and some of the questionable aspects of the Bible.
This is more than a standard book of rational apologetics. It has strong ‘people’ content in that it draws on the experiences and observations of some outstandingly intelligent thinkers as they have grappled with the age-old questions of life, meaning and purpose. They have all, in different ways, reached the conclusion that without a ‘big story’ of the kind provided by the Christian faith there is nothing to anchor one’s life to in order to give it stability.
All have come by different routes. The poet, novelist and ‘reluctant convert’ Paul Kingsnorth, for instance, came via Zen Buddhism and Wicca. Some had a childhood introduction to church and faith but ditched it in their teenage years. Others had a totally secular upbringing. But all, in their own way, longed for something that could cope with their deepest questions. Their many and varied accounts make for fascinating reading.
Big names among the sceptical thinkers cited — most of them interviewed by the author — include Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, Rosalind Picard, Francis Collins, Tom Holland, Yuval Noah Harari, Germaine Greer, Thomas Nagel, Jonathan Haidt, Terry Eagleton and A.C. Grayling, along with some prominent Christian scholars and intellectuals like N.T. Wright, John Walton and David Bentley Hart.
This is not just a book of rational apologetics. It admits that the rational, intellectual dimension is not the only meaningful aspect of being human, and that all of us have a ‘felt experience’ dimension that touches the emotions and other non-rational aspects of our nature. Left-brain activity is not all there is.
Many today would describe themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious’. Brierley looks into this and its implications in some detail. His tone in this, and throughout the book, is gentle, without the slightest sign of tub-thumping or know-it-all preaching. I highly recommend it to atheists, whether seekers or not, and to all who want to understand our era more thoroughly.
Here are a few quotations, with page numbers…
…G. K. Chesterton’s dictum that when people stop believing in God, they do not believe in nothing; they believe in anything. (p xiv from Intro by N.T. Wright)
In this book I will make a bold proposition—that Matthew Arnold’s long, withdrawing Sea of Faith is beginning to reach its farthest limit and that we may yet see the tide of faith come rushing back in again within our lifetime. (p3)
British comedian Ricky Gervais, creator of The Office, became increasingly vocal in his mockery of religion on Twitter and dedicated a whole stand-up routine to making fun of the Bible. (p12)
Up to that point, New Atheism had been largely united in agreeing that religion was bad and science was good. But it turns out that life is more complicated than that. Once the community discovered they held radically differing views about how life should be lived once religion has been abandoned, things quickly spiralled downwards. (p23)
Today, New Atheism is a largely spent force, relegated to corners of the Internet where teenage bloggers continue to churn out antagonistic Bible memes in online echo chambers. It has faded from public view as a serious cultural phenomenon. The publishing boom in anti-God literature fizzled out almost as quickly as it began, and the atheist speaking circuit is a shadow of its former self. (p25)
Just as those London buses bearing the words “There’s probably no God” had the unintended consequence of putting religion back in the spotlight, so New Atheism has revitalized the intellectual tradition of the Christian church in the West. (p30)
As well as giving us a story to live by, there is another concept which the Christian worldview gifted the modern world: objective truth. (p43)
Now a “be whoever you want to be” culture is in ascendancy as people search for a “true” inner identity—their “authentic self.” This phenomenon is known as “expressive individualism.” (p46)
To a large extent, the signs and sacraments of traditional religion have been replaced in our culture by a heightened interest in amorphous forms of new age spirituality, primarily focused on mindfulness and meditation. These are often practiced by those who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” (p49)
[Terry Eagleton] has repeatedly pointed out to his secular contemporaries that Christianity’s central story of self-sacrificial love is the revolutionary force that has most shaped the moral arc of the West, rather than the value-neutral project of science. (p58)
Christians don’t just believe Christianity is socially useful; they believe it’s true. (p60)
Others have argued in similar ways that the very concept of human rights that undergirds the humanistic worldview is itself radically contingent upon a Christian understanding of what it is to be human. (p72)
Secular humanists who believe in the existence of human rights and treat them as sacrosanct are being just as theological in their assumptions about reality as the Christian who believes they are conferred by a divine Creator. (p74)
Slavery existed unchallenged for millennia in many other civilizations. It was only formally outlawed in many Muslim countries in the latter half of the twentieth century, and arguably in these cases because of pressure from the Christian West. (p82)
Like the proverbial goldfish who fails to realize there is such a thing as water, we are all swimming in the moral water of Christianity, even if most people don’t recognize it. (p88)
First and foremost, from Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is a story. (p105)
Part of the problem is that the Bible’s fiercest contemporary critics have tried to dismiss its credibility by reading it in the same way as the fundamentalist Christians they often find themselves at loggerheads with. (p106)
Many sceptics seem to believe that merely pointing out the fact that the Gospels contain differences between them is enough to dismiss the Bible’s claim to be divinely inspired. But that’s only true if we assume its divine pedigree is based upon how closely it mirrors modern literary conventions. (p123)
The reason the Bible has changed the world is because its written word provides evidence of a personal “living Word” who can be encountered today. (p127)
Simply applying the scientific method doesn’t eradicate the prejudices of scientists. As in any area of study, science is a very human endeavour, marked by the biases and presuppositions of those who engage in it. (p132)
The young earth creation movement, which has been the focus of much New Atheist ire, is a relatively modern movement that only really gained prominence in the mid-twentieth century. (p136)
Many sceptics assume that the scientific revolution came about as the Enlightenment allowed reason to break free from the shackles of religious superstition. But this notion is as prejudiced and unhistorical as the exaggerated stories about Darwin and Galileo we have already touched on. In reality, both those men were building on the foundations of a scientific revolution that was a direct product of the Judeo-Christian tradition. And all the chief architects of that revolution firmly saw their science as a gift from God. (p137)
The idea of an age-old battle between science and faith is largely a nineteenth-century invention promulgated by John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, two quirky historians whose pamphlets on the “conflict thesis” became wildly popular, despite most of the historical details being completely false. Sadly, their version of history is still uncritically regurgitated by many modern-day critics of the faith, despite having been debunked by historians… The conflict is not between science and faith at all but rather between two worldviews—naturalism and theism. (p139)
Richard Dawkins famously wrote that “the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” But the evidence from science doesn’t seem to agree with Dawkins’s statement. On the contrary, our scientific discoveries seem to reveal a universe that is teeming with order, purpose, and meaning. (p160)
Whether it is the panentheism of McGilchrist or the panpsychism of these alternative thinkers, the tide certainly seems to be turning away from the purely material understanding of nature that has dominated academia for some time. (p189)
We are beginning to see the turning of the tide. It begins with recognizing that we have been living in the wrong story for too many years. The materialist-determinist paradigm is an atheistic assumption supported by neither science nor philosophy. We need not be compelled to live in such a nonstory. (p194)
It is the “organized” part of religion that people have rejected in the last half century, rather than spirituality itself. And it’s not only organized religion feeling the effect. The rise of individualism and a rejection of traditional forms of community in general mean that the church is in the same boat as political parties, social clubs, and civic groups, who have also seen a similar drop in membership. The fact that local village pubs are closing faster than rural churches is a reminder that wider demographic changes are afoot. (p203)
It turns out we’re all believers deep down. We all believe that good must conquer evil and that justice really matters. We may have inherited those beliefs from our Christian past, but as that story has faded from view, we’re left with a set of quasi-religious beliefs that have become detached from their original moorings. As Glen Scrivener puts it, “We’re all standing on the Bible, hurling verses at each other. We’ve just forgotten the references.” (p206)
In a world where we have lost sight of the grand adventure of the Christian story of reality, we are liable to settle for much smaller stories. We replace a drama of cosmic significance, written across the pages of Scripture and history, with political battles and culture wars that will likely puzzle future generations in terms of how much heat was generated, yet how little was achieved. (p207)
The most fruitful way we can introduce people to the Christian story is through the realm of the imagination rather than the intellect. We do that by making people want Christianity to be true in the first place, by showing how it meets our deepest instincts about what matters most. Only then can apologetics—the work of showing them why it is true—be of any use. (p213)
As we meet the incoming tide of refugees from the meaning crisis, the church needs both apologists in the academy and storytellers in the arts. (p222)
The church needs to be a place of countercultural grace in a polarized, moralistic, and unforgiving society. Grace is the antidote to cancel culture, and people are desperate for it. Perhaps the greatest witness the church can offer society is that, even when we disagree, we can still love each other. (p227)
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