The Receding Tides of New Atheism

If anyone should tell the story of how secular thinkers are considering Christianity again, it is someone with a front row seat to the show.

Justin Brierley fits that bill.

As host of Unbelievable?—a podcast which regularly brings Christian and secular thinkers together— Brierley ponders the flaws and strengths of different answers to life’s bigger questions.

Over his career Brierley has noticed a trend: New Atheism has grown old and many are giving Christianity a fresh look. In his own words:

I believe we are seeing the firstfruits of the returning tide in the lives and stories of a number of public intellectuals who are finding themselves surprised by the continuing resonance of the Christian story. (4)

In The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, Brierley considers why.

The Pipe Dream of New Atheism

Many people lost their religious faith while reading Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and other bestselling “New Atheists” in the 2000s. Today over half the people in the UK—where Brierley lives and works—claim no religion. It’s similar in Australia—almost forty percent of people reported “no religion” in our last national census.[1] Yet Brierley asserts that New Atheism is “a largely spent force, relegated to corners of the Internet … It has faded from public view as a serious cultural phenomenon” (25).

What caused the New Atheism craze to fizzle? For starters: public distaste for the arrogance of its most vocal proponents, and schisms within the movement itself (it turns out New Atheism has heretics and denominations of its own). But the main reason for the fizzle was that “atheism was shown to be a very thin worldview, not one that could provide a reason for living” (28). It fails to provide the mental and spiritual resources needed to navigate the meaning crisis of our current day. Even when it tries, it tends to borrow from Christianity:

New Atheism’s religion-less utopia has proved to be a pipe dream … many modern atheists fail to recognise the degree to which their vision of the good life is a product of the Christian culture that preceded them. (56)

Brierley’s diagnosis is compelling. What makes it refreshing, though, is the intellectual humility accompanying it: “I thank God for Richard Dawkins. Our harshest critics are often the ones who help us to grow the most” (30). On his podcast Brierley regularly models what humble engagement between Christian and secular thinkers can look like. He’s done so again in this book, and we should take a leaf out of it.

A Fascinating Roll Call

The bulk of the book tells stories of public intellectuals evaluating Christianity afresh, like psychologist Jordan Peterson, historian Tom Holland and journalist Douglas Murray. It becomes clear that the story of the West is so bound up in the story of Christianity that it is easy to forget the water we are all swimming in. This is true of the moral values we deem worth fighting for: “when we exalt humility and compassion, or champion the equality and dignity of every human being, we are walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ” (88).

A major strength of the book is that it pushes past mere appreciation:

recognising the cultural and psychological debt we owe to Christianity is not the same thing as believing Jesus lived, died, and rose from the dead … Christians don’t just believe Christianity is socially useful; they believe it’s true. (60)

This struck a chord. As good as it is that people like Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland are exposing our cultural debt to Christianity, the gospel compels us to go further. The question we must arrive at is this: did Jesus really rise from death?

Brierley’s call-to-action is to explore the words that have so impacted our world: “the Bible has a tenacious ability to surprise each new generation of readers when they actually open its pages” (99).

But it is not only historians and journalists who are considering Christianity again. Brierley interrogates the naturalistic worldview by exploring several lofty questions: can science give a compelling answer for why the universe exists as it does? Can life arise from nonlife? Can unconscious matter spawn conscious minds? Can morality derive from material alone? Numerous scientists and philosophers are losing faith that science alone can answer these questions.

Preparing for High Tide

The book ends with words of wisdom for churches anticipating the turning tide. One suggestion is particularly precarious: “Keep Christianity weird” (222). I like the sentiment. I’ve made the mistake myself of trying to smooth out Christianity to make it palatable for sceptical friends, forgetting that the Bible is full of things alien to modern sensibilities: angels, miracles, not to mention God’s only Son who dies for our sins and rises from the grave! We should acknowledge the strangeness of what it is we’re claiming to be true.

A weakness of this advice is that it fails to acknowledge that some churches are weird for bad reasons—reasons which have nothing to do with the claims of Christianity—and this can be a massive turn-off for would-be explorers. That said, the advice is worth hearing and contemplating.

Many Christians (myself included) long to see more people explore Christianity afresh. Brierley’s book is a welcome prediction that the tides may turn in the West in our lifetime.

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[1] https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/2021-census-shows-changes-australias-religious-diversity