How New Atheism Collapsed and Gave Way to New Faith

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Collin Hansen
If you know Justin Brierley, it is probably for the debates and interviews he hosted for many years with the unbelievable radio show, and podcast. He interviewed some of the most outspoken atheist critics of Christianity and convened some of the most intense debates of recent memory. During that time, however, Justin noticed a shift. The conversations changed in tone and substance dramatically so and that earlier, bombast began to disappear. Secular guests open to Christianity even or at least its cultural and social value, if not always its literal truth. They expressed concern over Kancil culture and identity based politics. Some of them made common cause with Christians and some of the atheists even became Christians. And Justin tells these stories in a new book, The surprising rebirth of belief in God, why new Atheism grew old and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again. This book is published by Tyndale elevate now until April 2023. Justin was theology and apologetics editor for Premier Christian radio and host the Ask anti write anything podcast. He was also editor of Premier Christian Christianity magazine from 2014 to 2018. Now you can tell from the title of this book that the surprising rebirth of belief in God is an optimistic book. Justin writes this new Atheism gave the Christian church a kick up the backside that it desperately needed. Arguably, the last two decades have seen the greatest revival of Christian intellectual confidence in living memory as the church has risen to the challenge. Now my gospel bound listeners and viewers you know how much I love the sounds of that revival, given my leadership with the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. NT Wright wrote the foreword for Justin’s book, and he asks this question, what if the Christian story is poised to come rushing back into public consciousness in our day? Could it once again nourish the hearts and minds of people who have been starved of meaning and purpose for so long? How amazing that would be. And that’s what I want to discuss with Justin on this episode of gospel bound. Justin, thanks for joining me.

Justin Brierly
It’s great to be with you, Colin. Thanks for having me on the show.

Collin Hansen
Justin, when did you first notice this new atheist tide beginning to recede?

Justin Brierly
I think it was somewhere around 2018 that I really started to feel like something had changed in the atmosphere. I remember there was this one specific moment that struck me quite hard. I had had in 2014 on my show, and atheists called Peter Bogosian. He was at the time professor of philosophy at Portland State University, and very much one of the new atheist tribe he’d written this book called A manual for creating atheists, which is exactly what it suggests on the cover as sort of a set of strategies for persuading people out of their religious beliefs very much seeing faith as akin to a mental delusion. So so that was the kind of the tone that he was striking Peter Bogosian in 2014, when I brought him on for debate on his book, but when I contacted him in 2018, to take part in a live discussion in Portland, he kind of came back to me in a very different frame of mind, basically, he said, Well, Justin, I’m no longer really debating religious people. In fact, I often see Christians more of my allies and my enemies now, because I’ve noticed a far more pernicious evil that I’m now dedicating my time to sort of confronting and, and what it emerged that he and some fellow co conspirators were doing was actually writing a set of hoax papers, sort of sending up the whole area of grievance studies, sort of critical theories around gender, race, LGBT and so on, which he felt were kind of overtaking the academy and were a cause of concern for academic freedom and so on, because these were sort of the new orthodoxies that could not be quenched question, and, and this whole thing kind of came out in the press, there was a quite a big controversy over it. But um, whatever you think of that particular episode, it showed me that the conversation had changed significantly between atheists and Christianity because of the changing cultural tides. So, an atheist like Bogosian was no longer interested in just demolishing religion, you know, institutional religion, he was far more worried actually about the new forms of sort of quasi religion woke religion, if you like, that he saw emerging in his own backyard. And I think that was kind of very symptomatic of the shift that was happening generally, in the world of atheists and Christianity. And, and to some extent, that was a little picture of what was happening with the new atheist movement as it started to sort of fracture itself because of these different kinds of concerns within the movement around woke ideologies, and whether they were going to be pro that or against that, and so on. So, so that’s kind of the point at which I saw the change happen. Now,

Collin Hansen
Justin, we know what the new atheists were against, they were against religion that threatened a thoroughly secular public life, especially in the aftermath of 911. Amid culture wars over sexuality and, and science. What was the positive agenda that the New Atheists shared?

Justin Brierly
Well, I suppose you could say that a number of New Atheists wanted to inject something of a positive ethic into their movement. And, and this kind of, sort of came about in the form of atheism. Plus, this was a set of the new atheists who wanted to do something with their movement that wasn’t just denying the existence of God and saying, we’re better off without religion, but actually being for certain things. So a certain number of the movement wants to go in the direction of atheism, plus a commitment to human rights, to LGBT, to feminism, and so on. And so this, this was essentially, you know, some some would say, this was the beginning to a large extent of what some people now labeled the kind of woke ideology and so on. But it also produced this backlash against it. So you had people who were more on the right, in that movement, like Richard Dawkins, like Peter Bogosian, and others, who were very anti, this particular way of doing things, they felt this was just sort of sacrificing reason and free thought to basically political ideology is just another sort of quasi form of religion. So that that was the interesting thing was that the movement itself split over what sort of positive ethic it should actually embody. And, and to that extent, once they had agreed that religion was bad for you, and God didn’t exist, they couldn’t really agree on much else. And that’s, that’s really why the movement sort of unraveled in the end.

Collin Hansen
I mean, I think, in a lot of ways that maybe because of the history with communism, that we often associate atheism in the modern sense with a kind of left wing ideology or liberalism. But basically, you’re saying that’s not really true? Is it in part because of of a significant liberal social shift that has happened on the left? Or is that just the nature of atheists often being more educated? Male, older? How do you explain some of that, perhaps, maybe confusion of why people are surprised at this, at this political split within the atheists?

Justin Brierly
Yeah, I think it probably boils down to kind of some of the reasons why people join that movement to begin with, I think for some, that they will have joined it, because they were fed up of seeing sort of religion, as it were trumping science and reason, or, you know, the dangers that they see. So the Sam, Sam Harris, for instance, you know, his, his real concern was that religious narratives were effectively taking the place of reason and science, and that’s the way we should approach reality. But he’s sort of on the right, when it comes to essentially conservative sort of social sort of aspects of things. And, and to that extent, you know, he, he’s still wants there to be a commitment to, you know, basic facts around biology and around, you know, those sorts of things. Whereas I think other people joined the movement, because they were very concerned that religion was, if you like, taking away people’s rights, when it came to LGBT and that sort of thing. So they were concerned about the movement as far as it was impacting, you know, their ability to express yourself. And, and to that extent, they were inevitably more inclined, I think, to go down the route of the more sort of progressive side. So we think, unbeknownst to them, in the early days of this movement, there was actually quite a broad spectrum of political perspectives. So the there and it was only once sort of, they’d kind of got past the honeymoon period really, where they’d sort of joined forces to say, you know, we’re, we’re all against religion, aren’t we, that they realized, actually, they were quite a mixed bag when it came to have watched what should happen thereafter. So I That’s my understanding, at least of why the movement ultimately split because ultimately, they realized they just weren’t on the same page politically

Collin Hansen
easier to build a movement of who you’re against than what you’re for. So the reason it cracked up was because they had been so spectacularly successful in Western culture and Western government and the Western Academy and somebody away. Yeah.

Justin Brierly
Yeah. And and it’s often said, isn’t it, it’s much easier to tear something down than to build something up. And I think I think New Atheists was quite successful in the tearing down phase, you know, where they sort of tore down, belief in God and that sort of thing, but much harder, I think, to actually build a positive ethic as, as they quickly discovered. Explain the difference

Collin Hansen
Justin, between atheism and anti theism. Um, I think that distinction is probably going to be lost and a lot of the folks watching or listening here.

Justin Brierly
Well, to be honest, a lot of people might kind of assume they’re more or less the same thing because new Atheism really was almost synonymous with anti theism. It was very much categorized, typically sort of seen as this movement that was very anti God that was, you know, very disparaging, dismissive of religion in general, and believers. So to that extent, you could describe the the four horsemen, you know, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, as anti theist. You know, Christopher Hitchens famously railed against God at various points in his talks and in his books. But I think that’s unfair to categorize all atheists as anti theists. In fact, a number of the atheists I met who started to distinguish themselves from this new atheist movement, wanted to simply say, Well, look, all that being an atheist means for me is that I don’t believe in God. But that doesn’t mean that I’m against God. In fact, a number of atheists I met were sort of sort of wished God did exist, they were actually quite open to the value of religion as well. And that’s, those were the people I started to increasingly meet to kind of set themselves against the anti theism of new Atheism. So So atheism in a sense has been around a long time. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that you you know, call religious people faith heads, and fairytales and delusion and everything else. That was that was very much the modus operandi of the New Atheists. But yes, plenty of atheists came out of the woodwork eventually saying, Well, look, I’m not that kind of an atheist, I’m, I’m actually quite open to the thoughts of religious people, I want to have a constructive dialogue. And actually, increasingly, many non believers who I met who kind of recognized actually that we were losing something significant by losing the Christian story. And even though they didn’t believe it, they were sort of concerned to see it slipping in Western culture in the way it has.

Collin Hansen
You wrote this in the book, Justin, people need a story to live by. But the stories we have been telling ourselves in the last several decades, have been growing increasingly thin and superficial. Just give us a sense of some of the stories that you don’t think are working any longer and why they’re not working any longer.

Justin Brierly
Well, again, just to begin again, with the new Atheism, I think, atheism itself tries to tell a certain story of reality. But I think the reason partly the reason why it eventually did fade away was because it wasn’t it wasn’t a story that ultimately gave people a real sense of meaning and purpose for their life. Because ultimately, the story of of atheist reality if you like, is that there is no ultimate story. It kind of is purposeless, there’s, there’s there’s no narrative, there’s no ultimate meaning. There’s no beginning end to this story, you just kind of a floating in a vacuum and life will be what it will be. And for most people, they can’t really live life according to that story. Now, there’s obviously been many attempts within the atheist community to kind of bolt on a kind of a sense of meaning and purpose through philosophies like humanism, but, but in the end, I found they’ve all ultimately sort of traded on in the end the values and virtues and meaning that you find in the Christian story, they’re they’re kind of, in many ways indebted to that story anyway. But in our culture, as the New Atheists sort of swept away that the Christian story that once did give a shape and meaning to people’s lives. I think what was proved was that that you know, maximum of GK Chesterton is that once people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they have the capacity to believe in anything and so all kinds of other quasi religious stories really have taken shape and taken the stage. And that looks like you know, the modern kind of obsession almost now with sexual and gender identities, I think that is a sort of quasi religious, semi sacred category for many people, that they kind of invest their, their sense of meaning and purpose and identity into and I think it does honestly take the place of God and the identity that people once found in the Christian story. Equally though, there are there are sort of issues on the the right wing, you know, Christian nationalism, I think, is a certain form of idolatry that is in it in it’s funny way, another story that people are using in place of the story of God. Likewise, you know, certain kinds of, you know, theories, the all the kind of conspiracy theories and everything that you find in right wing circles. I think all of these things I feel like people grabbing onto things to try and make sense of life because we’re meaning making creatures were driven by the idea that we have to live in a story that makes sense of our life. But these stories are just very small and thin and superficial. And ultimately, they’re they’re bashing up against each other in societies where we’ve got the culture wars. So I think I think that’s the problem is that we’re, we’re meant to live in the story, but when latching on to the stories that aren’t made to do the job, because ultimately, they’re idols, that they’re things that were never meant to kind of take the place of God in our life.

Collin Hansen
Justin, if you, if you took me back to 2004, I was new in my career I had recently graduated from from university. And if you told me that this new Atheism is a moralistic form of religion, it’s a type of fundamentalism, I would have been completely confused. Because, of course, the whole point was, we have to the New Atheists would say we have to oppose this. There’s all forms of fundamentalism, which they saw as the Christian riots in places like the United States, and also the jihadists who committed the 911 attacks, they would have said, the problem with religion is that it is immoral in some ways, and it’s bad morale. Well, basically, that it was more of a push against morality, I would effectively say, I don’t think we really saw the rise of identity in the same ways. In 2004, for example, in the debate about gay marriage, it was more or less a, come on live and let live question just, you know, what, if you’re not harming somebody else, what is the big deal? So how in the world, the part of this is the is the discussion you’ve already had, of the split between the left wing, sort of progressive this view and the free speech, right wing view, but explain a little bit more of why you describe atheism as a moralistic form of religion, and even in some ways, a type of fundamentalism?

Justin Brierly
Well, I think because inevitably, anything that as I said earlier, we put in the place of God sort of becomes quasi religious in itself. And I think atheism itself as a movement, served that purpose for many people in the end. And I think one of the reasons it became so popular for a while at least the new atheist movement was that it kind of did give people a shape and a meaning for their lives. It was another of the stories that people tell themselves. And and it did take on some some interesting he kind of religious aspects to it. So you had these four leaders of the movement, you could say they were the four high priests of new Atheism, they all had their best selling anti God books that sort of functioned as their religious texts. And they met, you know, to praise the wonder of science and science very much was seen as the savior of humanity, if only we could just, you know, obey science and reason, you know, then we could live in this, this utopia. And there was this also, I think, a kind of Orthodox creed really, that they were supporting. And that was naturalism, that the idea that all that exists is matter in motion, and that we can fundamentally explain everything about life and nature, through that, that that creed, and if you diverge from that creed, or some of their brethren did, you could say that people like Thomas Nagel, the philosopher who started to open openly wonder whether there was some kind of teleology or purpose in the universe, you know, they rounded on people like him with, we know with real zeal. And so it felt like, you know, in many ways, it was a sort of taking on all the worst aspects, if you like of religion, in terms of their Kancil culture, and the kind of the fundamentalism ultimately that that often, you know, typifies the worst forms of religion. So, so I just think it’s inevitable. We, we we can take, we can kind of claim that we’re not religious, but ultimately, I think we just get religious about different things, and atheism can be no different in that respect. So and what’s interesting is, I think a lot of the New Atheists sort of now looking back on that movement, they’re kind of recognizing this. So, Peter Bogosian when I’ve heard him talking about the movement now in retrospect, he recognizes that you can’t kind of take the religion out of people they’ll just gonna get religious about something else. And and it’s so interesting to hear him say that now because I don’t think he really recognized that at the time, I think there was this genuinely quite naive, almost optimism that the eighth you know, this new atheist movement would herald a new scientific rational utopia. But but it clearly didn’t. It just opened the way for other types of beliefs to come in its place.

Collin Hansen
And we’re talking with Justin Brierley about his book The surprising rebirth of belief in God. Why then why new Atheism grew old and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again. One of the things you wrote in here is really, really exciting to me. You say new Atheism has revitalized the intellectual tradition of the Christian church in the West. I would love for you to explain more of how this has happened. And I I liked this imagery it might be a little bit too on the nose that you put in the book. But you say put down the tambourines and guitars and pick up history and philosophy books again. Yeah, I don’t mind a good tambourine and a guitar. But, you know, I’m happy for a lot more history and philosophy books being picked up. Now,

Justin Brierly
and I’m not anti guitars and tambourines, and in fact, I’m playing guitar most Sundays in church. But the, the point I was making was that I think, in the course of the 20th century, for various reasons, we did go into a more kind of subjective, experiential, personalized form of religion. And that was kind of akin with the culture generally, which was going in that direction, you know, a kind of expressive individualism and I think people started to essentially engage with faith and Christianity in that way. It’s, it’s a personal relationship with God, it’s all about emotions and feelings, and so on. Which, you know, I’m not denying there is, of course, that important experiential aspect to a relationship with God through Christ. But, but of course, we shouldn’t neglect the fact that obviously, faith is also about using your reason, you know, life of the mind. And we have a strong intellectual tradition in the Christian church that I think did kind of get forgotten, as people started to sort of engage it in a more kind of sentimentalized. way, during the 20th century. So the way that the new Atheism, I think, actually helped the church and in an ironic way, was that it did force us to kind of Yeah, to go back to those theology and apologetics resources that were there in the in the archives. And when Richard Dawkins and Hitchens and others came along with a bunch of awkward questions, and especially once they started putting those questions in the eyeline of young people through the internet, suddenly the church was forced to, to sort of start to answer some of these difficult questions. And I think that intellectual tradition, which had kind of gone away or being forgotten, to some extent in parts of the church was suddenly rediscovered. And you actually had really in the past 20 years, a flourishing I think of apologetics and theology resources, especially with the advent, obviously, of the coming of age of the internet, that we never have a really experienced in living memory. So I can now point people in the direction of, of more great apologetics resources than I could possibly have done back in 2004, when you know, the movement was really gaining a head of steam, so So I’m encouraged to that extent. And you can even find people today who have become Christians because they encountered the new Atheism, but that sent them on a journey to discovering Christian apologetics and some of the reasons why you can be a Christian. And so for me, you know, obviously, new Atheism, also reaped a number of D converts. But in the end, I think, I was glad for the fact that it forced Christians to kind of be on their mettle and to respond in the way that they did in the Christian church. Isn’t

Collin Hansen
there a new book out of something like how Richard Dawkins made me a Christian, or something?

Justin Brierly
Yeah, it’s called it’s called coming to faith through Dawkins, it’s very good. And one or two friends of mine are actually featured in it, who’s whose stories essentially, are that yes, I started listening to the New Atheists, but they turned me on to, you know, the Christian thinkers who actually were responding to them so, and my own unbelievable show was very much born in that milieu of the new Atheism. And the reason I think it became so popular was because people were looking for those kinds of conversations, you know, proper conversations between Christian thinkers who could stand up to the New Atheists. So I in that sense, I do thank God for Richard Dawkins, I think he did the the Christian Church’s service in many ways.

Collin Hansen
That’s what the Lord does. What he does what he does, at the same time, you acknowledge in the book that we do not primarily reach people for Christ through the intellect. But more often through the imagination. How do you reconcile those two perspectives? How do those two things relate?

Justin Brierly
I think this is a lesson that I’ve learned over many years of hosting apologetics debates is that obviously, some people are primed to be more, if you like to use a crude left and right brain analogy to be more left brained in their in their search for God, and they are going to sort of want to pick it all apart and work it out in a very logical fashion. And the world of apologetics tends to be filled with left brain people in that way. But at the same time, most people are, you know, are really a meld of left and right. Or maybe the right brain sort of overwhelms things. And the right brain typically, you know, as is often said, is, is where the musicians and the artists and, you know, the the writers hang out, because that’s the kind of where, you know, the neuroscientists tell us that you kind of get the bigger picture, if you like that the left hemisphere is good for analyzing things and doing logic, but the right side of the brain is where we put it all together in a bigger story where it’s the bit that makes sense. Now, I’m talking purely in kind of neuroscientific terms here. But I think in the bigger scheme, I think God has designed us to be people who come to life and come to faith with with both of those things, the reason and the imagination, and we can’t do one without the other, we have to have them both in an interplay. And I love the way that the Blaise Pascal put it. He said, Make religion attractive, make good men wish that it were true, and then show them that it is. And I think that’s what the very best Christian thing because an apologist have actually done people like CS Lewis, they’ve used that imaginative part of our, our brain, our psyche, to say, Don’t you wish that this were true? You know, when Lewis writes the Narnia stories, he makes us wish that this land of talking animals, and knights and castles and valor, and truth and good versus evil, he makes us wish that that were true, you know, who who hasn’t tapped the back of a wardrobe just in case that world really exists somewhere. But at the same time, after making a wish that it were true, it shows us that we’re What if it was true? What if there really is a true noble, beautiful person? Yes, called Aslan, in Narnia book called Jesus in your world, Lucy? And what if there’s good evidence that he really lived, died, and rose again. And I think that’s, that’s what we need to be doing in our apologetics showing people why they would want this story to be true. And then doing that classic apologetics thing, the left brain thing of giving them facts and reason, evidence that it really did happen that this, this can be trusted. And so to me, you know, we shouldn’t forget the ways in which we can reach people through art, through literature, through music, through through all those kinds of creative endeavors that ultimately give clue people into the idea that there may be something here, that there might be missing something in life. Before we just go to the sort of four facts where you can believe the resurrection or this philosophical evidence for God or whatever it is. So for me, I think that’s an important part of the puzzle. And then the book, I’d sketch out a number of stories of surprising converts to Christianity, where I think they had to go on that both that imaginative and intellectual journey to see how the big story made sense of their story.

Collin Hansen
If you’re reading the book, again, I’m sure you’d add Molly Worthen in there you just interviewed

Justin Brierly
words. Yeah, she’s she well, I discovered her through your show column, of course. And and Molly, I would definitely include Molly had had her come to her she come to my attention sooner than she did. But that’s a great example. I think yeah, of someone who’s gone and obviously a really intellectual journey, but for whom that story ultimately, the story of Christianity has has made sense of her own story as well in a bigger way. So So yeah, there’s lots of people that I find popping up interesting converts to Christianity that I sprinkle in throughout the book.

Collin Hansen
Well, I we actually here at Beeson Divinity School, when we’re teaching on cultural apologetics and evangelism. We actually use that interview that I did with Molly as a paradigm because she shows the different aspects of evangelism and apologetics working together, direct confrontational invitation invitation to Jesus, from JD Greer, then you turn around and then there’s this, this imaginative awakening that comes largely through CS Lewis’s space trilogy magining That world and then there’s the deep intellectual component of it as well, which comes largely through NT Wright’s work on the resurrection of the Son of God, the historicity of the resurrection, all three aspects working together, all of them important, some will lean in one way or another. But Molly’s story is a good example of how they all work together. Do you think? Do you think Justin that atheists like Sam Harris, do they realize that the loss of Christianity’s cultural dominance dominance might actually be a significant problem that ultimately they can’t have the fruit of Christianity without the root of Christianity? I

Justin Brierly
think some of them are coming to realize that I don’t I can’t speak for Sam Harris himself, I think he’s still pretty basically only sees the negative in religion, at least when I hear him talking about it. But I think I think he among others have woken up to this fact that you you can’t sort of just excise religion out of people, it kind of pops up in all kinds of ways, whether you like it or not. And to that extent, I think, I have heard, for instance, Richard Dawkins talking, you know, interestingly, in recent months about the fact that he’s aware that it might be better the devil, you know, if you like with Christianity, he at least I think, sees that you can talk about truth and falsity when you’re talking with most Christians. You can talk about sort of certain facts, you know, that it’s not so postmodern that you simply can’t have those kinds of conversations. And I think he appreciates that whereas I think he’s, he gets terribly frustrated now with people in academia where he feels like he can no longer speak the same language because the rules have shifted so much. And to that extent, I think even someone like Richard Dawkins is now acknowledging Well, perhaps we’re better off with Christiane Have a tea than what we’ve got to replace it at the moment, which in his view is is the kind of the preponderance of sort of these quasi religious woke ideologies, which I’ve taken, which are in the ascendancy. So, you know, I’m sure Dawkins would prefer, you know, ERATION, a rational atheist Utopia over the Christian paradigm. But I think he’d still rather have the Christian paradigm, interestingly than, than what we’ve currently got. So I do I do see people sort of making this point that actually, yeah, and what what do we do? I mean, more more significantly than that. There is obviously a number of interesting secular intellectuals who are also recognizing that our basic moral instincts you know, about human dignity, human rights, equality, freedom, essentially come from the Christian story. People like Douglas Murray, people like Tom Holland, and a number of others, Jordan Peterson, who are sort of have basically realized, you know, these these values didn’t come from atheism, they didn’t come from science, they didn’t come from the enlightenment, they didn’t come from the Greeks or the Romans, they came from a very specific moment in our shared history, the Christian revolution. And to that extent, I think they are starting to influence more and more of their secular peers to realize, well, hanging on to these sorts of fruits of the Christian West is not going to be easy in the absence of that Christian story, because actually, you know, it as that story goes away, there’s all kinds of alternative options that are coming into play. And so I think we are even seeing some of those heart more hardened, New Atheists start to, to be influenced by by that kind of thinking.

Collin Hansen
To that good list there, Justin, I would add Joseph Henrich at Harvard, I would add, Jonathan Hite at New York University. And this is definitely a major theme in the podcast. We recently launched at the gospel coalition from Glen Scrivener, and Andrew Wilson called post Christianity, because that’s exactly the dynamic that they’re exploring together. Now, I think, Justin, that a lot of people get confused about evangelism and apologetics imagining that the work that we’re doing is to try to make Christianity seem easier or palatable or appealing to modern people. And even some of what we’ve talked about earlier with imagination, you want it to be true before you realize that it is true. Maybe that can lead to some of that confusion. But in fact, in this book, you say that looking weird to the world could be an effective evangelistic strategy. Explain what you mean by that?

Justin Brierly
Well, I think sometimes we have to take a bit of an imaginative leap, and put ourselves back into the shoes of the first century Christians and realize just how weird they appeared to the culture around them, you know, this claim of a crucified and risen Messiah was, well, you know, foolishness to the Gentiles, and so on. It’s it was, it was weird, it was a really weird claim to make, and that the way they live their lives was very weird in that culture. Now, obviously, we, as benefactors, have those moral assumptions. Don’t think it’s weird now to treat women and children in the way that they did, to give, you know, dignity to slaves, and, you know, people of all kinds of station, but it was with them. And that was what made it so successful. You know, if you actually read the Rodney Starks and others who talk about the triumph of the Christian church, it was because they, they were weird. And they were had something very different to say, in a culture. And the problem is, I think, today is that, as you say, a lot of Christians think, well, the way to win people over is to try and assimilate with the culture to try and look as much like the culture as possible. But I think actually, it’s it is a, it’s a, it’s a strategy that’s not going to work or it’s going to have, to the extent that it does work, you’ll be reaping converts that unfortunately, are not going to stand the test of time when it comes to sort of the gospel going out into the whole world. Because when I’ve spoken to some of these interesting secular intellectuals who are sort of taking the Christian story seriously, again, who are maybe occasionally setting foot in church, that they’re actually not looking for sort of a warmed over version of secular humanism with a bit of Gods sprinkled on top there, they’re actually looking for something that just feels completely different to the culture they’re in because they’re kind of fed up with the culture they go to. They want something that feels different. They want the mystery, they want the weirdness of Christianity. And I think to some extent, in the end, people that people step up to it when you ask them to commit to something when you ask when you say this is something that you’re gonna have to give your whole life to, and it’s going to involve sacrifice, and it’s going to involve changing the way you think the way you live. I think that actually gives people a sense that this this is something I need to take seriously. When you try to make it so accessible. You lower the bar so much. I think people just think Well, I can I can get, you know, that kind of money. allottee that, you know, social club, you know, the golf club. It just becomes another sort of, sort of optional thing, you know, church and Christianity. I was very struck as many other Christians were by an article written by the agnostic journalist, Ben Sixsmith, for the spectator, in which responding to some of the sad cases of you know, megachurch pastors going awry. He’d said, The problem is that, so often it looks like Christians want to look more like me. Whereas, you know, that’s not really gonna persuade me to become a Christian. I would rather you were challenging me to look more like you. And I just think I think that’s true. I think that so many of the people I’ve spoken to say, keep Christianity weird, don’t make it just look like the rest of the culture, or it actually loses its appeal in a funny way.

Collin Hansen
I’ll come back to that, as we conclude, Justin, but I want to stop in and focus on the Bible here, because I loved so much what you wrote about the Bible, I want to read it here and a little bit of length. You say the Bible is a grand narrative, often exciting and absorbing, sometimes complex and dense, occasionally disturbing and confusing, and frequently beautiful and inspiring. It’s a story that has led to the rise and fall of nations been used as a tool of oppression or as an instrument of liberation been banned and burned by some and regarded as an object of veneration by others, to many as a source of daily comfort, but it is left by many more to gather dust on a bookshelf. You know, Justin, some of the some of the folks who are watching and listening here, they’re, they’re Christians, they take their faith seriously, but their Bibles are collecting dust on a shelf somewhere, what was the best way you’ve seen to, to get those folks to blow that dust off the cover and read the Bible for themselves again,

Justin Brierly
um, I would say, one of the most, the best ways to sort of engage with the Bible is to actually step out in faith in our lives a bit more. Because I think that inevitably sends us back to the Bible. I think when we’re living, very comfortable, Christian lives, we can kind of get assimilated into the culture rather easily. And the challenge of the Bible sort of stopped speaking to us in quite the same way. So I would say it’s, it’s once you take some steps of faith, when you go and have that conversation with someone that puts you in an uncomfortable position where you’ve got to explain or defend your Faith to them, or you’re in a position where you’re, you’re being asked to do something significant that that those are the times in my life, at least when I’ve gone back to the Bible the most. Because actually, I it helps to see that people in the first century, were experiencing exactly those same kinds of issues when the Apostle Paul was writing to them. I think the other thing is that what I’ve really enjoyed from scholars, like auntie, right and others, is, is the idea that we need to get a bigger understanding of Scripture, that sense of the big story that has been told across the whole of history through the Bible. And to that extent, I think, I think we do, one of the best ways to engage with Scripture is, is to start seeing it in that perspective. I think too many Christians inevitably, and this is sadly, the fault of many churches and pastors kind of use it as a kind of, for them moral therapeutic days and kind of approach to the faith where I’m just picking bits and pieces out in a kind of this is how I’m going to live my best life now, way where I’ll just sort of focus on, you know, five lessons from the Bible about how to run a successful business or something. Now, there’s, there’s no, you know, you can get principles from the Bible like that. But what I think people really need to engage with, again, is that they are part of this story. And it’s a story that has a beginning, a middle, and a future, if you like, and seeing yourself as part of this grand story of God’s, you know, actions in history, through the people of Israel, through the sending of the Messiah, through the church that went forth in his name, and seeing yourself in that grand, if we got a bit better sense of that story, than we will be able to tell that story far better and more engagingly to the culture around us. Because they’re looking, as I said earlier, for a story to live in. And I just think this is the best story that’s ever been told, but to do many Christians don’t even really understand the story. And the only way you’re going to do that is is by engaging with Scripture is reading the story. And obviously, having great resources to help you understand and maybe we need to shed some of those kind of Sunday School assumptions about that and how we’re meant to engage with that story. But for me, that’s that’s when it gets really exciting when we see ourselves as part of this big story of Scripture. And what I was trying to express in the passage you read that was that actually, the Bible does have this incredible power once we realize it’s, you know, just how it can still speak into every place. circumstance and time the way it has done that historically, you suddenly realize you’ve got something dynamite here. And so often we are letting it gather dust on a shelf. And it but it was the book that inspired the greatest movements, you know, of the last 2000 years when it comes to liberation. And, you know, all of the things that that Christendom sort of inspired really came directly from the Bible. So So for me, that’s it would just be about engaging with the big story of Scripture again.

Collin Hansen
Well, Justin, that would be a good place for us to stop on scripture. But I want to ask one more question. Because I think folks who are listening and watching, they’re familiar with my own writing my own interviews and teaching. They’re gonna recognize so much resonance with what with what I believe, and what I’m teaching and what you’re writing about in this book, and what you’re saying in this really remarkable interview. And one of the major burdens that that I have leading the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics was one of the major burdens that Tim Keller had. And I, I addressed it earlier this year in my first episode of gospel bound this, this season, with a Jean Twenge game and her work on generations, the leading expert on really young adults and generations, and especially the role of technology. And at the end of the interview, she’s not an observant Christian, as far as I know. But I tried to say, you have a narrative here that shows that with each passing generation, religion becomes less important. Family becomes less important, community becomes less important. While anxiety, loneliness, medication are skyrocketing. I said, my religion, my religion would expect that. So she didn’t really seem to be tracking with me quite on that. But I just kept thinking one of the best things I could do evangelistically is just say, hey, read this book, see what happens when you turn away from the truth, the reality, the wisdom, of God’s plan, and God’s creation in his story, as you’re describing there. And you write this in the book, very apt point, you say, and this is exactly along the lines of what I’ve been teaching. And what I was talking about was 20, you say, we know far more than our forebears did about how the world works and possess a hitherto unimaginable ability to control it through technology, medicine and science. Today’s skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression suggest, we know far less about how to live happily in such a world. And I keep thinking, Justin, we’ve got to find a way to make these connections to connect these dots in our evangelism. And you go on to say, and this is something that’s I find to be fairly basic to the problem that young adults and young people in general face, you say they are confused by the demands of fashioning their own identity, when there is no pattern to follow. And the rules keep changing. They are made anxious by a culture that demands ideological purity. But it says no grace to those who fall short. They’re exhausted by the search for a meaning they must invent and a purpose that seems to elude them. People can only take so much. So big question here. It doesn’t have to be a long answer. But just how do we connect these dots in evangelism?

Justin Brierly
Yeah, I should say I’m taking a leaf from one of your fellows at the Keller center, Alan noble, in writing that passage has done such a good job, just explaining this kind of meaning crisis that that is there among a younger generation that’s led to this sort of epidemic of anxiety and depression, but but how do we connect the dots? I think we start where people are in evangelism. You know, the mistake we sometimes make is to answer yesterday’s questions, when actually those are questions being asked. I don’t think people are starting with the new atheist objections these days, you know, well give me you know, evidence for God. You know, that’s actually not where most people are. They’re, they’re asking how, how do I make it make sense of like, give me a reason to get up in the morning, basically. And I think I think it is about starting there, and just engaging with them at that level and, and helping them to see that their story matters. And that actually, the things they do get out of bed for that those ultimately point back to a bigger story, that the things they’re trying to make sense of life with, you know, as we said, those those those stories that just aren’t working out for them, these, the kind of this sense that they need to make an identity for themselves from scratch, just helping them to realize that they weren’t meant to do that, that they’re living in the kind of the wrong worldview to start with. And if you can help them to see that they’re part of something much bigger, that goes back, you know, across time and space that they’re, they’re meant to live, understanding themselves as a child of God as someone who is made in God’s image and all that that brings to them I think that’s going to be the starting point. Now how you Do that, of course, will depend on the individual you’re speaking to. But for me, often the touch points are the things that are the most important to them. It might be family, it might be their love of music, it might be some social justice course that they’re really wedded to. But if you can show them that, you know, if you can ask them, Well, why does that matter so much to you? I think that might just be the start of a conversation on why that thing, in its in and of itself can never actually actually satisfied their deepest longings, it’s always pointing beyond itself to the One who created music, and justice, and sport, or whatever it is family relationships. So for me, it’s got to be about starting where the person is the things that they love, the feeling they have that that they’re never quite satisfied by that being the center of their life and asking, well, could it be that there’s something else that you’re missing here? The thing behind the thing, if you like? That’s, that’s where I would begin at least.

Collin Hansen
I agree. I love it. You know, there’s a great line of hope, in your book throughout your book, but I love this this line in particular, you say? Perhaps we are not seeing the emptying of churches to make way for a secular future, but an emptying out that will make way for a new influx of people. May that be God’s will to see in our day. My guest on gospel bound this week has been Justin Brierley. His book is The surprising rebirth of belief in God, why new Atheism grew old and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again. Justin, thanks for the great work. Keep it up and we hope to hear more from you in the future.

Justin Brierly
Thank you so much for having me on the show, Collin.