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With Justin Brierley
172 Plays1 year ago
There has been a surprising rebirth in belief in God in some quarters formerly dominated by the "New Atheism" of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry. It seems to have disappointed many who were left without answers to their purpose or meaning in life. How is the Christian story gaining traction, and how can we show that it is both meaningful and true? Andy and Gavin are joined by Justin Brierley to discuss his observations from his latest book "The Surprising Rebirth of God".
Justin Brierley is a freelance writer, speaker and broadcaster who has become known for creating dialogues between Christians and non-Christians. He has worked in radio, podcast and video for over two decades. Until April 2023 he was Theology & Apologetics Editor for Premier Christian Radio, and hosted the Unbelievable? radio show and podcast as well as the Ask NT Wright Anything podcast. Justin was also editor of Premier Christianity magazine from 2014-2018, for which he continues to contribute articles. Justin's first book 'Unbelievable? Why, after ten years of talking with atheists, I'm still a Christian' (SPCK) was published in 2017. Justin is married to Lucy, a church minister in Surrey, and they have four children.
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Transcript
Introduction and Co-host Announcement
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to PepTalk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. As you can tell, I am not Christy Mayer. She is still away, ferreting away in PhD land, trying to get her dissertation over the line. So I'm filling in for her today, but as ever, Andy Bannister is in the co-pilot seat. Good afternoon, Andy. How are you? I am doing great. I was amused by you stumbling over the word co-pilot there. That was almost a bit of a road crash.
00:00:33
Speaker
It was indeed. However, we've got a great guest this afternoon.
Guest Introduction: Justin Briley
00:00:38
Speaker
We are joined from somewhere in the southeast of England by Justin Briley. Justin, how are you? I'm very well, thank you. I'm so pleased as well. Andy's got his mic facing the right way around on this occasion because the last time I joined Andy for a recording, there was a little bit of a technical hiccup where he had it facing the wrong way.
00:00:56
Speaker
But so it's that your slight set of dumbbell at the beginning, it was as nothing compared to Andy's. Exactly. I just use the version therapy after that. I turn the mic various ways and got my wife to hit me with a baseball bat every time it was the wrong way. And now now that's that that solved it. And the doctors say the concussion will will pass. But it's great to have you on the on the show, Justin. And of course, it'd be fun because obviously you're used to being around, right? You're used to being the one asking the questions and of people. And now
00:01:24
Speaker
We get to ask you, I'm looking forward to being grilled by you, Andy. Um, and I got to say, actually, this is one of the podcasts that I've kind of been most anticipating. This is actually the hardest one for me to do. It's easy for me to talk about big ideas because I kind of have been doing that for years, but actually practical implications of how you ground those ideas. That's actually where the rubber hits the road. So I'm sort of, we'll see how I do.
00:01:49
Speaker
that way.
New Book Discussion: 'The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God'
00:01:51
Speaker
The context of this interview, of course, is that you've got a new book out entitled The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, which is quite an inspiring title. And also the subtitle, Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again. Great title. And you're talking to us about sharing the Christian faith in the context of a moving cultural conversation. Could you just give us a little bit of the background before we plunge into the practicalities?
00:02:19
Speaker
Tell us about the background, the backdrop in which you're painting of where the questions are going.
Shift in Religious Debates
00:02:25
Speaker
Well, what I noticed after a number of years of hosting conversations between Christians and atheists for nearly two decades on Unbelievable was that what started out as these very abrasive, combative debates between new atheists and Christian thinkers,
00:02:41
Speaker
Turned into in the last several years a far more nuanced conversation between still secular thinkers, but people who are often not simply dismissing religion out of hand who were acknowledging the fact that it had had a profound influence often positive on our culture and ask me whether we can even live without something like a religious story and seeing that shift away from that new atheist rhetoric towards a kind of.
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, just a different conversation about God from secular quarters made me wonder, is there something that's going on here in our culture? And I think it has been, and I outlined the way in which that conversation has changed in the book, the way in which many secular thinkers nowadays are taking religion more seriously. People like Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Tom Holland, Ian McGillchrist, and a variety of others who are in various different spheres of psychology and science and culture.
00:03:33
Speaker
asking can we live without Christianity, especially in a world where people seem to be searching for stories to live by, but are often seeming to make a bit of a hash of it when it comes to the culture wars.
Decline of New Atheism
00:03:45
Speaker
On top of that, I was noticing interesting stories of adult conversions to faith, people who are surprisingly turning towards Christ.
00:03:56
Speaker
Apparently because the atheist materialist story didn't stack up in the end for them so i just felt like all of this you know made sense to kind of. Ask what does this mean potentially for our culture for the church for the way christians ought to be thinking about and interacting with things because things do move on and sometimes we can be answering yesterday's questions when actually there's a new. A new movement going on and under our nose that's really what the books all about.
00:04:21
Speaker
Let's just pick up on that for a moment, Justin, because I think one of the things I still hear in some parts of the church, I think some Christians are still operating under that assumption that the world is very atheistic. It's very secular. It's very hostile. But if I go out there and try and talk about my faith with my friends and neighbors and colleagues, I'm going to get new atheism with both barrels.
00:04:42
Speaker
Now, let's not be naive. There is some of that still around, but that's the landscape has changed. You've just described that a bit. So maybe flesh that out a little bit. What happened? Because the new atheism sort of gave the impression 15, 20 years ago, it was all over. Yeah. Religion. Um, but they got that story wrong. What, what's going on?
00:04:59
Speaker
I think what's happened is that the new atheism itself started to experience a number of fractures and it imploded really under its own weight eventually. What had started as a very dogmatic, brave movement claiming that it had the solution for all of society's ills,
00:05:18
Speaker
It turned out that once the key architects of that movement had agreed that god didn't exist and religion was bad for you, they couldn't really agree on anything else they had this, a lot of internal dissension and fallouts to the point where, you know many of the key leaders wouldn't share a stage with each other any longer you know the eighties conferences that had once,
00:05:38
Speaker
you know been so popular they can put them on because people you know what agreeing to share a stage there were all kinds of controversies claims of misogynism claims of you know bigotry and all sorts of things that eventually led to the.
00:05:54
Speaker
movement itself kind of tearing itself apart. I mean, one commentator said that the ire that the atheists sort of had for one another in the end, sort of dwarfed anything they had for their Christian counterparts. So it was just interesting to be on the sidelines watching that all happen kind of in real time. Now,
00:06:12
Speaker
As you say, Andy, it's not that new atheism has disappeared, it's just that it's no longer the kind of mainstream cultural force that it was, where you were sort of having these figures writing op-eds for major newspapers about why religion is bad for you. It's no longer on the bestseller charts. In fact, if there are any kind of those new atheists still writing and speaking and doing things,
00:06:34
Speaker
They're not talking about religion anymore that seems to have completely no longer be their focus primarily then one side or the other in the culture wars now. And a lot of that is what i noticed happening in the last several years was that a number of these characters realized.
00:06:50
Speaker
Actually, religion isn't that much of an enemy as we thought it was. In fact, we're probably more bedfellows with some of these folks than some of the new kind of quasi-religious movements that they were seeing potentially impinging on academic freedom and that kind of thing, which was coming more from the progressive left or even the far
Religion's Resilience
00:07:08
Speaker
right. There were aspects of that that were actually becoming more worrying to some of these new atheists than any kind of religious dogmatism had been in the past.
00:07:17
Speaker
So that's really where the energy went from the whole movement. And to me, it's indicative of the fact that you can kind of try and, you know, get religion to die. You can sort of try and persuade people out of their religious beliefs, but it pops back up in some form or another. And it just popped back up in another form, which suddenly they realized they, you know, was actually potentially far more pernicious than the one they were used to.
00:07:41
Speaker
Interesting. How much do you think these kind of high level academics debates have trickling down to the shops and the offices and the neighborhoods in the country? Or how much do you think the debate and the ground is still sort of 20 years out of date? Because I mean, a lot of people are not reading Tom Holland and Doug Murray.
00:07:56
Speaker
and these people that you've mentioned. Is the debate on the ground catching up with this, or is it still locked in a kind of a new atheist sort of mindset? Yeah, I think there's always a delay in a sense, that trickle down, isn't there? And so on the ground, I think you will still find a lot of that new atheist rhetoric doing the rounds, you know, among people who kind of are still living in that paradigm. However, having said that, it's interesting to me that
00:08:19
Speaker
You know these are actually quite popular level movements themselves some of these people who are sports speaking you know jordan peterson filling out auditoriums to tell people. About you know the young and significance of genesis or something it's it's it's actually everyday people who are there is not just academics and philosophers who are turning out for these things.
00:08:38
Speaker
So for me, it does have that sort of everyday thing. And I think it's because one of the failures, again, of the new atheism that I sort of say in the book is that it really didn't actually answer people's fundamental questions about how to live a flourishing life. It gave them science and reason, but those are completely inadequate for giving you a kind of roadmap for how you get meaning, purpose, and value out of life.
00:09:03
Speaker
And to that extent, people started turning away from that, those mantras and started to turn to people who seem to at least have a bit more to offer people like Jordan Peterson, who seemed to be saying, well, look, here's a way you might think about living your life and here's some ancient wisdom that might help you to do that in a.
00:09:18
Speaker
in a helpful way and and to that extent i think that has been been a popular level movement and i do encounter people all the time who are familiar with some of these people and some of their ideas and i'm saying now what are you stir you know i didn't ever really give much credence to religion but actually listening to some of these guys it's made me it's made me reconsider the whole thing i'm not i'm not a religious person but i you know i can see why people might turn to religion and that it's not all bad actually
00:09:46
Speaker
So those are the kinds of conversations that I'm bumping into more and more at a ground level. Yeah.
00:09:53
Speaker
It's interesting. I mean, even some of the old eighth new atheist dinosaurs, I find fascinating like Dawkins the other day, you know, pops up on the trigonometry podcast for those who are familiar with that. And yes, he's still an atheist mode, but it's quite a different. Yeah. That it was a few years ago. Um, but one thing I'd love to ask you to unpack a little bit there, Justin, you referred to some of the questions that the new atheism didn't, didn't answer. And I think that became increasingly apparent.
00:10:18
Speaker
Do you want to unpack some of those? That's an idea they're unfamiliar with. What are some of the really big questions of life that people are wrestling with, that are pretty universally, I think, wrestled with, that the atheism failed to engage with, and people are looking elsewhere for?
Existential Questions Unanswered by Atheism
00:10:35
Speaker
Because I think as Christians, we can be aware of those. That can help us be more wise in some of the ways that we engage with the questions our friends are asking. So what are some of those questions of life in your experience?
00:10:45
Speaker
Well, it will vary for each individual, but I think it fundamentally comes back to common themes, basically. What am I here for, you know, is one of the ways, you know.
00:10:56
Speaker
Common ones, I think, who am I supposed to be? The question of identity as well is a key one for most people. And I think that's the problem with the new atheism was that because it basically told people, well, in the end, you are a sort of DNA propagating itself in an otherwise meaningless void.
00:11:18
Speaker
Because that was actually the message that was underneath, it sometimes got allied with a kind of sunny optimism of humanism kind of message. Oh, look at the wonder of the stars. And isn't it nice to think that you're part of this, you know, grand thing, but, but it was also telling them at the same time.
00:11:33
Speaker
By the way, you live in a completely determined universe in which every thought, feeling and value you've ever had was always going to be the way it was because you are just one more part of a completely material, non-rational process. It's hard when you've got both of these messages, you know, isn't life wonderful and you're just part of a meaningless machine. I think that creates a kind of an internal incoherence for most people.
00:12:01
Speaker
When you kind of put that into then a post-modern culture where we're all expected to make our own stories, our own identities, it creates a kind of intolerable burden actually on people. It's exhausting living in this kind of a world where we have to invent ourselves from scratch and make meaning in an otherwise meaningless universe.
00:12:21
Speaker
And I think that's why the new atheism ultimately didn't answer those kinds of questions. Science and reason wasn't enough alone, as I say, to kind of give people that sense of who am I, what's my purpose in life. It's great if you're a bestselling atheist author, that might give you a great purpose in life. But if you're actually just someone who's kind of in a fairly mundane job and has difficult relationships and everything else, it won't actually sustain you for that long.
00:12:51
Speaker
And so I think that's why there was this turn away from the simplistic rhetoric of the new atheist towards this more interesting and deeper sense of, well, maybe there is something in this ancient wisdom that people have benefited from for thousands of years that is the stock in trade of a number of the more recent secular thinkers who aren't dismissing religion.
00:13:15
Speaker
Now, whether they have the answers is another question. I don't think they do have the full answers, but I think they're asking better questions and kind of offering something closer to more interesting answers. And so for these sorts of people that we're coming across, intellectuals or otherwise, who are saying we need a better story to live by, that the kind of secularism is not providing that story, providing meaning, purpose, and all the other things for life.
Christianity's Narrative vs. Personal Conversion
00:13:37
Speaker
So many of them seem to think that Christianity is what we need,
00:13:42
Speaker
because it provides a story for us to live by, but few of them seem to be saying, Jesus is who I need and talking about personal conversion. And if there's lots of people in that kind of category who want a story to live by, who want meaning and purpose and value and think, well, Christianity is a reasonable story, how can we encourage them to actually see Jesus himself and move towards saying, I need Christ, not just we need the Christian story? And I think this is a key distinction is that
00:14:08
Speaker
A lot of those thinkers are still in that kind of religion is a useful fiction kind of mode, which is basically, yeah. And they quite often sort of handily exempt themselves from needing this. They've sort of seen through it and, great, if other people want to be religious, I'm not going to stop them because I think it's generally a good thing. But of course, I couldn't possibly do that myself because I'm sort of a little bit too intellectual for that. What's interesting is I do see
00:14:35
Speaker
quite intellectual people actually making that leap and sort of actually saying, actually, no, I think I need the whole thing, not just the kind of the nice after effects of Christendom, if it's going to make a difference. And I think there's a lot of those, even those intellectual thinkers who haven't embraced Christianity or Christ, who understand that you can only keep going on the fumes of the people who did believe for so long before the thing starts to crumble.
00:15:01
Speaker
And to that extent, I think it is time absolutely for the church to be both reminding people of our Christian heritage and why this story has sustained people for so long at some kind of psychological and storytelling level, but also to say, and here's some good news, it's true as well. It really is the truth and we've got some really good reasons for believing it's true. And that for me is the exciting moment when the kind of, you know,
00:15:29
Speaker
The way I put it in the book is perhaps the first task of the church these days in apologetics is to show people why they want this story to be true. That this is where their hearts are inclined, that this is kind of
00:15:42
Speaker
they see that this story, if it were true, would make sense of them. And then once you've kind of shown them that, then to show them, well, handily, it is true. So that doesn't have to be this disjunct between what you would like to be true and what actually is true. You know, it's that old C.S. Lewis thing. When he converted, he says, when he initially had this conversion from atheism to sort of theism,
00:16:05
Speaker
And it would kind of answer an intellectual question for him about, you know, morality. But he said he still lived with these two spheres of his mind, one which was enlivened by imagination and mythology and storytelling, and the other that was the reality. And it was just this drab material universe that we lived in. And he said it was only when Jesus put those two things together that he suddenly could be a fulfilled person because he realized
00:16:30
Speaker
You know, all of that imaginative stuff that, you know, made sense of everything came true in a real person, Jesus Christ. So it's that journey that I think we kind of now need to start encouraging the thinkers to go on and the people who are following these thinkers to go on.
00:16:47
Speaker
Yeah, it was interesting. I was thinking of Lewis as you talked there before you mentioned him, Justin, and of course the other quote that's been oft used that springs to mind is Blaise Pascal's oft quoted line about, you know, preach the gospel in such a way that good people, he's a good man, but obviously we'll make it more inclusive, good people, wish that it were true, and then show that it is. And the danger sometimes as Christians, we jump to the showing that it is.
00:17:12
Speaker
Before we've drawn people in which leads me to perhaps some you know penultimate question and then probably one more from my partner in crime over there before we have a rap so Obviously we want to make pep talk is practical and you judge at the start that you're not but you are practical You know, you're very grounded in church ministry or wife is a is a pastor and you're very involved in the in the church there so all the stuff that you've shared and
Advice for Church Leaders on Engagement
00:17:33
Speaker
How should this affect how we think about evangelism today? For church leaders listening to this of whom we have many, what would be some advice you might give them about how you take some of what you've discovered and uncovered in the book and then let that flow into the way that we're reaching out? Are there some lessons for the church here? I think there are, and I think it is about probably
00:17:55
Speaker
For a lot of people, they're not necessarily these days asking, does God exist? That's probably not where your conversation is necessarily going to start. It might have been a bit more that way when the new atheists were sort of prompting people to ask those kind of basic questions. People are much more likely, though, to be starting from a place where there's somewhat uninterested in that question, but they may be very invested in certain social issues, justice issues, equality issues, and so on.
00:18:21
Speaker
So I think inevitably you do have to start where people are and engage them with that passion that they have and show them why, as we were just saying, that itself is a pointer towards a bigger story, that the story they're currently living in can't really make sense of that passion, that sort of instinct towards justice and everything else.
00:18:43
Speaker
I think we've got a lot of interesting ways in which we can do that these days because there are some of these people who are of interest publicly, the Jordan Peterson's and the Tom Hollins and so on, who are saying interesting things around this stuff. We've got some common things that we can point people to, some popular icons that we could maybe use as those sorts of conversation starters.
00:19:09
Speaker
And then beyond that, I think it's, it's about doing that thing of the reason than the imagination it's, it's taking people on a journey that doesn't just say, well, let me give you five reasons why Jesus rose from the dead, but where we do kind of.
00:19:25
Speaker
Help them to imagine what a universe looks like, where there is the possibility of new creation, a new star resurrection. And why we talk about that all the time, you know, in our movies and films and art and that kind of thing.
00:19:40
Speaker
I guess it's just starting from a point of view where you can hopefully introduce people from the desire for it to be true to actually talking about some of it. And then inevitably it's going to be different for different people, but I had a really great conversation with someone at a wedding just on Saturday gone, who's obviously something of a deep thinker himself.
00:19:59
Speaker
But when we got into it, you know, he was fascinated to kind of hear about some of the sort of the evidences for Christianity and for God and things that he hadn't sort of necessarily considered himself. I think there still is, you know, a certain number of people out there who want that kind of, who are open to it once you've kind of given them, you know, some kind of reason for why they might want to take religion seriously again, that you can start having those kinds of conversations with and quite fruitful ones.
00:20:26
Speaker
Thank you so much for sending me a copy of the book. I thought it was absolutely a rip-roaring read. I couldn't put it down. There's so many insights into culture and debate and where things are going and some brilliant stories woven through it. It's a terrific read. So the obvious question to end with is how could people get their hands on a copy and when is it published?
Pre-order Information and Podcast Preview
00:20:45
Speaker
Well, the surprising rebirth of belief in God is going to be published in September, but you can pre-order a copy right now via my website is a great place to do it. So that's at justinbrily.com and just click on the page for the book and you'll find the ways to do that. I'm also going to be launching a podcast that's based on the book as well soon. So look out for that. That'll be called again, like the book, the surprising rebirth of belief in God. But yeah, I'm looking forward to what people make of the book and the podcast as it launches.
00:21:14
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, we'll put a link to the website again in the show notes for folks who didn't catch it, but it's fairly easy because it's got your name in there and you're also all over social media so people can find you there too as well. Right. So Justin, it's been a privilege to have you on the show. Thank you for taking the time. Wish you all the best with the book and just second Gavin's review of it. I find it absolutely fascinating, exciting and encouraging and stimulating. So really encourage people to give it a go. Thanks again for being with us and Gavin and I will be back.
00:21:41
Speaker
in a couple of weeks time with another guest and another episode of pep talk. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.