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After the decline of the New Atheism in recent years, the conversation is shifting as there is a renewed interest among writers and public intellectuals in the Bible and the Christian faith.

My Top Three Takeaways

• The rebirth of belief in God is because people are looking for meaning, for a bigger Story that they can feel they are part of – and the gospel is the greatest Story ever told! We need to be confident in telling this Story.

• The materialist view of the world that has dominated in the West for so long just cannot satisfy and does not explain the world adequately or make sense of life in a way that satisfies our longing for truth and purpose.

• Key thinkers are beginning to revisit the religious sense within our intuition and captured best in the imagination – this is a fertile field for conversations about faith.

Outline

Chapter 1: The Rise and Fall of New Atheism. Brierley begins by charting the rise and fall of new atheism, highlighting its ultimately shallow thinking about matters of faith. Its inadequacy left many people still searching for meaning. However, it did provoke many Christians to rediscover a more robust intellectual engagement with faith.

Chapter 2: The New Conversation on God. Brierley shows how the conversation has shifted, with an increasing number of academics and public intellectuals showing a renewed interest in God and the Christian faith. The loss of the Christian Story over recent decades has left us in a perilous situation of competing and conflicting narratives. Thinkers like Jordan Peterson have highlighted how our deepest desires for meaning can be found in the figure of Jesus and the Christian story. Brierley argues that the reason the Christian story resonates so deeply is because it is true.

Chapter 3: Shaped by the Christian Story. He explores how historian Tom Holland and others have shown that the moral vision of our Western world, including that of secular humanists, can only be understood in light of the Christian story that shaped it. Even secular humanists have been deeply influenced by the West’s Christian history.

Chapter 4: Rediscovering the Bible. Brierley examines the renewed interest in the Bible, with people like Jonathan Haidt appreciating its ancient wisdom. He discusses the journey of classicist James Orr, who moved from a cynical position to see the reliability of the Bible as history. As C.S. Lewis wrote, ‘myth has become fact.’

Chapter 5: The Alternative Story of Science. Brierley considers the alternative story of science as a way of making sense of our universe. He challenges the idea of inevitable conflict between faith and science, showing that devout believers spearheaded the scientific revolution and that many scientists, like Francis Collins, are Christians at the forefront of science today.

Chapter 6: Mind, Meaning and Materialists. He examines the inadequacy of a materialist view of the universe, which fails to give meaning or make sense of our world and human experience. He engages with psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist who, though not a Christian, believes that only a divine mind could explain human consciousness.

Chapter 7: The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God In the final chapter, Brierley shows that the religious impulse has not gone away, lying deep within everyone. He looks at the fascinating journeys of Paul Kingsnorth and Francis Spufford, demonstrating how the Christian story makes emotional and intuitive sense at a deep level. Brierley emphasizes the importance of imagination and intuition, noting the influence of C.S. Lewis on many seekers. He concludes with a challenge to the Church to embrace reason and imagination in apologetics, maintain its distinctiveness from society, and create a community of grace which is a counter to cancel culture.

See my review of this book here.