\u201cI<\/span> think a case can be made that faith is one of the world\u2019s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate,\u201d Richard Dawkins said<\/a> in 1996 to the American Humanist Association. Ten years later, in 2006, a ComRes poll<\/a> found that 42 percent of UK adults agreed with this vitriolic statement. That is, two in five were not just nonbelievers; they thought all belief in God should be deliberately snuffed out.<\/p>\n This was near the height of the New Atheism movement\u2014an angry, bombastic form of anti-religion that arose in the early 2000s. New Atheist leaders garnered millions from best-selling books and gained an influential following. At the time, it seemed that this would become the permanent state of secularism\u2014that a lack of belief in God was necessarily joined with a bitter, trollish contempt for religion.<\/p>\n But things began to change. By 2015, some had begun to announce<\/a> the death of New Atheism, and in 2020, 15 years after the ComRes poll, a new survey<\/a> showed that only 20 percent of adults in the UK agreed that religious faith could be compared to an evil and intractable plague on society.<\/p>\n Nick Spencer\u2014senior fellow at Theos, a Christian thinktank in the UK, and one of the coauthors of the new report\u2014said the New Atheism era spawned an unprecedented scale of animosity against religion in the general public. But he concluded<\/a> in a 2022 Theos report on science and religion that \u201cthe angry hostility towards religion engineered by the New Atheist movement is over,\u201d with the UK public expressing a more balanced view of religion than during the height of New Atheist influence. Among the streams of contemporary nonbelief, more nuanced forms are on the rise.<\/p>\n As the New Atheist movement seemed to implode from within\u2014due in part to its odd merger<\/a> with the Far Right in the American culture wars\u2014many secularists in the public square began to consider its leaders \u201ca real embarrassment\u201d who give \u201catheism a bad name,\u201d says John Dickson, a Wheaton professor and public apologist who engages with atheists.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically, the world has moved on and has rather left the New Atheism behind,\u201d said Oxford theologian and apologist Alister McGrath, author of The Dawkins Delusion?<\/em> \u201cBut that\u2019s no cause for rejoicing, because we have new problems to worry about.\u201d That is, the decline of the New Atheists\u2019 particular brand of hyperbolic antireligious fervor does not necessarily signify a rise in religious faith or belief in God.<\/p>\n There has been an increase in the proportion of non-believers in the UK<\/a>\u2014already one of the least religious countries in the world, according to Gallup International<\/a>\u2014and also in the US<\/a>, where prominent New Atheists such as Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett lived and worked.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean that religion is in a better place; it just means religion is in a different place,\u201d McGrath said.<\/p>\n T<\/span>here are similarities and differences in how the nonreligious landscapes of the UK and the US have changed since the New Atheism era. Religion in both countries has declined over the past decade, and its recession looks poised to continue.<\/p>\n Although many \u201cactivist\u201d atheists still publicly maintain staunch antireligious sentiments, a milder type of \u201ctemperate\u201d atheist, who is more tolerant of religion overall, is on the rise. Another curious trend is the increase of \u201camicable\u201d atheists, or secularists who become unlikely evangelists for the Christian worldview\u2014including a number who eventually come to a full-fledged faith.<\/p>\n In England and Wales, the 2021 census<\/a> showed that less than half the population identified as Christian, a sharp drop in the past decade\u2014and over a third say they have \u201cno religion,\u201d making these \u201cnones\u201d the second-biggest religious group in the country. But Hannah Waite, a researcher at Theos, found<\/a> that out of those who identify as nonreligious, only about half said they don\u2019t believe in God.<\/p>\n A recent Theos report<\/a> determined that these nonreligious respondents fall into three different groups. About a third of the UK nones are strongly atheistic and hostile to religion (\u201cCampaigning Nones\u201d), and these overlap with the activist atheists who span both countries. Another third of UK nones are generally atheistic yet accepting of religion (\u201cTolerant Nones\u201d), and the remaining third are agnostic but spiritually open (\u201cSpiritual Nones\u201d).<\/p>\n In the US, the proportions are quite different. The US is more religious <\/a>than the UK. Pew Research found in a 2021 report<\/a> that self-identified Christians made up 63 percent<\/a> of the population, down from 75 percent a decade prior. Just under a third of US adults (29%) were nones.<\/p>\n According to the 2021 General Social Survey<\/a> (GSS), almost 7 percent of US adults selected<\/a> \u201cI don\u2019t believe in God\u201d from a list of phrases to describe their faith.<\/p>\n Working from GSS data, Ryan Burge, author of The Nones<\/em> and political science professor at Eastern Illinois University, found that not all self-identified atheists would say they don\u2019t believe in God. <\/a><\/p>\n Perceptions of religion in the two countries are also not parallel. The share of UK adults who believed \u201creligions cause more conflict than peace\u201d declined from 74 percent to 63 percent between 2008 and 2018, according to<\/a> a British Social Attitudes study, indicating a slight warming trend. In the same survey<\/a>, most UK adults said they had a positive view of Christianity and a positive or neutral view of other religious groups.<\/p>\n In the US, the public\u2019s view of religion is more positive and more stable. A 2019 Pew report<\/a> showed that a majority (55%) of Americans see religious organizations as a positive force in American society.<\/p>\n In both places, however, activist atheists view religion more negatively than other nones and the general public. In the UK<\/a>, 24 percent of the population and 39 percent of all nones said they believed that \u201cReligion has no place in the modern world,\u201d compared to 89 percent of campaigning nones (78 percent of whom still agreed with Dawkins that religion is comparable to the smallpox virus).<\/p>\n In the US, a 2019 Public Religion Research Institute survey showed that 36 percent of the general public said they believed \u201cReligion causes more problems in society than it solves\u201d\u2014compared to 88 percent of avowed atheists.<\/p>\n \u201cT<\/span>here\u2019s different factions of atheists, different groups,\u201d Burge says. There are the \u201cevangelical boogeyman\u201d atheists who are old-school boomers associated with the Freedom From Religion Foundation<\/a>\u2014the ones who \u201cread Nietzsche in college and became like a hardcore hippie liberal,\u201d Burge describes.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the American Atheists<\/a> group, populated by a \u201cyounger, hipper, more socially active kind of atheist.\u201d This group is known for posting billboards<\/a> around Christmas time encouraging people to come out as atheists, and suing<\/a> for the right to not be blocked from commenting on politicians\u2019 social media accounts. And while the elder atheists are \u201ca bunch of old, retired college professors\u201d who are \u201chappy to read their Dawkins and Hitchens books,\u201d the younger ones are in some ways more radical, Burge says. \u201cThey don\u2019t like each other.\u201d Like the disunity among evangelicals<\/a>, the divides between different atheist groups tend to run along generational lines.<\/p>\n Next-generation activist atheists are more present on social media and more likely to be politically engaged for far-left causes. They are also more outspoken in their attacks on evangelical Christians, Burge says. \u201cThey\u2019re the ones really trying to push the agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n These activist atheists think that religion (especially evangelicalism) is evil and immoral, Burge said. \u201cThat, for them, is like their reason to be. \u2026 They want less religion in society. They want their worldview to win out.\u201d<\/p>\n S<\/span>ome of the most popular and well platformed among these younger activist atheists are exvangelicals, people who once considered themselves evangelical Christians but have since repudiated the movement.<\/p>\n According to Paul Djupe and Burge\u2019s analysis of the General Social Study, former evangelicals may comprise up to 5.5 percent of the US population\u2014a rate that has remained steady since the 1970s. Most exvangelicals aren\u2019t atheists. Burge says that only about 6 percent of exvangelicals don\u2019t believe in God.<\/p>\n But in recent years, this minority has had an amplified voice and outsized influence in the public square as a \u201cnexus point\u201d of interest for both evangelicals and atheists, Burge explains.<\/p>\n Some exvangelical influencers, like Abraham Piper<\/a>, theologian John Piper\u2019s son, do not identify as atheists but also say they do not believe in God. Tony Campolo\u2019s son<\/a>, Bart Campolo<\/a>, identifies as a secular humanist. (Both have been profiled by The New York Times<\/em> about their deconversions.) Others, such as the social media personality @Eve_wasframed, have built their platforms around being exvangelical atheists.<\/p>\n Burge believes American society is currently at \u201cpeak exvangelical\u201d and that this backlash movement is likely to wane in the next five to ten years. \u201cAt some point you can\u2019t be defined by what you\u2019re not,\u201d Burge said. \u201cAnd also, as the number of Americans who were raised evangelical goes down, you\u2019re talking to a smaller and smaller audience every time.\u201d<\/p>\n A<\/span>ny rise in religious belief can prompt greater antagonism toward faith, Spencer explains. That\u2019s because atheism is a \u201cshadow movement,\u201d as he puts it\u2014meaning \u201cthe bigger the shadow cast by religion\u201d and its faith figures, \u201cthe darker and bigger the shadows\u201d are of those who oppose religion. Not only did this happen with the 9\/11 terrorist attacks and Islamic extremism in the early 2000s, but the rise of religious nationalism has sustained the rhetoric of activist atheists, Burge says.<\/p>\n \u201cChristian nationalism is being amplified by atheists \u2026 as \u2018this evil thing we\u2019re pushing back against\u2019\u2014and that gives them traction, online clicks, retweets, and likes, all the things they need to amplify their message,\u201d Burge said. \u201cChristian nationalists [have] become the perfect enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other hand, many past predictions of the death of God and religion have been followed by revivals of faith and belief in America. For instance, five years after the 1966 cover of Time magazine echoed Friedrich Nietzsche\u2019s words with the question \u201cIs God Dead?\u201d, its 1971 cover story was \u201cThe Jesus Revolution\u201d\u2014and five years after that, Newsweek dubbed 1976 \u201cthe year of the evangelical.\u201d<\/p>\n In any case, Burge says the growth of hardline atheism in the US has slowed and is not projected to expand much in the future\u2014in part due to the homogeneity of the movement. Two-thirds of US self-identified atheists<\/a> are men (68%), and three-quarters (78%) are white.<\/p>\n I<\/span>n contrast to activist atheists, a more temperate type of atheist thinker seems to have emerged over the past five years or so, explains Jim Stump. Stump is vice president of programs for Biologos, a Christian think tank in the US founded by Francis Collins<\/a>, former director of the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n Instead of frontal attacks on religion as a \u201ccancer\u201d to society, he says, this \u201cnew wave\u201d is more subtle. Whereas New Atheists say religion is dangerous \u201cand we need to go out and combat it,\u201d Stump said, some of these dispassionate atheists simply dismiss religion as \u201cirrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s kind of a second wave of books that are coming out by people who are atheists and have no love of religion\u2014but their approach is different,\u201d Stump said. The 2011 bestseller Sapiens<\/em> by Yuval Noah Harari, On The Origin of Time<\/em> by Thomas Hertog, and many similar books<\/a> offer naturalistic origin stories for humankind that account for the development of morality and religion.<\/p>\n While these temperate atheist authors may still be \u201canti-religion,\u201d they are more likely to acknowledge reasons why so many people today hold to religious worldviews. Instead of relying solely on \u201chardcore scientism,\u201d Stump says, this approach to atheism borrows from and blends with soft sciences like sociology, psychology, and natural history.<\/p>\n \u201cThey recognize that there are differences of values and that these are things that we\u2019re not ultimately going to resolve through scientific arguments,\u201d Stump said. Their works are popular, accessible, and engage in more charitable public discourse and modest claims about world religions.<\/p>\n The reason there\u2019s an appetite for a more calm, cool, and collected brand of atheism\u2014and the reason it is palatable to a wider audience than simply atheists\u2014is because of the ever-deepening divides between ideological groups in our society.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tribal identity we have has become stronger and stronger,\u201d Stump says. \u201cAnd that, I think, contributes to this newer way of looking at these religions as though they are distinct people groups.\u201d<\/p>\n This more circumspect atheist rhetoric has eclipsed the New Atheist dialogue in volume and popularity. Of course, the activist atheists are still out there, but their vitriol does not have as wide an audience as the New Atheists\u2019 once did. This is partly because the internet can be so partitioned according to personal interest, Stump says.<\/p>\n The atheist content that\u2019s likely to gain an audience among the general public today comes from those whose approach to religion seems fair-minded and polite, instead of unreasonable and vicious. It\u2019s a \u201cmore nuanced and sophisticated understanding of different religions, rather than the New Atheist\u2019s way of saying, \u2018Look at all those religious people, aren\u2019t they stupid?\u2019\u201d Stump said.<\/p>\n Image: Illustration by Danielle Del Plato<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n O<\/span>ne of the most famous and frequent accusations New Atheists have launched at Christian theism was that it is anti-science and therefore anti-intellectual.<\/p>\n Dickson says the New Atheists brought this debate back to the forefront and gave it a \u201cfresh energy.\u201d Even though he reckons \u201cthe general public could not remember a single argument they made,\u201d their rhetoric left people with the \u201cgeneral feeling\u201d that \u201cscience versus God is a live issue.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, much of the general public in the US and the UK today still perceives a tension between science and religion.<\/p>\n In the UK, Theos\u2019s 2022 report<\/a> found that the British public are more likely to think that science and religion are incompatible (57%) than compatible (30%).<\/p>\n Similarly, in the US, a 2014 Pew poll<\/a> found that 59 percent of Americans believed there often is conflict between science and religion, compared to 38 percent who said the two are \u201cmostly compatible.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Theos concluded that<\/a> this sense of incompatibility between science and religion \u201cseems to be a conflict of image rather than substance,\u201d since the percentages were much lower when the respondents answered questions about specific religions, sciences, or scientific arguments rather than about science and religion in general.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the same in the US. A higher percentage of people (68%) said that science did not conflict with their own religious beliefs. This finding aligns with Theos\u2019s conclusion that although many religious people have no personal issue with science, they still perceive<\/a> there to be conflict in general.<\/p>\n That is not to say that some atheists don\u2019t still look down on Christians because of their sense of a conflict. Stump noted that in certain scientific fields, there is what he called an \u201cacademic elite\u201d who find it hard to believe that a serious scientist could be a committed Christian. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t quite compute to them. They don\u2019t quite understand how you can accept all of science, but yet still hold on to this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Some groups of American evangelicals do find their faith to be in tension with scientific findings like evolution and climate change, as well as with policies they see as aligned with science, such as abortion or vaccines derived from fetal stem cell lines. In the UK, however, there has historically been less perceived tension on these issues, even among those with conservative Christian beliefs\u2014such as an orthodox interpretation of Scripture, a pro-life stance, and a traditional sexual ethic.<\/p>\n Biologos is seeking to reconcile the truths that can be known by science with the truth of the Bible, theological principles, and church tradition. One of its primary goals is to encourage believers who have a high view of Scripture and an interest in science.<\/p>\n \u201cScience has been put on one side of the culture wars, and religion on the other,\u201d Stump said. \u201cThe ultimate real-world impact that we\u2019d love to see is that kids growing up in the church or going through school don\u2019t feel that they\u2019re forced to choose between the insights of today\u2019s scientists and genuine religious faith.\u201d<\/p>\n Christian thought leaders are pointing out that science and religion are neither the same nor completely separate fields of inquiry. Spencer borrows from Stephen Jay Gould\u2019s idea that, as in a Venn diagram, science and religion are distinct \u201cmagisteria.\u201d But in contrast to Gould\u2019s theory that these magisteria never overlap, Spencer sees significant overlap in their authority\u2014especially around \u201cthe question of the human.\u201d His book Magisteria<\/a><\/em> describes science and faith as entangled, rather than competing.<\/p>\n In fact, there is a burgeoning \u201cscience-engaged theology\u201d movement\u2014encouraging theologians to explore scientific topics through the lens of faith, and Christians in scientific fields to lend their expertise. The goal is to show that not only can science and religion correspond, but they can do so in many creative and generative ways.<\/p>\n This includes the initiatives of newer organizations such as Biologos and of older organizations like the John Templeton Foundation<\/a>\u2014founded in the 1970s and \u201980s by a social philanthropist who saw the need for scholarship and dialogue among scientists, philosophers, theologians, and the general public.<\/p>\n Theologian and coauthor of Science-Engaged Theology<\/em> Joanna Leidenhag says one of the goals of such efforts is to go beyond the traditional apologetic arguments and historic battlegrounds between Christians and New Atheists. Its leaders want to do the work of \u201cemploying science within constructive theology,\u201d she explained, but \u201cmore carefully, more deliberately, and more conscientiously\u201d than has been done in the past.<\/p>\n T<\/span>he other primary battleground between Christians and New Atheists\u2014whether religion is good or bad for society\u2014is also as relevant as it ever was.<\/p>\n With the rise of Christian nationalism in the US, ongoing church and leadership abuse scandals, and greater awareness of Christianity\u2019s historic participation in systemic marginalization, people of faith are having to combat as much criticism from the unbelieving world as ever.<\/p>\n The New Atheists left a lasting impact on the public consciousness, says Dickson, making it \u201crespectable to be disrespectful\u201d toward religion and shifting the burden of proof onto people of faith to show how religion could be good for society, rather than on secularists to prove why religion is bad for society.<\/p>\n Dickson, the author of Bullies and Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Christian History<\/em>, says that while believers should \u201cconcede that there\u2019s such a thing as bad Christianity,\u201d Christians can also highlight the beauty and goodness in how God has worked through the church and Christianity\u2019s positive impact on human history.<\/p>\n In fact, some thinkers want to reclaim the term Christian humanism<\/a>. They want to highlight the Christian values underpinning much of the humanitarian ideology that built Western civilization\u2014concepts such as reason, dignity, and morality.<\/p>\n Spencer explains that \u201chumanism is a Christian idea\u201d because it involves a commitment to a concept of the human that is \u201cutterly rooted in Christian thought and practice.\u201d He says the term humanist \u201cwas absolutely in no way, shape, or form a non- or anti-religious label\u201d until \u201cit was increasingly appropriated by nonbelievers from the 1920s and \u201930s onwards\u201d and \u201crelinquished by Christian believers in the postwar period.\u201d After that, he explains, it became \u201ca badge for atheists and freethinkers, or skeptics and secularists.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI talk to a lot of humanists, and I will irritate them enormously by saying, \u2018Well, look, I\u2019m a humanist too, I\u2019m a Christian humanist.\u2019 And they say, \u2018Well, you can\u2019t be, because humanism is atheism,\u2019\u201d McGrath said. \u201cAnd I say, \u2018Look \u2026 you are secular humanists, and you have hijacked the word humanist for your own aims.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n As a historian, McGrath argues that figures like Isaac Newton and Erasmus of Rotterdam were actually Christian humanists. \u201cOur dispute really is what we mean by humanism,\u201d McGrath said. \u201cBack in the Renaissance, a humanist was someone who, in effect, saw religions or God as\u201d being key to \u201cenriching and enabling authentic human existence.\u201d<\/p>\n S<\/span>ome of the best apologists for Christian humanism today aren\u2019t even Christian. That\u2019s because, along with the decline of \u201cangry\u201d activist atheists and the rise of \u201ctemperate\u201d atheists has come the advent of what we might call \u201camicable\u201d atheists. Most of them do not believe in God, but, unlike the temperate atheists, they are publicly pro-religion and may even advocate for Christianity\u2019s benefits for society.<\/p>\n For instance, Jonathan Haidt, author of the best-selling book The Righteous Mind<\/em>, is a moral psychologist who considers himself an atheist but believes religion is good for humankind. In an interview<\/a> for The Atlantic<\/em> in 2020, Haidt said he \u201cbelieves that religion is part of human nature, is generally a good part of human nature, and an essential part of who we are and how we became a civilized species.\u201d<\/p>\n He also shares a critical commonality with Christians: believing there is a \u201cGod-shaped hole in everyone\u2019s heart\u201d that must be filled. Calling himself the \u201copposite\u201d of the New Atheists, Haidt said he\u2019s even gotten into some arguments with them for \u201cdefending religion against some of their charges.\u201d He\u2019s also spoken at various Christian organizations and universities, and was interviewed on The Russell Moore Show<\/a><\/em>, a CT podcast.<\/p>\n Then there is Tom Holland, a historian and former liberal skeptic who wrote Dominion<\/a>: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World<\/em>. Growing up with an Anglican mother and an atheist father, Holland once considered himself an atheist but now describes himself as agnostic. He even attends church occasionally, once encountering<\/a> something akin to a spiritual experience.<\/p>\n Holland realized the values of Christianity were the reason the Western world moved from celebrating brutal societies\u2014where might makes right and the strong dominate the weak\u2014to honoring civilized societies where a universal human dignity is the ideal. Holland now champions Christianity as a benefit to human society, becoming a kind of apologist for Christian humanism while not yet claiming any faith of his own.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that ultimately the power of Christianity is expressed most potently through its stories,\u201d Holland explained<\/a> in an interview with author Glen Scrivener. \u201cThose stories don\u2019t have to be literally true \u2026 for the story itself, in my opinion, to be true. \u2026 Some stories have such a power that you can surrender to them.\u201d<\/p>\n And while amicable atheists like Haidt and Holland\u2014along with Jordan Peterson, Alain de Botton, Douglas Murray, and others\u2014became more tolerant and spiritually open to Christianity, some of them have \u201cadopted\u201d Christianity\u2014in a purely cultural sense, not as followers of Jesus.<\/p>\n For example, Murray, a politically controversial UK figure, wrote The War on the West<\/a><\/em> and describes himself as a \u201ccultural Christian\u201d and a \u201cChristian atheist.\u201d Or as Holland wrote in The New Statesman<\/a><\/em>, \u201cIn my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am \u2026 thoroughly and proudly Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n B<\/span>ut perhaps most surprising is the growing number of atheists who have come to embrace a full-fledged faith in Jesus.<\/p>\n This group of adult atheist converts to Christianity\u2014along with many of their conversion stories\u2014is catalogued in two books released this year: Atheists Finding God<\/a>: Unlikely Stories of Conversions to Christianity in the Contemporary West<\/em> and Coming to Faith Through Dawkins<\/a><\/em>. The former explores what brought 50 skeptics to faith, while the latter highlights 12 intellectuals who said New Atheists were actually instrumental in their journey toward Christian faith.<\/p>\n Some notable atheists-turned-Christians in recent years are Stephen Bullivant<\/a> (author of Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America<\/em>); Josh Timonen <\/a>(who was once Dawkins\u2019s \u201cright-hand man\u201d); New York Times<\/em> columnist David Brooks<\/a>; and writers Martin Shaw<\/a>, Paul Kingsnorth<\/a>, A.\u2009N. Wilson<\/a>, Leah Libresco<\/a>, and Molly Worthen<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cPrivately, I have had conversations with at least 15 men in the last year who are either now Christian or actively trying to be,\u201d wrote<\/a> the former director of Theos, Elizabeth Oldfield. \u201cIt\u2019s possible that I\u2019m seeing it now because of the backlash to the New Atheist movement. \u2026 Either way, I find it moving and hopeful.\u201d<\/p>\n Justin Brierley, a public apologist in the UK and author of The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, says that there is a \u201cgrowing meaning crisis in the West,\u201d a crisis Burge says America is \u201con the leading edge of now.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOnce you lose the Christian faith as the overarching narrative in the West, people just latch on to other quasi-religious things,\u201d Brierley says. \u201cIn the absence of the Judeo-Christian story, culture was basically coming up with lots of little stories about identity and purpose and meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n Brierley was the host of the Unbelievable<\/a>?<\/em> audio show, where believers and atheists frequently discuss questions of faith. And in the past five years or so, he says he\u2019s begun to have much more \u201cnuanced conversations around faith and meaning\u201d with many secular thinkers on air\u2014discussing questions like the purpose of humanity and whether we can live in the absence of God.<\/p>\n In the wake of disappointment that the scientism touted by the New Atheist movement didn\u2019t \u201canswer people\u2019s questions\u201d and \u201cget to the bottom\u201d of things, Brierley says many atheists today are on the \u201cquest for meaning and purpose\u201d and wondering where to go in the absence of Christianity and religion. They\u2019re asking themselves, \u201cWhat sort of story do we live by?\u201d<\/p>\n And in order to reach those who are seeking a greater purpose and sense of identity in community, he says, the church needs to avoid retelling the same lesser narratives proposed by either side of the culture wars. Instead, Brierley says, Christians need to get back to \u201cthis big story that God is telling\u2014in which we can all find a place.\u201d<\/p>\n This trend of activist, temperate, and amicable atheism spreading in the UK and the US highlights important insights for the future of Christian apologetics in a post-Christian age, where New Atheism is no longer a dominating factor in conversations about the existence of God. That is, for all the people who are leaving Christianity today, a great many are open to returning. But these seeking souls are looking for a faith deeply rooted in history and tradition that can answer the question of what it really means to be human.<\/p>\n It turns out that the Christian faith, when properly centered on God\u2019s story and kingdom, still has the same ancient power to captivate even the most cynical hearts.<\/p>\n Stefani McDade is an associate editor at CT.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here<\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www-images.christianitytoday.com\/images\/135752.jpg?h=857&w=600\" "\\"\\"")
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