Is the West Headed for a CHRISTIAN REVIVAL? | Justin Brierley

In this episode, Jonathon has a conversation with Justin Brierley, a UK broadcaster, writer, and speaker, about his book 'The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God.’ Brierley shares his insights on the intellectual and cultural shifts he observes, including a growing interest in Christianity among secular intellectuals disillusioned by atheism. 

He explores themes such as the collapse of New Atheism, the potential for a Christian revival, and how the digital age, the sexual revolution, and the resulting meaning crisis affect this transformation in both intellectuals and Gen Z.

You can find Justin Brierley’s book and other work, including his podcasts and videos, at https://justinbrierley.com/

The Bridgehead on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebridgehead8554
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Transcript

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I think it's kind of inevitable that people either just start to kill themselves, or they have to find something that works. And Christianity has been proven to work. The reason that the sexual revolution seemed to work for a couple of generations is because we were living on the fumes. we hadn't torn everything apart yet. I'm increasingly seeing lots of significant secular voices pointing people back to the value of Christianity. I think we're already seeing lots of anecdotal evidence of people who wouldn't normally have considered church just walking into church, just trying it. Today, we're going to be talking to Justin Brierley, the author of "The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again." It's one of the most interesting books with one of the most fascinating theses of the last couple of years. And I've been looking forward to talking to Justin about this book since it was first published last September. Justin Brierley, for those of you who don't know him, is a UK broadcaster, writer, and speaker who is known for hosting the "Unbelievable" and "Ask N. T. Wright Anything" podcasts, among other shows, including a documentary show. focusing on the thesis of this book. He is passionate about creating thoughtful conversations about faith in both Christians and skeptics. And his first book, "Unbelievable? Why after 10 years of talking with atheists, I'm still a Christian" was published in 2017. He lives in Surrey, England with his wife, Lucy, and their four children. This is our conversation. So just to start off this incredibly fascinating book, which I've consumed several times now going through it. If you had to describe your thesis to a skeptic, uh, who was interviewing you about the book, how would you steel man the thesis that we're seeing a surprising rebirth of belief in God, despite the fact that almost all the headlines indicate "the rise of the nones" and, and galloping secularization. Well, it's a fair question because a lot of the initial response I had when I first put the title of the book out into Twitter space was very skeptical from, from skeptics saying, hang on, have you not seen all the statistics, Justin, in the West? Christendom on the decline, church going on the decline, the rise of the nones. And none of that I dispute. In fact, I, those are the statistics I mentioned in the book. What I guess my thesis is, is that actually despite all of those statistics, we are seeing what I think is a turning of the tide. Perhaps, if you like, this is something that's more in academic circles at this point. This is something that is still trickling down to a wider level. But I honestly believe that the, the conversations have changed significantly over the last several years and there is something about the atmosphere that is changing when it comes to God talk, when it comes to people being open to the idea of taking religion seriously again. So really the book's major thesis- well, there are there are two really. One is that new atheism rose but fell quite dramatically. That that has been on the way in for some time and that it's really a spent force the kind of Richard Dawkins, Peter, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens kind of new atheism. And that it's actually opened up a kind of a vacuum, actually, because it wasn't able to answer people's existential questions. All kinds of other quasi religions have flooded in to the gap. We're all kind of in that sense, intrinsically religious. You can't, kind of take the religion out of us. Um, but that this has created a meaning crisis in our culture. And that I'm increasingly seeing lots of significant secular voices stepping into that void and pointing people back to the value of Christianity. People like Jordan Peterson, Tom Holland, Douglas Murray, uh, and the list goes on. So. So what my thesis in that sense is not that there is some great revival of Christianity happening, but I think there are signs that we may be heading towards something like a revival of Christianity. And a lot of that is about those conversations and the way that they've completely changed in the last five to six years. So there's a few aspects of that I want to look at, but I wanted to start by asking a question actually about your thesis on, on new atheism, because I was familiar with a lot of the content later in the book, because I've listened to your podcast for years. And so I actually saw quite a few of the conversations that you cite in the book. I'd never heard anyone or read anyone detail the collapse of new atheism the way that you did, and I think myself, I kind of assumed that, you know, once Christopher Hitchens, um, you know, passed away, once wokeism became, uh, more of a prominent civilizational struggle than Islamism, these things seem to go through cycles, that it kind of just disappeared. But you give the details of quite a spectacular collapse, actually, the internal fights within New Atheism that I was totally unaware of. How would you summarize the collapse of the New Atheists? Yeah, it's a fascinating story and I watched as an interested bystander in many ways. Um, but I guess there's a particular point that I reference in the book. Um, it's called Elevator Gate and it happened in 2011, 2012. And, uh, this was the story of, um, a kind of quite well known atheist skeptic woman, um, who was part of, uh, a, a conference in Ireland, in Dublin. And she was on the panel talking about the fact that she thinks there's a problem with misogyny and sexism in the atheist movement. Um, she goes on to sort of have drinks, sort of late night drinks with some of the other panelists. And as she goes back to her room, she gets propositioned essentially by someone from the conference. Uh, and, uh, she kind of blogs about this afterwards saying, look, this is the problem with the atheist movement. It's very white, male dominated, sexist, and it's people think they can proposition you in elevators, basically. That might have been the end of it, except that Richard Dawkins kind of came in on this. And he wrote this highly sarcastic blog called "Dear Muslima," which pitted the kind of concerns of this atheist feminist against, uh, you know, a Muslim woman who's suffering all kinds of ills at the hands of, um, an authoritarian regime. And, and this just sort of poured gasoline on the whole thing and the whole thing exploded. And essentially from that point on, I think atheists, new atheism kind of split into two camps. This sort of what you might now call a progressive, woke sort of side, who wanted something like atheism plus, uh, atheism, plus a commitment to social justice, LGBT, feminism and everything. And then the kind of the, the ones who pushed against that, who said this was all politically correct nonsense, all we need is science and reason and free thinking. And you had Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and people like that on that side. But it does feel like it split the movement down the center and, and this, this elevator gate sort of, um, thing. And the woman at the center of this was called Rebecca Watson really was the defining moment of that. It was like the culture wars came early for new atheism. And suddenly the atheists were battling each other far harder than they'd ever battled their Christian counterparts on blogs, in person. Uh, a lot of atheist conferences ended up getting canceled or descended into scenes of chaos when people refused to share a stage with each other. Um, and you, you saw this kind of come out with things like, um, Richard Dawkins, you know, in recent years, doubling down on his criticism of transgender ideology, for example. And that has led to him being stripped of his American Humanist Association - Humanist of the Year Award, um, that, that happened in 2021 that he was stripped of that title. So there's been all of these kind of fascinating ways in which, suddenly, the atheist movement itself couldn't agree with each other. It was kind of like there was a honeymoon period sort of from the, you know, the mid two thousands when things like "the God Delusion" were the best sellers. And basically the new atheists could all agree that religion was bad for you, God didn't exist, and hopefully if we just get a hold of science and reason, we can create a fairer culture. Um, But then it turned out you need more than that. You need more than science and reason. You may need more than just a shared belief that God doesn't exist. You need to decide what you actually believe in. And they realized that they believed in very different things in the end. And, and that's where I think the kind of the collapse of the new atheism came. There were all kinds of other issues going on as well. There were genuine issues and misogyny, you know, a lot of atheists, new atheist leaders got, you know, um, criticized and accused credibly of sexism and, um, behavior at conferences and things. And so the whole thing kind of, yeah, it, it, it kind of ate itself in the end. And as I say, it was fascinating to watch from the sidelines because in a way it was like any movement that doesn't actually ultimately know what it stands for. It only stood against something. It just didn't know what, what direction it was supposed to take in the end. So what's really interesting about your book is that it kind of pins down this moment where we don't really know what's going to come next. And I think that, um, you know, you have a, you have a very bold title and in your book, you make a very measured case about, um, intellectuals coming around to the idea that Christianity is not only useful, but actually in many ways, beautiful. So there's the conversations with Jordan Peterson. Um, there's the conversations with Douglas Murray, who's referred to himself as a Christian atheist. I had similar conversations when I interviewed Charles Murray for national review. He's an agnostic. He says that America's doomed if a revival doesn't happen. So basically saying like, if, if what, if what you say may be happening in your book doesn't happen, he thinks that it's going to end very badly. Um, very badly indeed. The one thing though, that I wonder what your take is on is that many of the intellectuals you examine in your book have come to believe that Christianity is useful and even beautiful, but then they can't be pinned down on whether or not they believe Christianity to be actually true. Right? So Douglas Murray recently said, I basically have to hear a voice from God in order to believe that. He admits that he's putting the bar far higher than he should be, but just admits that that's what I would need in order to convert. Jordan Peterson - people often think he seems to be sort of staggering forward in his struggle with God, but has said that he's not sure if he'll be able to make the leap. Um, even though his wife and his daughter, um, um, both, well his wife became Catholic. His, his daughter goes to a Protestant church in Arizona. And so even Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who Richard Dawkins admits now, okay, Ayaan, you are a Christian based on their conversation at Dissident Dialogues. But there's, there's plenty of orthodoxy that she has yet to fully accept or wrap her mind around. She said in their discussion, she's not sure if people live on after death, which is a pretty essential, uh, part of, of the Christian worldview. So do you think that, uh, that this is just a recognition as Ayaan described, um, at Unheard, of the fact that the things rushing in to take Christianity's place are profoundly dangerous, are far less preferable, um, are often quite awful, and are tearing our civilization apart, and that people are turning to Christianity or back to Christianity because they recognize that this was a much better alternative. Or are they actually believing it in the way that they could recite the Apostles Creed and mean it, I guess would be a simple way to put it. No, I think those are all great questions. And they're things I confront in the book and the podcast, because I think there is a spectrum, if you like, of different people here. Um, and I think at one end, there is that person who sees the value of religion, a kind of at a social level, they say it is a"useful fiction" in that sense. And that would include people like Brett Weinstein, for instance, you know, evolutionary biologist who has, I don't think has any intention, particularly of, of really, believing, you know. But he likes the, the, the cultural aspect. And he appreciates in the way that another evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, doesn't the fact that religion is actually very good for us in, in various ways. Whereas Richard Dawkins has always held to this view that it's a kind of evolutionary misfiring. Now, I think he's backed off a little bit from that now that he's kind of been quite public about being a so called cultural Christian himself and thinking it. I think he. I think even he has come to realize the same thing that, that Ayaan realized that people don't just, when they reject Christianity, go to a utopia of rationalism and, you know, uh, secular scientism or something. They, they frequently fall into much worse things. And, and so I think even he has come to see actually Christianity may be the best of the worst, if you like, as far as he's concerned. But you've got people that over there on the spectrum who don't seem to have much interest in believing themselves, but see the kind of, the usefulness of Christianity. And in a sense, I'm glad that even at that level, the dialogue has changed. Conversation has changed from this, this kind of, I think, very unhelpful view that, you know, religion is just a plain, plain bad and evil and everything else. I think at least people are grasping that there's a, there's a good reason why our culture is the way it is on the basis of the Christian values that have been espoused. Having said that, I don't think everyone's in that segment. I think there are. People who are sort of, I would describe sort of teetering on the edge of belief. And I would say that the Jordan Petersons are an interesting example of that. Where so often when you hear what he has to say, as well as obviously appreciating the value of Christianity, he seems to be on the verge of believing it. He, you know, I remember a very moving. interview he had with Jonathan Pageau, um, uh, Orthodox icon carver. Where Peterson talked about, he said, I'm amazed by my belief because he recognized that somehow Jesus Christ represented the coming together of the subjective imaginative symbolic world, you know, um, with the kind of objective historical factual world and, and he, he seems to have those moments quite regularly where where he seems to teeter right on the edge of something like orthodox Christian faith. But who knows, you know, it's hard to say. Likewise, a friend of mine, Tom Holland, who's a historian here in the UK, and has again, extolled, the values of Christianity in the West. His bestselling book Dominion is really 700 pages on the way in which the Christian revolution shaped the moral imagination of the West. And he's been a real thorn in the side of many seculars- secular people here in the UK. Um, and yet he's always been somewhat shy of saying exactly where he stands on the question of God himself. But I've seen him become more and more attracted to the Christian vision of reality. To the point now, you know, in our last public conversation where he talked about what appeared to be sort of quite specific answers to prayer that he thinks he's had. And so he, again, he seems to be on this journey towards embracing it. And then I think you've got people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and a number of other people I talk about in the book and the podcast who I think have, have jumped in basically. Now, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, we could, you know, we could speculate exactly where she is, whether she, you know, believes all the right things or not at this point. What I do get the sense though, just in the conversations I've seen her have, is that she really, has kind of somehow grasped the heart of Christianity. That, that actually, this is a complete worldview shift. And yeah, she's probably working a lot of things out. She's very early on in that journey. But I do think that there are some people who have not only seen Christianity is useful, but they've seen the reason it's useful is because it's true. Um, and, and for me, that's the important place that these secular intellectuals need to get to. Not that it's sort of metaphorically true because it works. It works because it is literally true. That's the reason why it has changed the world and transformed our culture. Anything less than that, won't get you the results that you, you so desire, if you like, from, from Christianity. So, so for me, you know, it's instructive to see some of the journeys that people have been on where they've actually landed and realized actually, yeah, I've got to kind of humble myself, actually. Um, I think that's one of the key things with a lot of these secular intellectuals. There's, there's a kind of humility involved in saying it turns out there's someone bigger than me and my intellect. Um, and I need to kind of, at some level, bow the knee to that. And that's not an easy thing, I think, for many of these people to do. But it's fascinating when you do see people start to do that and the effect, the effect it has on them. It's very, it's very interesting that you put it that way because a couple of years back, I, I had, I did an interview with Niall Ferguson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali within the same week, uh, Ayaan for her book, uh, "Prey," which I was reviewing for the European Conservative, and then, um, Niall on his book, um, "Doom," which I was reviewing for, for the American Conservative, and both of them, apropos of nothing, brought up Christianity. Um, as they were discussing, she was discussing Islamism, of course. He was discussing, uh, the fact that our society seemed to have no center in the face of these great disasters. And he kind of, I, I didn't even ask him the question because Niall Ferguson is not the, the guy that I go to, to discuss Christianity with. It hadn't even crossed my mind. And he started saying that he thinks people should go back to church. And he thinks that Christianity is really, really important, um, that he was brought up with what he called Calvinist atheism, um, in the church of Scotland. And that his atheism had been basically forced upon him and that he'd never decided to be an atheist, but he was trying to kind of think and struggle his way out of it. He said to me, which this was just, was before Ayaan came out and it turns out they were, they were in part of this journey. But to hear Niall Ferguson, and I wonder what he would say next, because it's true. I sent you this question by email because it's one of the questions that I was most kind of dwelling on when I got through your book. Somebody like a Niall Ferguson and a Peterson like these guys have huge audiences. They're incredibly intelligent. They're very articulate. And one of the things that you do in your book is you make the case that actually, when the intelligentsia um, began to shift towards secularism, it didn't have that much of an impact actually, um, on the broader public at the time, which is borne out in the numbers. Secularization didn't really start in earnest till the early 60s. There's a new study from Oxford out on that really definitively making that case. And so then what I wanted to ask was, um, your point here is that a lot of the elites are reconsidering Christianity. Um, at a bare minimum, they have entirely rejected the Christopher Hitchens case that religion poisons everything. I think, of all of the books produced by the New Atheists, his probably has aged the worst. Because everybody, Even those who don't believe in God just agree that that's obviously not the case. That religion gave us a lot of good things, and that absent those good things, we really, really miss those things. But if the, the, the conversion of the intelligentsia to atheism didn't have a lot of impact at the time, what is, what would the conversion of the intelligentsia, or a significant part of it, have now, do you think, how would that unfold? Let's say Ayaan, um, an oh, Niall Ferguson who may already be on that journey, um, follows her and also declares himself to be a Christian, um, that Douglas Murray, uh, "hears a voice," that Jordan Peterson's journey ends at the beginning. Um, what might that look like in your mind? I think it'll be really interesting to see how that trickles down, because these are people with very large platforms. Um, the thing that's changed, you know, in a way from the sort of the conversion of the intelligentsia to atheism, sort of through the latter half of the 20th century, is that that, that conversation predominantly stayed, I would say, in academic circles. Whereas I think now we live in this age of, of very direct communication through YouTube, podcasts and everything else. And a lot of the people we're talking about actually are speaking very directly to their audiences. Now that certainly happened with the new atheists, you know, Harris Dawkins, if you like, they were in that early, early phase of, of, um, internet and new media. And it's one of the reasons why new atheism was, was such a phenomenon was because of the internet. But I think now that we're kind of fully into that flow and people, it's just part and parcel of the way people, um, consume their media, it will be fascinating to see how some of these people, as we're already seeing with Jordan Peterson, huge platform, YouTube following and everything. The way in which that changes the conversation. And that's what I've been impressed to see even in the last few years is the way that even just one person like Jordan Peterson can significantly change the tone of the conversation. So that the people that I hear now who, who were once absolutely would have been turning up for Dawkins and Hitchens and those kinds of things, they're now sort of being speaking very differently about God and about religion, about the place of faith and so on. Um, and so I think it's just, it's just kind of really, it's just changed the whole way that we, we're having those conversations. And I think as certainly like Niall Ferguson and, um, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and, and everyone else. That all of them, I think are going to, to, to be reaching their audiences. They're going, you know, Tom Holland, again, is a, is a classic example of this. You've got someone there who not only sells, bestselling history books, but he co hosts the most popular history podcast in the world. It's impossible for that not to reach and influence a lot of people. So I think that's going to be one of the major ways in which we see that change is it, is it through, is that it will begin to change the kind of the tenor of the conversation among lots and lots of people. And I think that's going to open up opportunity for the church to speak into people's lives. In new ways. Um, I think we're already seeing, I'm seeing lots of anecdotal evidence here in the UK, of people who wouldn't normally have considered church just walking into church, just trying it. Um, uh, literally people who, and here's the other thing that I think is the catalyst. It's the sense, it's the meaning crisis. It's the fact that a lot of the reason people have been turning up for Jordan Peterson is because they have this sense of, uh, an unfulfilled life and the promises that they were sold haven't materialized in the kind of secular atheist culture. And I just think there's an opportunity now. Uh, it was Douglas Murray himself, who kind of, if you like, gave me the idea for the book when we were having a conversation a couple of years ago. And he referenced that well worn line by Matthew Arnold about the melancholy, long withdrawing roar of the sea of faith. And he said, the thing about the sea of faith, Justin, is it could come back in again. That's the point of tides. And he was saying this in the context of talking about seeing a surprising number of people of his own peers, his intellectual peers, converting to Christianity. And, he said, maybe this is a moment when people are a bit more receptive to this message. And I think that's only continued to happen since I had that conversation with him. So I do think that's, that's the major way in which these particular individuals, that those kind of elites, as you say, it's the influence they'll have on the people who are listening to them and watching them. Um, whether or not they kind of fully convert and get on board to some extent is, is not that relevant necessarily. It's the fact that they're, they are themselves talking in such different terms about faith, as you say. Um, and you know, the, the, the, the, the, all of the people you've mentioned and more that I could add are having that effect, I think at the moment. I've been, I've been wondering, and there's a couple of chapters in your book, uh, that, that really made me want to ask this: if there are not many paths forward from the moment that you described really well in this book? Because based on the trajectory of even some of the intellectuals that you take a look at, so Peterson, for example. Um, I remember one of my friends texting me after watching Jordan Peterson, um, give a "Biblical interpretation" fused with Freud and Carl Jung and said, this man is going to start a cult if he doesn't convert. Um, and I remember thinking that that's not outside the realm of possibility. And so I wonder when you, when you lay out the meaning crisis, when you lay out the fact that people are becoming more open to, to spirituality in general. When a lot of the "religion poisons everything," um, stuff has been cleared away and people have kind of been granted permission to explore these things. Do you think that a return to Christianity itself is likely? Considering the fact that Christianity is so pitted against the sexual revolution upon which many of our, our, our, our most significant cultural movements are premised? Or a meaning infused, sort of, moralistic, therapeutic deism? Because there, there, I agree with you entirely that the vacuum is going to be filled. I wonder sometimes though, if because I'm a Christian, I just hope that, okay, people are going to, are going to realize that, you know, Christianity was right this whole time. We're going to see sort of a reversal of the secularist trend. But the reality is there's many paths from this moment and you've captured the moment here, I think perfectly. It's, but I wonder if Christianity is the most likely path for them to take, or just the most likely path for intellectuals to take. Yeah, no, I think I think you're absolutely right there. And I think that's something I've increasingly been aware of, actually, is that I think there is a real pull for Christ, of Christianity, once people get it in intellectual circles. It's for me, I'm not seeing lots of intellectuals sort of going, "Oh, I might give, you know, Buddhism a try.""I might give Islam a try.""I might give, you know..." it's, it does feel like Christianity has the high ground here. Um, that's, once people kind of get turned on to the intellectual tradition, especially of Christianity, suddenly the lights go on for a lot of them I think. Not... I don't think that's necessarily going to happen for everyone, obviously. And I, and I think Ayaan Hirsi Ali's right on the money, you know, when she says in her "Dissident Dialogue" that the reason secular materialism has failed is because it can't give young men the kind of vision for life and identity that, say, Islam can give them. Islam is incredibly attractive to young men who are looking for that kind of meaning and purpose. Sadly, very often more attractive than lots of versions of Christianity. Um, and so absolutely, there's an absolute possibility that that for a certain demographic that that is beginning to fill that void, if you like. Um, I think that there are also kind of versions of Christianity, which are kind of more politically motivated. And again, this has been the criticism sometimes of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, that it's a kind of, kind of, quasi-Christian nationalism or something, you know, that, that is being invoked, uh, as, as the kind of solution to the West crisis. Now, again, that is a path down which people could go, and some people do seem to be going down that path. And, again, for me, that's a wrong turn. Um, that's just going to create another kind of idol. So, yeah, there's lots of things that, you know, I quote in the book, GK Chesterton's famous line about once people stop believing in God, they don't thereafter believe in anything. They have the capacity to believe that they don't believe in nothing. They have the capacity to believe in anything. Now, what will come back in with the tide? Yeah, there could be lots of different things and we are already seeing that. But I suppose it is my faith in the end that gives me an optimism that actually Christianity will be the thing that ultimately triumphs, um, kind of as it did in the past. Um, I just think all the other things on offer don't give the kind of fulfillment ultimately. Um, and I'm, I'm encouraged in that sense that a lot of the energy seems to be with Christianity in those, those leading figures who are talking in the, in this way. So I'm, I'm, but I'm by no means saying it's going to be an easy ride. Um, there's going to be a lot of competitors for people's hearts and minds. I just think that secular atheism materialism is not one of them anymore. I think it's failed. I think, um, and so I'm very encouraged to see people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali standing so strongly for, for a kind of a Christian perspective now. But yeah, she's, she absolutely recognizes that, uh, it's not the only game in town. There's a couple of studies that have come out recently kind of detailing what people's primary objection to Christianity was. And it's really interesting because I was involved, I went to a lot of apologetics conferences, you know, when new atheism was a big deal, it felt like we were engaged in some sort of civilizational struggle. It was a lot of fun to engage with Christian apologetics back then. Because as you point out in the book too, um, people on our side were, were really upping their game in response to new atheists. And you make the case that one of the reasons Christian apologetics advanced so much was because it was responding to, to an enemy that had called it out. Um, books like "Religion Poisons Everything" and, and "The God Delusion." But I remember thinking when, when, uh, when I first got involved that the key questions were going to be a lot of the questions you've discussed actually on your podcast and in your book in 2017, right? You know, the historicity of the resurrection, even all these things like, is it true? Now, however, the majority of the questions are that, uh, people think, well, Christianity is cruel to LGBT people because, uh, of its, uh, uh, its restrictions on, on sexuality. Um, it's cruel because of its definition of marriage. Um, um, if, if you're, if you're, if you're Orthodox in that way. And so for me, a book that really impacted my thinking on this was "How the West Really Lost God, a New Theory of Secularization" by Mary Eberstadt, in which she very compellingly makes the case that it's been affirmed by a lot of significant scholars since then, that it wasn't actually, um, the intellectuals who, who facilitated secularization. It was the sexual revolution. And that in fact, the sexual revolution came first. It broke apart the natural family. The natural family is the vessel in which faith flourishes and has passed down. And this kind of facilitated secular, uh, secularization across the West. And so when we look now at, at, um, like cultural queerness to many degrees, replacing cultural Christianity, right, 24 percent of Gen Zers identifying on the LGBT spectrum, but not many of them are actually having relationships with the same sex. That stayed roughly the same, but they want to identify with the perceived cultural power. And so we're seeing a transfer of the sort of Barack Obama cultural Christianity to instead, you know, Andrew Cuomo's daughter who calls herself a demisexual. She's obviously straight in the way that she leans, but she wants to be part of a different kind of movement. What what do you think? What are the implications for this moment? Again, you capture this moment and looking ahead from this moment. What implications does this have? The fact that it was the sexual revolution that facilitated, um, the collapse of Christianity and the rise of secularization. The sexual revolution, although you could argue that it's hit its high watermark, say, in the UK as transgender ideology, um, gets gets rolled back. You could also make the case that it was largely, you know, um, traditional feminists who did a lot of the fighting, uh, um, uh, against gender ideology in the UK and that this isn't a victory for Christians per se. Um, what would you say the implications of, of Eberstadt's thesis and the fact that the primary barrier to Christianity for many people seems to be, um, sexual issues as opposed to truth issues? Yeah. I, I think, I think that's huge. Um, and let's not forget that it's, that issue is the thing that's. In many ways stymieing the church being able to be responsive as it tears itself apart, you know, um, over those issues as well. So it's, it's not just the culture that is creating a problem within. It's, it's within the church too. I, I think, um, that that is absolutely probably correct that the sexual revolution played a huge part in the secularization because it was essentially a rolling back of Christian ethics and to do that you kind of have to basically deny, deny God. As well. I think what's fascinating though is that you do even, even with all that and even with all the problems that now presents the Christian faith is that you do have interesting secular intellectuals like Louise Perry writing books like "The Case Against the Sexual Revolution." Now she doesn't specifically tackle of the more kind of LGBT issues, but she does tackle the general way in which sex has now become commodified, the porn industry, everything else. Um, the way in which sex has been completely, you know, separated from long term committed faithful relationships and everything else. And, and that's just a super interesting study as a book of someone who as a completely kind of secular, liberal, feminist kind of perspective person came to just through looking at, uh, kind of socio evolutionary factors. Came to surprisingly Christian conclusions about what is best for people. She basically came to the conclusion that the sexual revolution has been really bad for, for, for lots of people, mainly women and children. And that there is this funny old thing that we have been practicing up till about 70 years ago called monogamous Christian marriage, which happened to keep the guardrails on male sexuality and enabled the kind of flourishing of women and children and families and therefore society. And when you see someone like Louise Perry rising to, you know, quite a lot of prominence here in the UK in terms of her writing as, you know, and, and kind of being in that circle of the kind of critical feminists. Um, it's very interesting to see that happen because she is actually part of a bit of a wave, actually questioning the whole sexual revolution at this point and saying, what if we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater? What if Christianity had something to say that was important? Now, I haven't seen that filter down to kind of a wholesale questioning of same sex marriage and, and everything. But it's hard to not see that that, that line of questioning isn't going to sort of end up there. And I wonder if there's a sort of the pendulum which swung so far in one direction, post sexual revolution is, is we're starting to see it swing back here in the UK, as you say, as, as, as the kind of Cass report and things like that, kind of just bring a more common sense attitude, if anything, to issues around transgender and everything. But I wonder if it might even swing further as people kind of realize. We are... to be human is, is more than just to be a kind of biological machine that you can do whatever you want with and sleep whoever, with whoever you want with, and identify as whatever you want. I think increasingly there's a kind of a, a swing back to recognizing that actually we were kind of created with a kind of a design in mind with a, a way that we function best. So I'm, I, I absolutely acknowledge that there's a real, it's really difficult at this point to persuade people of the traditional sexual ethic of Christianity because they're so inculcated. But I think as they start to see the other ways in which Christianity makes sense of themselves, there is a, I think, a movement towards starting to see that the stuff it said about sexuality might also make some sense as well. So I wouldn't write that off. Um. We saw how quickly attitudes and ethics change in the sexual revolution. They could change back again. Don't forget that we're basically living in the same kind of, or similar ish sexual attitude now to the one that the early church was born in. Greco-Roman culture was highly, you know, liberal, you could say, in a sense, in terms of its sex, you know, the rules were a bit different in terms of society and so on. But basically, it was an incredibly sexually liberated culture. The first sexual revolution was, of course, the Christian sexual revolution, which basically made people made made men be faithful to women and stop them sleeping around with whoever they wanted. And, um, and I just wonder whether we, it's, it's not impossible that we, you could see a similar kind of anti sexual revolution, you know, of its own coming even in our day. It's, and who knows what that could look like, but I guess I'm just saying. Don't assume just cause this is where we are that this is where, where we'll always be in that way. That's a very, I really like that point because Louise Perry's book, what struck me about Louise Perry's book, "The Case Against the Sexual Revolution" is it was, it was brilliantly written, but also there was a lot of anger on behalf of of women and what they've been, they're being forced to endure in a very pornified culture. Where consent has turned out to be a very flimsy standard because as it turns out, um, it's sexual expectations have changed as a result of pornography, which means that the choices that young women are faced with generally feel like obligations. And we know from all the data coming out of the UK, Canada, and the United States, there's significant data indicating that intimacy has transformed into something that resembles a 21st century sexual hunger games in many cases. And to add to, uh, to Louise Perry, there's Mary Harrington as well. They're quite good friends. And I, I've, I've interviewed both of them, and I would be shocked if they didn't make it into a sequel to your book at some point. Like, it does very much seem that their critique of the sexual revolution is leading them in the direction that you just articulated. And that the next conclusion would be, if I want this to be true. Like actually true, not just preferable, but true, I might end up having to make a leap. Yeah, no, I think that's right. I do briefly mention Louise Perry in the book, um, but she only really kind of came into my consciousness properly as, as the book was kind of coming to a close. And I've since had the opportunity for a couple of conversations with her on, on the podcast I run. And I do think, yeah, I, I honestly think she's kind of taken the temperature, um, of, of young people, especially. I think, I think you'd be surprised at how even though it looks, you know, you, you walk down your road and, you know, we're recording this in June, it's, it's pride month and it just looks like everyone's up for, you know, a very kind of progressive liberal. Um, I think it's surprising though, how unhappy people, young people are with their sex lives. Despite this kind of very liberal progressive culture we're in and unfulfilled they are in them. And that is a lot to do with pornography and everything else. And I just. There's a point at which I think people realize, despite as to use Louise Perry's phrase, "pulling on the freedom lever and, and, you know, maximizing that" it turns out just doing that doesn't actually result in happier, more flourishing lives. And I just think at a practical level, there's a sense in which people may in various roundabout ways, come back to realize that the Christian sexual ethic has something going for it. Um, and, uh, yeah, so, so I guess I'm, I, I see them as, as. As a bellwether of what, of what might happen more generally in our culture going forward. So, um, in your view, you articulate this on, on page 169 of the book. Um, you talk about "the digital age." Um, and it's interesting because I, I, I've done a few interviews and written a few pieces for, for, um, the European Conservative on the digital age. And I was therefore intrigued by your optimism. Because for me, when I, when I started your book, um, and I'm reading about the different intellectuals, um, that, that are embracing the fact that Christianity is good. And some of them who are flirting with the idea that it's true. I thought, well. Well, for intellectuals who spend all of their time, you know, actually grappling with the meaning of the universe and all that it would actually make it seems more likely to me that somebody like a Douglas Murray, as entranced as he is by, you know, by beauty, by poetry, by all these things. It seems more likely to me that somebody who spends their time kind of interrogating the meaning of things might come back to Christianity than your average, you know, consumer who spends most of their time commuting and glutting on TV and pornography and those sorts of things. Because the sheer roar of, of, of, of modern culture, the number of addictive things that we've kind of entangled ourselves in, make it very, very difficult to give people any time to think at all. And if you read, you know, Mark Bauerlein's book, "The Dumbest Generation" or "The Dumbest Generation Revisited." Or any number of other apocalyptic books on the literacy levels of our society at large, it does seem to be more likely that an intellectual would convert than, say, your ordinary person who comes home, throws on Netflix, um, and, and then goes to bed. But you indicate that the, the, the digital age is ramping up the meaning crisis to such an extent that it could force a return to God, or at least a reconsideration of God. Um, and the reason I thought, um, just listening to you now, that this, this could be true is because I do think that, um, the way that violent pornography has transformed the sexual landscape in the last 10 to 15 years, especially. Has kind of started the Louise Perry, Mary Harrington critique. It's become a lot more popular. 10 years ago for a conservative to say that pornography caused rape culture, um, would have gotten you laughed at. You would have said, well, you know, you're Andrea Dworkin. There's no such thing as rape culture. Now that's a pretty standard view across the board. And that's a very significant intellectual shift on that issue specifically, it's a debate I was involved in a lot. And so I guess I'd like to hear your case. Do you think the digital age will culminate, um, in a meaning crisis that leads back to God? Well, we're in the meaning crisis already. But how might that unfold? Yeah. Yeah. I, I do think that, that, that, that is the direction it'll go. Um, I guess that that's a pretty cool bit of my book really, is that the meaning crisis, people try to put all kinds of other things in the place of God before they return to God. Uh, and, but I think ultimately people reached the end of their resources. So I think we're already seeing that in, we're in a meaning crisis. And what people are trying to replace God with is, you know, on the progressive left, kind of certain woke ideologies that kind of function as God for them. They are that, that, that's a sacred sort of identity, um, that gives them their meaning and their purpose and their identity. Um, on the right, you know, political mythologies around Trump as a kind of Messiah figure who will, you know, "Make America Great Again." You can choose your, your kind of thing that you fill the God shaped hole with. Um, but the, what we're seeing, I think in the culture wars is that none of these things work. Um, they just create really unhappy, um, you know, fights and, uh, tribalism. And, uh, and, and in the end that it's exhausting, you know, it's exhausting for young people to basically have to invent themselves from scratch. That's what I think a lot of the psychologists are telling us. It's being kind of fueled and accelerated by technology and social media and everything else. So I think it's kind of inevitable that, that kind of people either just start to kill themselves. And that, of course, is literally happening as well, sadly, or they, they have to find something that works. And Christianity has been proven to work. And, and that's, I think is, is why you are seeing so many secular psychologists, you know, the Jonathan Haidts and the Vicky's and everyone. Kind of basically saying, yeah, we need religion. Um, even if they're not kind of necessarily sold up for it themselves. And extolling the virtues of, of faith. Um, and why I think you are, as I say, even in that generation, like you say, who aren't the intellectuals who are kind of just putting on Netflix and zoning out or whatever. Even they, I think are going to get to a point of, of needing more than that. Um, now it's interesting because I've kind of, as I've been hosting the, the podcast documentary series version of the book. I've been able to go a lot further than just the book. And so just recently I've been interviewing people about, well, what next? What is, could there be some kind of Christian revival on the cards. Which is not something I wanted to kind of tangle with too much in the book itself. Um, and honestly, it's been so surprising to hear again and again, people who are now taking the temperature, especially of Gen Z saying the same thing, basically. Gen Z are ready to believe in God again. They are way more open than Millennials and Gen X, uh, and so on, who were kind of had enough religious background and baggage to kind of be inoculated against it basically. And the new atheism kind of was the tone in which, you know, religion was viewed by a lot of those people. That doesn't apply to Gen Z. They missed the new atheism. They're, they're kind of so unchurched that they don't really have a reference point to kind of criticize it from. And fascinatingly, from what I'm seeing, there's, there's an incredible openness actually. Um, and it's, I think it's borne by the fact that they are, um, kind of, yeah, desperate for something to make sense. Um, and I think that's coming through in, so I spoke to one organization that works across university campuses here in the UK, and they are seeing extraordinary numbers of young people who are willing to go to church. Will say yes, if they're invited to church, lots of young people who are apparently converting as well. There, there's, um, kind of things like the Asbury Awakening, um, is an example of Gen Z young people, just kind of spiritually desperate and hungry and thirsty. And, sort of just reaching out for God. And that's been popping up all over the place here in the UK. There's been certain similar things happening. And it just, for me, it's all just sort of, that is the ground level. If you're like I've, I've, I've likened it to there's up here, there's the intellectuals kind of making the case for God again, and for the value of religion. And that's your Ayaan Hirsi Alis and Tom Hollands and Douglas Murrays. But at the ground level, the meaning crisis is forcing people up as well. And I think the two are kind of converging on each other so that you are finding the, the deep need for a spiritual, for a story to make sense of yourself at the ground level is forcing those people into the same conversation that the kind of the people who are, you know, the intellectual elites are realizing culture needs God. If it's going to survive, if we're going to have human values, if we're going to, you know, um, not turn into Russia, or radical Islam, or woke ideology, or whatever it is. And so, um, so I do think, yeah, something like that is happening. And again, it's probably going to be very messy and it's probably going to be very painful. And it, a lot of the time I think things will look like they're getting worse before they get better, if you know what I mean. Because I think that's what happens in these kinds of scenarios. It's, um, and very often sadly it takes things to get significantly worse before people turn to God. I mean, that's always been the case. Um, I think there was a theologian who didn't live to see the, um, the pandemic, but said probably the thing that will get turn people back to God is a, is a global pandemic. Um, and I think that was kind of borne out a little bit by the fact that it did give people a pause for thought, but there could be worse to come. There's lots of pretty dire things being prophesied when you take AI together with the kind of Metacrisis that people are talking about. When you, when you look at the way in which China and Russia, uh, and the, the kind of political situation going on in the world, it, there could be some really bad things, but, but the only rate that the only silver lining I see to that is that God often works through really dire, um, circumstances to bring people back to himself. And, and I'm not, I'm not in any way wishing any of those things to happen, but it's often those kinds of things that actually ultimately do send people back to, to God in the end. No, and you're right that the baggage of previous generations being cleared away has opened up room for a conversation, right? We find that, um, like I work for a pro life organization and, and going out and speaking to young people about abortion is far easier than talking to somebody who's older because this is just something that they grew up with. It's nobody talked them out of, you know, believing that life in the womb should be protected. It was sort of their default. And young people today are very cynical and very open to being told that they were lied to. They instinctively recognize that they were told that they have everything and it doesn't feel that way. They're very, very unhappy. They were starting to be unhappy before technology, which is just sort of ramped up the trend because I think Malcolm Muggeridge put it best when he said, sex is the mysticism of materialism. And I think that kind of encapsulates the extent to which it's been sort of a false religion that hasn't delivered on what it promised. And the reason that the sexual revolution seemed to work for a couple of generations is because we were living on the fumes. We hadn't, we hadn't torn everything apart yet. You know, people were still, you know, getting married, they were having families. Um, but now this younger generation, um, they didn't get any of the benefits. They've only gotten the downsides. And so for them, they already know this isn't working. They just don't know why. They don't know what else there is. Um, which is why, you know, every sexual identity now becomes a movement almost immediately with its own banner and its own kind of tribe. But I guess so, uh, sort of as a wrap up question, what I wanted to know was if I had to encapsulate your book in, in one sentence, I would have said, um, Um, the elites are now at the point where they admit we need Christ, but are not yet at the point of saying, I need Christ because with, with, with, with a few exceptions, right? But, you know, like Niall Ferguson is saying, we need Christ as an, if you look at our society, if you look at our culture, if you look at the West, like we need Christ or we need Christ back. But when you look at a lot of the individuals. This is sort of what they're, they're, they're really grappling with. Right. Even Dawkins has kind of very reluctantly said, like, I guess it turns out, according to studies, people are less likely to lie or steal if they believe in God. And I wish they could just be as moral as me. But if, if, if, if you need it, then fine. You know what I mean? I guess it serves some utility, although he's gotten away with. He consistently says, I've always said, I'm a cultural Christian. Um, this is not new. I've never changed. And that isn't true because as you quote many times throughout the beginning of your book, he was the one who said, mock it, ridicule it, treat it with contempt. Like that is not a cultural Christian. That is somebody, you know, contempt is, yeah, it's cultural cultural approval. Even in the, the, the interview he gave that went viral about culture and Christianity recently, he's, he's, he's radically inconsistent because in the same interview, he says he really enjoys and doesn't want to lose cathedrals and carols and, you know, the nice trappings of Christianity. He'd rather have them than Islam, certainly. At the same time, he wants people to stop believing in God and being Christians. Well, you won't have any of those lovely trappings of Christianity if people stop believing in God. So it's kind of, yeah, I don't understand why he doesn't see, you know, the obvious inconsistency in his own position there. I think, I think genuinely though, as I say, I think Richard Dawkins is kind of just starting to wake up to the realization that the new atheism was a completely wrong turn, um, and was never going to do the thing that he imagined it would do, this sort of scientific utopia that it would bring about. Um, I, I think, I think he's kind of starting to see that and people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali are pointing it out. Um, yeah, I, I'm sorry, what was the original question? I got off track We need, we need Christ versus I need Christ. Yeah, no, I think that's right. And I think it's fascinating to see that latest dialogue between him and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, because I think that's the perfect example of it. And Ayaan, you know, struggled at times, I think, to, to kind of give a sort of, in a sense, a rational justification for her faith. I think there are rational justifications you can give for faith, but that wasn't, that's not how she landed there. Um, it was a personal crisis that led her. And it was praying and it was the belief that God stepped in. And as she said it in that interview, rescued her. That, that has kind of seems to have transformed her way of thinking about these things. Um, now I don't know if it's likely that Richard Dawkins is going to suffer. So he's going to have such a kind of personal experience that will kind of certainly turn him to God. I think, I think Jord - someone like Jordan Peterson is more primed for that. It seems to be kind of open to, to kind of the inevitable and, and, and a sense that, that, you know, I, I think in the end, um, I think actually in the end, people find all kinds of different ways to God. And so it's not that I think that someone like, um, Dawkins could never become a Christian. I think. But it would take, it would obviously involve him eating a huge amount of humble pie. Um, uh, but I, I think in the end. You know, if I'm absolutely honest, I love hearing people who have become Christians, obviously. But again, like I said earlier, it's for me, it's more about the influence they're having on the people below them. So where, whether Jordan Peterson is or isn't a Christian, all I know is he's opened the door. To a lot of people taking it seriously. And then I know a number of people who directly through his influence have walked through the door to full-blooded Orthodox Christianity. Um, and I think that that's happening more and more with, with some of these folks. So yeah, I wouldn't, I would wish that they would kind of keep tugging on that thread and find that actually Jesus is waiting for them at the other end of it. Not all of them will. Um, but I, I'm, I'm very hopeful that it's opening that door for a lot of other people to pull on that thread. And a lot of people I think are now starting to wake up and realize these values that I long for this story that I wish were true. Maybe it is true. Maybe I was sold a false bill of goods with the kind of atheist naturalism, you know, story of reality. And I just think people are kind of willing to change their mind. Um, so, so yeah, that's my, my overall picture. As a, a, a, a final question about the book. Um, what was, what was the general response to it? It's been very positive. Um, as I say, certainly that there have been plenty of sort of skeptics who have said, what, what, what rebirth when you look at the statistics. But having said that, what I've been struck by is I maybe was the first person to publish on this phenomenon, but I've seen a lot of more people now recognizing it. Um, it was very interesting that, you know, only a month or two after the book was published in September, last year, Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes out with her viral article, "Why I Am Now a Christian." Suddenly I hear a lot of other people talk in very similar terms about the way in which actually we're no less religious than we used to be. We've just got religious about other things. Um, you know, woke ideology, political mythologies, and so on. Uh, you have, you know, interesting stories like Russell Brand, suddenly becoming very devout in faith and, and, uh, becoming baptized. Lots of other people who seem to be on a similar trajectory. And, um, and so I think, I think there was a kind of. That initial skepticism I think has been replaced by people even grudgingly admitting there might be something in this whole thing, and that actually it does feel like the ground has shifted quite significantly, um, in the last few years. So I'm getting a lot of very positive response. A lot of Christians who, I think are just encouraged as well, because inevitably there's been a lot of skepticism, negativity, cynicism around the church, arguably for good reasons. Um, all the scandals and politicization and everything else that does happen. Um, but this, I think was just a shot of hope, um, and optimism to say that actually, I don't think God's finished with the church in the West and that dead things come back to life. And, you know, that's been the history of Christianity. And I think it will be the future as well. Justin, thank you so much for taking the time. Oh, it's been a fantastic interview, Jonathon. I've really, really enjoyed it. So thanks for having me on. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. If you want to hear other conversations like it, uh, you can subscribe to this YouTube channel You can also find our content wherever you get your podcasts, or you can head over to thebridgehead.ca where we post both written commentary and video. Thanks so much for joining us.