Justin Brierley 0:00
Just think there's something about a certain model of ministry, especially in certain parts of the mega church in the USA, celebrity sort of Christianity, that are just quite toxic and can so easily eat themselves. And I think we've just seen that happen again and again. And so for me, it's about the church taking long, hard look at itself and asking, well, who are we doing this for? You know, is it for
some, you know, mega church pastor's ego? Is it so we can say we've got X number of people on our live stream or in our church? Or is it because, you know, you believe that Jesus Christ died for every single person that you interact with? You
Chris Bright 0:43
Welcome back to the thinking church podcast. My name is Chris bright and today my guest is Justin Briley. Justin is a broadcaster and a journalist, and he has worked for a number of years with Premier Christianity on the unbelievable show and the big conversations show. And he's he's spoken with and chatted with lots of atheists and skeptics as well as Christians as well, and he's had some of the most incredible conversations over a number of years. And he has released a new book, which is the surprising rebirth in belief in God. And there's also a podcast about that as well. It's fantastic podcast, and I had a great conversation with Justin, talking about that rebirth in belief in God, and I think you've got to find it really interesting. We talk all about Jordan Peterson, and we talk about Alex O'Connor, the cosmic skeptic. We also talk about Tom Holland, and we talk about, how can the church learn from these people, but also, how can the church stay relevant and fresh and unique in its time and place. So we dive into all those things before we go into that, I just want to let you know about our free target market persona sheet. Now it sounds really businessy, and all it really is is a free sheet that will help you think about who is around your church, who are the people you're called to reach, and how can you get to know them better? It's basically looks at the attitudes, interests and opinions of the people that you're called to reach, and it means that you need it's going to help you do a whole lot of research to know who is in your locality, and what are the things that you need to do to be able to reach them. What do they believe, and how can you reach them with the gospel? So make sure you pick that up. That's for free. The link is in the description. Now onto my conversation with Justin Briley.
Well, welcome back. My name is Chris, and I'm joined with Justin Briley today. Justin, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you back on the show. Thank you very much. Nice to be back. Great. And we were just saying before we hit record, you've been out in the states doing lots of speaking tours and things like that. How has that all been out in the States?
Justin Brierley 2:52
Yeah, it's been good. Thank you. It's been about just over a year and a half since I kind of went freelance, as it were, with my work and journalism and so on. So it's been fun to get some invitations to go out to the US, to speak in my own capacity there at number of churches that I'm linked in with. So yeah, in August was sort of the West Coast California, speaking in
Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, those kinds of places. And then just more recently, with my son, Noah, we were in Texas, speaking at a conference at a big church in Dallas, and speaking around about and it's kind of partly that's all come because over the years, a lot of the listeners and the audience for my work have been in the US, so there's kind of been a natural case for going there and addressing churches and audiences there. So that's, that's real fun, because there's a kind of transAtlantic sort of aspect to the work I do now, both from the UK, the US, but also other parts of the world as well. And everyone obviously will love the the English accent, of course, yes, yeah. They say it gives you extra IQ points when you go to the UK, the US, if you, if you're from the UK, I'm happy to trade on that, even though it's obviously not true. But yeah, it's great. No, that's brilliant. Maybe that's the way I'm going to break the states, is with my British accent. So I'm going to have to work on that one. Well, we are here today to talk about your latest book, just the surprising rebirth of belief in God, also associated podcast as well, which has just been fantastic to listen to. And what we'll do is we'll just dive into that and just some of the things around that. Now, what in your book, in your podcast, you've talked quite a lot, and in other podcasts that I've seen you on, you've talked about this kind of the tide of belief in God has gone out over the last centuries, but you've started to see this kind of initial changing of the tide. Um, what signs have you seen that have kind of started to see that changing tide of belief in gods? Do you think? Yeah, well, the where I really begin the book is.
Is with the kind of high watermark of new Atheism in the mid 2000s and in many ways, you know, you could have been forgiven for thinking 1520, years ago that that tide of faith really had washed out and was never going to come in again. Because new Atheism was so popular, these very sort of dogmatic anti God thinkers who were riding high. You know, in the media, they had best selling anti God books in the charts. There was the atheist bus campaign, if you remember that, in 2009
these, these red London busses emblazoned with the slogan, there's probably no God now stop worrying.
And just, yeah, it was just kind of trendy, really, to kind of disparage religion and and so on. So so that that kind of that was the atmosphere in which I started having conversations about faith. But I did notice that that movement, that new atheist movement, as it came to be called, sort of waned quite quickly, just almost as quickly as it had popped up. Because by the mid 2010s late 2010s I was noticing the rise of of a number of interesting thinkers, still secular, not necessarily Christian thinkers, but who were far more open to the value of Christianity. And I think to some extent, the quite shrill, dogmatic form of new Atheism had kind of worn thin with its public appeal and in intellectual circles. In fact, I don't think it was ever really very popular in intellectual circles, honestly, because it wasn't really an intellectual movement. It was intellectual movement. It was. It was more a sort of online meme kind of movement. But having said that, I think ultimately that that movement basically just withered away, and in its place, I think, has come a much more interesting conversation, often involving these secular intellectuals who are asking questions again about God and whether we can live without the Christian story in the West. So I I started to profile more and more of these voices on my unbelievable show at the time, which I was hosting. And I also started to notice, you know, a number of interesting examples of quite high profile people converting to Christianity, kind of unexpectedly as well. And it was actually during a conversation I had on one of my shows with Douglas Murray, again, one of these secular intellectuals who's kind of in recent years, become a lot more open to the value of the Judeo Christian worldview. And he was in a conversation with NT Wright on the show and and he referenced this well worn line from Matthew Arnold, who's his poem, Dover Beach, talks about the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar of the sea of faith, you know, which was 150 years ago that poem was written. So that's only accelerated, really, in in the intervening time. But he said to me, Doug smurry said to me, Well, the thing about the sea of faith, Justin is it could come back in again. After all, that is the point of tides. And he was saying that in the context of himself, kind of calling himself a Christian atheist, which sounds obviously like a contradiction in terms, but where he, I think himself, had come to realize that even as a non Christian, he still completely had come to recognize the fact that all of his deepest values and beliefs about what it means to be human, you know, Western democracy, everything else, essentially come from the Christian story. And he was also noticing the same thing that I was noticing a lot of interesting people starting to take Christianity seriously again, even converting some of his friends and colleagues, you know, thinking, you know, rational 21st century people becoming Christians. And very often, as he put it, sort of drinking from the deepest wells, going to very orthodox, very traditional forms of Christianity. So I felt there was enough there. It felt like something had changed. The conversation changed. The tone of the conversation had changed. And it wasn't that I was seeing masses of people suddenly flooding into churches. You know, the decline of the church was only ever pointing in one direction. But at the same time, it felt like something had changed. And I just wondered whether Matthew Arnold's famous sea of faith, whether it maybe had reached its furthest limit of going out, and maybe we were just starting to see the first signs of a sort of turning of the tide. So, so that was the kind of the metaphor that I use in the book. It's on the front cover, and there's a sort of a wave coming in, and, and, and why I called the book and the podcast series now the surprising rebirth of belief in God.
Chris Bright 9:07
And I think you touched on that kind of new Atheism. And the the tide at its furthest was in the kind of the new atheist sphere. One of those popular, I mean, the most popular atheist was, was, of course, Richard Dawkins. And I've noticed, certainly recently him starting to struggle in that public conversation a little bit more. I watched a really fascinating interview with him on trigonometry, which is Constantine Kisin's Channel, and really struggling with
with Constantine Kisin being much more sort of
open to belief in God's really putting some questions to him that he really struggled to answer. And it made me kind of wonder, why, why do you think the Dawkins is are suddenly, suddenly starting to sort of struggle in this changing ties? Do you think
Justin Brierley 9:57
I think it's because the ground has shifted quite a lot, and.
To Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists. And something I point out in the book and podcast series is, is that there are some now very strange bedfellows. Because I think
the new Atheism was was a fairly unified movement initially, but then around 2011 2012 it all started to get very much split within the new atheist community and all basically, the culture wars came quite early for new Atheism, and they started to have major fallouts within the community over issues like gender and feminism, LGBT and so on, and and particularly Richard Dawkins, this is this has come to kind of affect his kind of public status, because he has been very critical, for instance, of transgender ideology, kind of from a biological point of view. And that has earned him a lot of, you know, critics from his own camp, many sort of secularists, you know, atheists who are very pro trans who now feel that he is transphobic and so on. In fact, it led to him being stripped of his humanist of the Year Award by the American Humanist Association in 2021 so this so there was this kind of internal implosion, really, of new Atheism as they started to go to war over these issues. And suddenly, I think people like Richard Dawkins have ironically found themselves kind of actually closer in some respects, to some of their more like conservative religious folk, you know, on those kinds of issues. And there's a so there's been a strange kind of remapping of the territory, where suddenly Richard Dawkins finds himself in closer Reliance with some Christians than he does with some of his atheist brethren. And I think that's kind of led to this kind of sort of uncertainty to some extent, that that's that's within even Richard Arkansas mind about, I think, about the whole project that he thought, you know, we were heading towards this sort of scientific Utopia once we got rid of religion. I think what he's realized is that religion is, is comes in all sorts of forms, basically, and, and there's a kind of, there's a quasi religion of the progressive left, just as much as there is of the sort of religious right, if you like. And it can be just as much of a cancel culture, and just as, you know, in and out and heretics and everything else. And I think it's kind of tempered his criticism simply of institutional religion. He's realized actually this, this religious incident goes quite deep, and it might be harder than he thought to sort of to squash it, because it just pops up in different forms, you know. And so and so. I think that's why he now finds himself. It's slightly harder to sort of just say, Yay for secularism, Bucha, religion. He's realized the world's more complex than that, and he's also seeing that actually, I think he's just come to realize, in a way, that his, you know, friend who's now converted to Christianity. Iron Hersey alley has that actually, secularism itself may not have all the answers. It may not provide a deep enough, rich enough story for people to be able to live their lives by and so I just find that he's a little he's kind of, maybe just been slightly humbled, almost, with his original kind of, you know, quite dogmatic, confident, bold assertions about, you know, why religion needs to go and it's going to be replaced by science and reason. And he's having these interesting conversations with people like Konstantin kissin, where they're saying, Well, you know, kak, can we really throw the baby out with the bathwater and so on. So I think that's all at play. And then you have him sort of even saying things like, Well, I am a cultural Christian, and so on. That kind of interview went viral earlier in the year, and and I think again, that's because he's sort of reaching for something
that feels a bit more solid. And at the moment,
contemporary culture is not very solid at all. So, so I think he's even Richard Dawkins, you know, of all people is starting to realize, well, maybe it's we were better with the devil we knew, you know, which is sort of
the values at least, of Christianity kind of make more sense than this new world that we're creating for ourselves. So, so it's an interesting time, you know, where, where even Richard Dawkins can seem to have more common cause, sometimes with religious people, than than perhaps he ever imagined he would. You know, it was very interesting hearing him talk sort of in sort of these kind of cozy terms about how he enjoyed hymns and church bells and things like that, which was very, sort of very bizarre to hear him talk about those things. I think it's from what I can tell, it's the in this. I think he's worried a lot about about Islam coming in. And I think he goes, Well, I'd rather, yeah, I'd rather a Christian, Christian worldview, than a than an Islamic worldview. I think that's in his mind. But I think it's, I can only sense there's a, there's a bit of,
Chris Bright 14:39
I guess cognitive dissonance in his mind about this, because it's difficult to deal with. Yeah, one of the one of the thinkers that I know you talk about quite a lot, I know you interviewed a lot, and is crucial in this kind of rebirth, is Jordan Peterson. Now I find him possibly one of the most fascinating people to listen.
To, and I've listened to an awful lot of his stuff over the years and but I think whenever I talk to some church leaders, I think he tends to be quite a taboo, slightly controversial character. I think he's often occasion that sort of controversy. What do you think that Jordan Peterson's kind of contributed to this kind of rebirth, and maybe, why should we interact with him as Christians? Do you think, yeah, I mean, you say I've interviewed him a lot. I've only actually had the one interview with him. It's only just the one, yeah,
Justin Brierley 15:33
maybe I've, you know, made that much of it that it sounds like more, but the Yeah, he came on my show in 2018 to sort of do a debate with an atheist psychologist called Susan Blackmore on the question of whether we can make sense of life without God, basically, and for all the world, you would have imagined you could have listened to that as a sort of casual listener, and thought that Jordan Peterson was the Christian apologist in the in the show, because he was defending the idea that we can only make sense of human value if we believe in kind of divine purpose, and us being made in the image of God and so on and so. So it was a really interesting one, because, as I say, Jordan Peterson himself is hard to tie down exactly where he is, you know, as a regards God and that kind of thing. He's he's kind of difficult to he takes things at a very young symbolic level. And the reason I bought him on the show was because I was, you know, this was in the early days of his sort of rise to fame. He he was drawing huge crowds, especially of young men, to maybe two or three hour lectures on the book of Genesis. And I just thought, this is so interesting, because this is basically bringing in the same demographic, same sort of secular demographic, that the new atheists were attracting, but this time, he's giving them a very different set of answers. He's pointing them back to Scripture. He's not sort of dismissing it and ridiculing it. He's saying, actually, there's a lot of wisdom here and and so I just found this whole thing fascinating. And I think he quickly came onto the radar of a lot of Christian leaders at that time because he was a sort of, you know, someone attracting bass crowds and pointing them at Scripture. And so he's been a fascinating sort of to me as well ever since. Not that I agree with everything that comes out of his mouth, but it's a sort of he does seem to at least take Christianity very seriously, and he sees the just how much it has done for the West in that sense. Now I think the reason why church leaders are often also a little bit aware is because he's, you know, in some of his manifestations, especially on Twitter and places like that. He can be very culture warriory. He can be, you know, quite controversial. He can say things that, you know, land him or others in hot water and so on. So as I say, I'm not, I wouldn't endorse everything he says. But at the same time, I think you can't ignore him, because he has attracted a lot of people, especially as I say, young men, to kind of just to take Christianity seriously again. And to that extent, you know, whatever you think of him or his politics, there's no doubt that he's kind of opened the door intellectually for a lot of people to kind of, you know, reconsider Christianity, whereas, as I say, his new atheist brethren, who he's shared a lot of stages with, he's done debates with Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and so on.
Music.
And
He's, he's kind of, as I say, offering a different picture of reality and and I've met lots of people who essentially are Christians today because of of Jordan Peterson, you know that he kind of made it possible for them to take it seriously. So, so I, I think the reason I've been interested in tracking his journey and his influence is because I think he's, he's it. He's scratching an itch in our culture, and I think he's almost like a Prophet from outside the church that the church needs to be aware of and understand. Well, why? Why is this attracting so many people? What? What is it about the way he tells the story of Scripture that seems to make sense to a lot of people, and I think he sort of think one of the things that I think has been attractive about Jordan Peterson in particular is he takes people really seriously. He doesn't kind of dumb things down too much. He kind of almost, you know, stretches people. Now, some people will like his kind of psychological approach, and other people say, Oh, it's all a load of baloney. You know, Richard Dawkins kind of likes the kind of free speech, kind of warrior aspect of Jordan Peterson. They're on the same page over transgender, for instance. But he like, can't stand his kind of, what he sees as psychobabble, waffle about, you know, the importance of Scripture. So it's kind of like he's got different people who like him for different reasons. But I think, I think actually, I find that he stretches his audience. He talks about really deep issues that often we've kind of skirted around in Western culture. And I think in a funny way, because he has become very well known through social media, through YouTube, through podcasts, those long form sort of, I. Ways of engaging with people that have kind of managed to now escape the usual gatekeepers of media. You know, now that we have the internet and social media, suddenly it turns out there's a huge audience of people looking for this very kind of long form, deep content, and people who just really want to think through life and just, I think he's just reaching a lot of especially these young men who feel bereft of purpose and meaning, and they feel like they're floating around without any real sort of sense of who they are. And, and suddenly he's kind of giving them a way to think about their identity again. And, and it's like he becomes this sort of sage father figure that he's not particularly actually dispensing advice that's that radical or different. It's just that suddenly, people suddenly seem to be willing to hear it and listen to it. So as I say, I've, I've been, you know, really interested in that. And I think the other aspect of it, as well as the sort of the seriousness with which he takes people's kind of existential, sort of longings and feelings, there's also a real, often at his best, I'd say in his lectures, there's a real kind of vulnerability he, you know, he was sometimes termed the weeping prophet, because he would cry, you know, quite easily on stage when talking about these things. And there was a sense in which, I think people sort of connected with that, because it felt like the kind of intellectual firewall got broken down a bit there. It felt I know this really, this is something that really matters. This is, you know, this is about your hopes and fears and dreams and life and so on. So I think there's just they kind of connected with people in a different way to some of the other sort of, you know, Ted Talk type people that maybe can do a good speech, but for whatever reason, I think he's just helped people to realize that life is about more than just getting on in the world, about biology, more than just sort of you know that the stuff that often culture throws at us, and certainly the new atheist made it all about it's all just about science and reason. I think, I think somehow Jordan Peterson managed to break through that, and it was just really refreshing, I think for a lot of people,
Chris Bright 22:07
yeah, yeah. And he, I think he, the depth and the length of conversation that he, he engages in, I think that's a refreshing thing, especially in church circles when you know church services are getting shorter. And he, you know, he's, he's doing, you know, whatever it was, an eight part series on the book of Exodus, with this big round table discussion. And you just never would have thought that would be a thing that would be in, would be wildly popular. And obviously, he did his Genesis series as well. And so I think he's interacting at a completely. He's bringing something new, and he's bringing a depth that I think people are longing for. Obviously, it's not the theolog, the theologian in me, kind of looks at it as it's not quite, you know, Orthodox Christianity sometimes, um, but I think he's, he's, he's leading towards a path. I think it is a path that he's leading people towards, which leads people towards a much more Christian worldview, which I think is really helpful. Yeah, on that Christian worldview, another thinker, writer that's been really influential is Tom Holland and and I've managed to finish reading dominion, which took me about two holidays. Well done to read, yes, two holidays, and also listening via audio. But I'm glad I got through it, because I think it was just one of the most fantastic books I've read on a real, I know, a real journey. You're going from 400 BC right up to the modern day, and it's been obviously humongously influential, especially for people like we've mentioned, iron hercially, and she she cited that book as one of the books that helped her in coming to faith. Why do you think this book's been just so persuasive in bringing people like the iron Hersey alleys and making Christianity that kind of viable option again. What do you think that is?
Justin Brierley 24:02
Well, I honestly believe that Tom Holland is, is kind of the church's secret weapon when it comes to evangelism. He's he struggles to even call himself a Christian, but I have met so many people who have been influenced by his dominion thesis in the direction of Christianity, I think, in a strange way, a bit like Jordan Peterson, though they are quite different. Tom Holland is kind of being used by God, actually, as, again, as a sort of prophet from outside the church to kind of draw people to Christianity. And there is something that, there's the fact that I think he's just a breath of fresh air in an otherwise very kind of predictable, sort of secular, atheistic argument about the evils of religion and so on, which we've all heard, you know, for a long time now, through the new atheist sort of media machine. But, but then Tom Holland comes on the scene and completely. Like with this book, Dominion, sort of turns that all over and engages in some really fascinating conversations with people. One of them was on my own show shortly after the book was published with philosopher AC grayling, very much in the new atheist camp and and it's just a fascinating debate to watch as Tom Holland and AC grayling go at it over whether Christianity gave us our moral values, basically. And, you know, I'm biased, maybe, but I do think that Tom Holland really took AC grayling to the woodshed in that one, because I think he does make a really strong case that actually our beliefs in human equality and dignity, compassion, progress, freedom, they don't come out of a vacuum. They don't come from science and atheism. Those are just sort of value neutral propositions. They certainly don't come from the Greeks and the Romans. Because the whole point of Tom Holland's whole thesis is that if you spend time in the sandals the Greeks and the Romans, as he had done for a long time, you do not find you know the same values whatsoever, as we are used to in the west and so he, he, yeah, almost single handedly, in a strange way, has kind of put this sort of this thesis into the public sphere, saying, Guys, if you enjoy the things you value about, you know, Western democracy, equality, dignity, so on. Guess where they come from? They came from Christianity. They came from Jesus of Nazareth and and that's really caught on for some reason. It's not that he's the first person to have said this. There are a number of other historians, Rodney Stark and various others who have kind of written books of a similar nature. But for some reason, the Tom Holland is is the one who broke through into public culture. And I think that's partly because, because he's a great because he's a great communicator. He obviously hosts now the the the best sort of listen to History podcast in the world. The rest is history. It's just becomes hugely influential. So I've had the great, yeah, good, good fortune of really sitting down with him several times over the last couple of years to talk about this. But I think what's really interesting is there's also sort of a personal dimension to this for Tom Holland as well, that he's sort of become increasingly attracted himself to the Christian faith by seeing the way it's shaped culture. And even though he struggles, as he, you know, candidly admits with believing the Collect the supernatural claims of Christianity, he's he would much rather the Christian story were true than the sort of secular atheist story if reality were true, which he finds pallid and boring and sort of, you know, uninspiring. So so again, for some reason, his voice has just again clarified for a lot of people a few things and as Yeah, again, helped to kind of opened the door intellectually. Suddenly, some of the objections people had about, oh, religion's been terrible for the world, therefore it can't be true, have suddenly sort of been sidestepped. And suddenly people realizing, Oh, well, turns out actually, Christianity might have done a lot more for us than I thought it did, and that alone almost has helped to drop some people's barriers and make them start to consider the actual truth claims of Christianity?
Chris Bright 28:03
Yeah, absolutely. I've started, I started a an apologetics group at my church, and I've actually used Tom Holland, one of his videos, I think was his conversation with Dan snow, and I use that as part of an apologetics argument. Now that actually, when you know you've got all of the kind of the belief in God, you know the the arguments for theism, they're kind of an early, early ones. You've got the argument for the resurrection. But I think there's this missing piece I class as the kind of the Tom Holland argument, or the historical argument, that I think that this is, if you just look at the how the world has been completely and utterly changed through through Christianity, it's a very compelling argument, I think so it is. It is brilliant. And your the conversation you hosted with Tom and AC grayling was another absolute classic, I think, and really enjoyed this. I've listened to that a number of times as well, and it's a great one. It's one thing. I think it was a conversation with with yourself, that, and it resurfaced recently that Tom Holland was talking about churches need to embrace the sort of the supernatural and the weird, which is really countercultural to this kind of seeker sensitive church view that's come out in the you know, came out in the 90s and 2000s Do you think that with this kind of rebirth? Do you think this is also for the church? Do you think it needs to put to death that kind of seeker sensitive style church? Do we need to kind of embrace the weird and the supernatural? What are your thoughts on that?
Justin Brierley 29:41
Yeah. So the clip that you're referring to, yeah, sort of for me, at least, went viral on Twitter with, you know, nearly two retweets. It was just a short clip of Tom in conversation with me at an event earlier this year that was hosted by LSCC at Westminster. I. Chapel. And we were talking about his thesis and about his own personal journey, and kind of what he thinks the church can do. You know what I think Tom wants to see the church prosper, but he often feels like the church kind of, kind of can be a little bit uncomfortable in its own skin in modern secular culture. And he thinks it often makes the mistake of trying to kind of tone down, or dumb down, or, you know, become so culturally relevant that it becomes culturally invisible and and so his advice, essentially, you know, in a in a phrase, was, keep Christianity weird. He thinks for the church to be attractive, actually, it has to look different, and it has to be different. And one of the things he said in this clip, which he said many times elsewhere, is that in some ways, Christianity has been the victim of its own success. Christianity has been so successful that nobody now in the West questions the deeply what were weird principles it had at its foundation about the equality of all people, and putting privileging the poor, putting them first, about the idea that, you know, the victim will triumph over the powerful. These are all kind of so embedded now in our psychology. You know, we, he said, we've nationalized all those things. We, you know, the Church used to be the place that provided for the poor, education, hospitals. Now it's all done by the state, because we essentially accepted all the core principles of Christianity in that way. And he says, So now, how can the church look distinctive? And he says he thinks that it has to actually major on that side of it, which often doesn't in popular culture, which is the supernatural, the weirdness of its claims. You know about Jesus being born of a virgin, dying and rising again, angels, the supernatural. And he says, And he points out, the fact that areas where the church does seem to be growing tend to be on Evangelical, charismatic type of circles where there is a kind of focus on the gifts of the Spirit and healing and that kind of thing. Also black Pentecostal churches, but also, he says Anglo, Catholic kind of churches where there's kind of a fairly unashamed kind of weirdness about the ritual and the mystery and and, you know, and so on and so. And when he does go to church, Tom Holland goes to, you know, London's oldest church, and Bartholomew the great which is steeped in this really, you know, if you go there, it'll be a kind of almost otherworldly experience. And I think that's what he means, is people like him, they're they're not looking for more of the same, of what you can already find in the culture. They're looking for a different story. They're looking for a different experience. And so he says, you know, you do better to actually highlight those differences, rather than try to kind of be slightly embarrassed about them and hide them away. And and that just seems to resonate with a lot of people. Hence, why, why you got so many retweets this, this clip from that, that conversation, and, and it's one of the core things I draw out in the final episode of this podcast documentary series, and the final chapter of the book, where I'm trying to lean into what some of the lessons could be for the church. I think one of them is to keep Christianity weird. It was the reason it was so pop. The reason it took off in the first century was because it was weird, and weird for the reasons Tom explained, you know, that it believed in the dignity of all people, equality. It had this completely radical way of looking at the relationships between masters and slaves. It had all kinds of like strange things in its culture. No longer weird, obviously. But I think today we need to ask, well, well, how do we keep Christianity weird, you know? Because actually, it needs to stand out from the culture if it's going to be seen in the culture. And actually, I think more and more people are looking for something that's a different story to what they're already getting in the culture. So, so yeah, that that I kind of borrowed that phrase almost from Tom Holland in in my book and podcast, keep Christianity weird, because I think it's, it's a helpful way of a framing that the church needs to, yeah, perhaps question that seeker sensitive model. I'm not saying, like, put up barriers that don't need to be there. Obviously, we don't want to make it difficult for people to enter our churches, but at the same time, we need to be comfortable in our own skin. You know, just, just be aware that actually a lot of people looking for a different story when they come into church. So, so don't pretend you know that we're anything, that we're not. You
Chris Bright 34:19
know absolutely well, we've, we've talked already about Richard Dawkins, and I think that the, you know, the with the the waning of the Dawkins style, kind of atheist, there's kind of a new rise. And I know you're friends with Alex O'Connor, I would consider him to be someone that's a very newer version of, I know he's an atheist at the moment. I know he grew up Catholic, I believe, and has since kind of become an atheist. But for me, he seems a very different style atheist to the Dawkins. What do you think? How do you think that kind of almost the new new atheist as they were, and. Um, how does he differ from the Dawkins? And I wonder, what sort of new challenges does, does that bring? Yeah, well,
Justin Brierley 35:08
it's interesting, because Alex has definitely gone as sort of an evolution of his atheism, because I first bumped him to when he was probably about 16 years old, and he'd sort of was just starting to really blow up on YouTube, but just as a sort of teenager from his bedroom, you know, and he got this trendy name at the time, cosmic skeptic, which I think he now feels is a bit cringe. Hence, he sort of distanced himself a bit from it in recent years. But he's at the time that I we, we sort of first interacted. It was because I'd published a kind of video making a sort of apologetic argument for the fine tuning of the universe for life. And he kind of did a snarky response video. But once we got to know each other, we got on quite well. And and I think his initial offerings were very kind of snarky new atheist Mimi kind of videos. And actually, he now will look back on a lot of those videos and say, Actually they were pretty bad. And he was trying to channel, you know, some kind of teenage version of Christopher Hitchens, basically. But I think what happened to Alex is that he he seems to be genuinely open to pursuing truth and finding things out. He's just interested in people he's not. I think he quickly ditched that kind of new atheist, sneering, kind of, you know, approach, and just just started to become actually, genuinely interested in what other people believe and why they believe it, and kind of debating them about it, you know, in good faith. He went to Oxford, got a degree in theology and philosophy, lived for many, has lived for many years with Christians, counts Christians as some of his best friends. So he's kind of, really, you know, genuinely tried to understand. And he's, as he says, he remains an atheist, but he's, he's far more understanding and appreciative of many of the arguments for Christianity that he wants, perhaps dismissed. He's far more aware of the value of Christianity as well, I think, for many people, and I don't think he's, in a sense, trying to make atheist converts anymore, as he perhaps was in his younger years. And and I find him a really delightful kind of dialog partner, because I genuinely feel like, as I say, he's he's there for the conversation, and not just to kind of score points, as long as, I think he feels the other person's up for the same thing. He can. He can do the kind of point scoring debating very well if he wants to. And I've seen him do that, you know, in some circumstances where he knows that's what he's there for. But I think he actually really enjoys better the the open ended conversations and so on and and so, yeah, I've really enjoyed sort of talking that through with him. I think, you know, it's interesting, because a lot of people, because he's become so warm and open and sort of, you know, gracious towards Christian his Christian guests that he has on, they've wondered, well, is he on the verge of converting? Now, I don't know where Alex is, and I've asked him once or twice. You know what? You know, what would it take you to cross the line? And I think he said things like, well, I guess only God, literally, God knows, if God's there, what that would be. I just It hasn't happened to me yet, but I don't I like to feel that he is genuinely like, open. I get the feeling that he is, at some level, genuinely open. He's changed his mind on some things, like he was very sort of earnest vegan for a long time, and that constituted quite a large part for a time of his content. He's always had a very sort of ethical view of life and and veganism kind of became a very important subject for him, but he found it, in the end, unsustainable, just at a personal level, for health reasons and other reasons. And so he stopped being a vegan. And that did not make him popular in the vegan community. He was seen as a traitor and everything. And that was, you know, so he's willing to change his mind, you know, on things that are almost, you know, quasi religious, to the communities that are there. So I don't, I feel like, yeah, he could change his mind on atheism as well, and we'll see. But I've, at the moment, I just enjoy interacting with him, you know, I think he's a really fascinating person.
Chris Bright 39:16
Yeah, I find him fascinating as well. Actually, the more I've watched of him, the more I warm to him, actually. And I've seen some of the earlier snarky stuff as well, which is, which is quite interesting to watch, but there's certainly in the more later videos I've seen, much more of a warmth in him. What I've noticed is, I mean, he knows his apologetics better than probably most of us do. He knows every facet of of every argument, and I know that he's he's not taken by Tom Holland's argument either. I think he's recently, kind of been slightly he's reacted to those, I wonder, with with this, with an with an Alex O'Connor, or people. Like him. What do you think that? Do you think the church needs to change any of its message or change any of its approach? Do you think to reach the the the Alex O'Connor's of the world? What do you think needs? Do you think we need to change anything?
Justin Brierley 40:12
I mean, Alex is fairly unique, and I think the more, the more I've kind of engaged in the kind of the hardcore atheist community, which, Alex, if you like, was part of a one time that it's, it's, it's, it can offer it was, it was allowed. But ultimately, I think, quite a small community in fact, and and I think the problem sometimes has been that the church has often been engaging the loudest sort of opponent of Christianity, without realizing actually, that most people, they don't have massive philosophical objections in the end to Christianity. They just think it's irrelevant or boring or whatever. And all it took, really, I think, was people like Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland to say, actually, it's not boring, it's not irrelevant. It's quite it's very relevant, actually, to your life. This, this Christian story, for people to suddenly wake up and say, Oh yeah, there might be something in this. I don't think that the majority Alec, one of the issues he brings up quite frequently is the question of violence in the Old Testament, and that's one of the issues. And that's fair enough, if if you're meeting people with those particular objections scripture, you should be ready to, you know, meet them. And I think that's an important part of what apologetics does, and helping people understand that and so on. But most people I meet, actually, they have those aren't particularly their objections. Actually, most of the time, it's just that they don't see how God is relevant, or church is relevant to their life. It's sort of something that some people do as a strange hobby on the weekend, if they feel so inclined, and and so I think actually the church needs to be learning more from, you know, the Jordan Peterson approach, where he doesn't sort of really worry too much about those sort of new atheist type objections to Christianity. He kind of just says, Well, where do you get your purpose from? What are what? Why are you so depressed? What's you know, why do you feel like you can't build the life that you hoped you would have and everything else? And those are the actual concerns that people really have, and when they find that actually, the Christian story speaks to those concerns in a very powerful way, suddenly, I think a lot of those other philosophical, quasi intellectual objections kind of fade away, actually, because they suddenly find, oh, there's more here than I ever thought there was. This isn't just some sort of, you know, intellectual game of chess, you know. And so, I mean, again, one of the principles I draw out towards the end of this podcast, documentary series and the end of the book, The surprising rebirth of belief in God, is the church needs to kind of engage with the imagination as much as the intellect. And while there's absolutely a place for that kind of traditional apologetics, answering objections, making a kind of philosophical, intellectual case for God, because there are going to be people who need that. I think the majority of people actually just need to be given a reason to want Christianity to be true in the first place. That actually that's where you begin showing them why Christianity kind of is completely relevant to the life that they're living and the disappointment they're experiencing and and it's kind of it's showing them why they would want this story to be true and then showing them that it is so. I think you often have to start a bit further back rather than trying to kind of prove to someone, here's three philosophical reasons for God, here's four reasons why Jesus rose from the dead. I don't think much of that lands if you're not particularly interested in the story being true in the first place. You have to kind of provoke a desire in people. And I think that's what the Jordan Peterson thing is doing. It's saying, wouldn't it be amazing if this were true, if there was a kind of a world in which there was a story, a purpose, a meaning, an identity, for you to live out, but kind of an adventure of kind of, you know, that you could go on and what if, what if there and what and what if this funny old book the Bible, kind of speaks into all of that in all kinds of weird and strange ways. But actually, it turns out in ways that that kind of have made sense of generations of people in the past and and so before you go to all of those intellectual issues, you just kind of, I think, stir something in people about why they would want it to be true. And then so again, I think Blaise Pascal put it well. He said, make good men wish that it were true and then show them that it is. And I think that's kind of the best form of apologetics, is doing it in in that order, as it were.
Chris Bright 44:46
Yeah, absolutely, I know. I fully agree with that. And I think that, I think people do want a sense of, they want to live inside of a bigger story. And I think helping them to realize that there is a, there is a bigger story first. And. And and then working on the philosophical, you know, those kind of arguments, or the, you know, historical arguments, or those kind of things, they can come a bit later, and almost can be, and often as or as much, a way to support people who do believe, to make sure to help them, to give a good undergirding. And you know, this a good foundation to their their faith, of what they of a belief they've already had. And so I think that's, I think that's really interesting. One of the things I've noticed recently, and maybe this is me running my own apologetics group at my church, is that what sometimes I and I start to look at my own area, my own tradition. I'm evangelical Pentecostal, and I look at some of the people across the other side of the Christian aisle to me. And when I think that, especially in the church, I think engaging philosophically with culture, I think is something that I look at, and especially from my side of things, that the church, we've probably not been particularly great at, sometimes looking at what's coming out in culture, what's behind those kind of things, and then I look across at my my Catholic brothers and sisters, and actually seeing quite a lot of people engaging very much philosophically With the worldviews, and especially Robert Barron, I think's been excellent, and that, and others as well, really good at being able to go, Look, this is what's happening in the world, and this is the worldview behind it. And I've ended up, you know, watching lots of things that help me understand the worldview that I've almost inherited. So, you know, looking at some of post modernism and all those kind of things that have started to creep in. Why do you think it is that? And maybe you can speak into this. I don't know what, what church tradition you're you're in, but why do you think that more of the evangelical side of things have maybe been a little bit more, little bit less philosophically involved, whereas on the on the Catholic side, they've been, I've seen a lot more engagement on that side. What do you think as someone looking I didn't, I don't know what, yeah, like I said, don't know what tradition that you are, but as you look into it, what are your thoughts on that, the philosophical side of it?
Justin Brierley 47:17
Well, I think it goes without saying that Catholicism has had a long sort of intellectual tradition, you know, going back to Augustine and the early church fathers and everything. So it's all there now. I think in some forms of Catholicism, it's been very deeply buried. So Bishop Robert Barron, who you mentioned, who's been one of the prime kind of people, certainly in the online space, is kind of bringing back that intellectual tradition for a popular level audience. I think he's the first person to say the Catholic Church is often not brought out these treasures, you know, and it's often replaced it with a kind of folksy, sentimental kind of way of doing culture and and his his sense was that that's actually been a huge misservice, especially to a lot of young people. I think there's he again, I think has sensed that there's been a real misunderstanding actually what young people need and want, and kind of to make it super accessible, you have to kind of dumb everything down. And he said, actually, that that loses young people very quickly. He says, Actually, most young people, they want to kind of understand and kind of be challenged, actually, for something deeper. And so I think that's why he has such a young audience. You know, he's super popular on YouTube, very young audience who follow Him and and interestingly, there's been a huge rise in what some is in, especially among younger people and young men, especially a move towards a more traditional Catholic ethic. A lot of I think, in through the 70s and 80s, there was a kind of a move, and 90s, arguably, towards a kind of very liberal Catholicism, and that this would be the way to attract young people back to the Catholic Church, and it didn't work. It made things worse, if anything, and suddenly you're seeing actually where the growth is. Now it is actually in these more traditional spaces that take the intellectual life very seriously, but take kind of Orthodox, traditional Catholicism very seriously as well. And and you know, even in the most unlikely places, very secular, places like France, suddenly Catholicism, seeing a record number of baptisms and confirmations, adult baptisms and confirmations this past year. Something interesting is happening in those spaces, and and, and I think what Bishop Robert Barron and others are seeing is that is that, actually, yes, it's really important, as we said, Jordan Peterson earlier, to take people seriously, you know, to kind of challenge people with the rigor and, you know, and that sort of thing. And you see it in other similar kind of ancient streams of the church, Eastern Orthodoxy. Again, it's. Kind of having a bit of a boom in the West, even though it's a fairly small, you know, part of the church, streams and nominations, I've been hearing time and time again that Orthodox parishes are seeing a huge boom in people coming through, men especially. And it's because I think certain influencers like Jonathan pageau and others are suddenly cutting through. But it's the challenge. It's that the intellectual seriousness of it, and the kind of the life challenge of it, and the sense that there's something deeper that can, you know, that is just so different to the kind of constantly changing froth of culture that we're kind of served up most of the time. So there's something you know, and I think evangelical churches, you know, and I broadly stand in sort of the evangelical church tradition, but the I think that they could learn from that. Because I think to some extent, again, going back to that seeker sensitive thing we were talking about earlier, I think a lot of churches have just assumed that we just need to make it more palatable, make it more sort of emotionally stirring. There's nothing wrong with emotions. I'm not down on emotions in worship, but when that's all you've got, I think that's a problem. I think you're only kind of appealing to one side of of things, if, if, if you're kind of and so I think, you know, in a funny way, the New Atheists sort of did the church a favor by forcing a lot of us to pick up our theology and apologetics books and kind of, you know, sort of engage that side of things as I say. That's not the only way to approach these questions, but I think it has been helpful. And I think a lot of people have realized actually, we need to take this stuff seriously, and sort of, we can't just rely on emotional obstacles and the nice music or whatever. It has to come with a sort of, yeah, an intellectual sort of core to it, and it has to appeal to the whole of someone's mind, you know. And, and always I noticed, you know, throughout my career, kind of in apologetics, it was incredibly male led, and appealed far more to men than women. Now I'm not a psychologist. I can tell you exactly why that is, but all I know is that there's this degree to which I think if you want that missing demographic in the church, it turns out you don't just keep doing the things you were doing. There's there's there's, you have to provide a kind of a more balanced diet across the whole of the church to make sure that men, women, people of lots of different social you know, strata are all engaging, or all finding something that makes sense to them and and I just find that, yeah, in that particular area, maybe our Orthodox Catholic brothers and sisters are suddenly finding actually, hey, turns out, if you focus on this, the people for whom this is for whatever reason really makes sense to them, they will come and yeah, so I think, I think there's definitely some some lessons to be learned there.
Chris Bright 52:56
Hmm, absolutely there's just as a kind of final question I was, I was listening to one of your, your latest podcasts about church scandals, and I was thinking about, you know, when you think about that kind of missing demographic, one of the people that was very influential in reaching that missing demographic of young people was Mark Driscoll, and he was actually on the beginning of your, your podcast as someone You interviewed, and he ended up sort of trying to turn the tables on you somewhat, which I found quite awkward to listen to, I must admit. But of course, the episode was about the scandals in the church. Obviously, he was one of those people that had been involved in one of those things. And it seems that I was struck in that episode about the, you know, the number and the level of abuse of power in leadership. What do you think needs to change in the church, especially maybe in the in that kind of evangelical space, what do you think it needs to change in leadership moving forward, to embrace this kind of to embrace this, this the tide coming in. Because I'm, I'm aware that, that, you know, the tide can come in, but if the church isn't ready for it, yeah, you know, and we've got, we've got, you know, scandals in the church, it's not going to, it'll just hit against the wall and
Justin Brierley 54:13
and the tide coming in doesn't necessarily mean a tide coming back in, washing back into Christian faith, necessarily, because there's lots of other things that offer, you know, there's, there's very attractive forms of Islam to some young men. There's all kinds of kind of esoteric philosophies and stoicism, and, you know, lots of sort of options on the table that are kind of making their presence felt in in in the world today. But, and I think, yeah, and that was my concern, that was why I specifically wanted to dedicate one whole episode of the documentary podcast to the question of church scandals and so on. And this is not just in the evangelical church. Obviously, the Catholic Church has said plenty of its own scandals and everything. But I, but I just felt like, if Yeah, will the church be ready? Will we have got our house in order and and I think there are some. Lessons to be learned from these what feels like just a whole barrage of balls from Grace and scandals that seem to have, you know, come out over the past few years and and that is that building a popular quote, unquote, as in, bums on seat ministry is not the same thing as integrity and faithfulness. Okay, there are lots of ways to get a large audience, and you don't necessarily have to be very Christ like in the way you do that, but the thing that will actually stand the test of time is something that is Christ like that does have that integrity, even if it's often feels like you're just plowing in difficult soil, and you just have to keep doing it, even though it doesn't seem to be bringing great results. I just think there's something about a certain model of ministry, especially in certain parts of the mega church in the USA, celebrity sort of Christianity, that are just quite toxic, and can so easily eat themselves. And I think we've just seen that happen again and again. And so for me, it's about the church taking long, hard look at itself and asking, well, who are we doing this for? You know, is it for some, you know, mega church pastor's ego? Is it so we can say we've got X number of people on our live stream or in our church, or is it because you know you believe that Jesus Christ died for every single person that you interact with and and there's a sort of, there's a humility, I think, that has come with all these scandals. There's a sort of sense in which it's proved that we cannot do this by human sort of means which, and I think a lot of these church growth models and things are often sort of more human led than than spirit led in that way. And, and I think it's it's just reminded me that actually, we need the small church. We need the local church as kind of bumbling and sort of inefficient, as it can often seem, often, that's actually the safest place because it's human, it's normal, it's and we're not going, of course, we're all going to make mistakes. You know, it's not that we won't, but hopefully we learn from these lessons how to create safe places where, you know, we we put what needs to be in place to make sure that abuse and power and privilege don't we do as much as we can, at least to guard against those but hopefully we just have the experience that comes from, from this humbling I would say that's happened, especially in evangelical circles, to realize God wants something much better for us than than what we've created for ourselves. And yeah, so I'm not an expert in this area, but I certainly believe that a lot of people, I think, are feeling actually now, now's the time to to kind of, there's still a huge move, especially in parts of the US church, towards a current certain kind of politicized way of holding on to power, and that is all kind of bound up with the scandals and the notoriety and everything else. But I just sense that a lot of people are realizing this. You're that's always a losing strategy, you know, allowing yourself to celebrity power politics. You only have to read the gospels to see that this was not the way of Jesus, and whatever the future is, it's in God's hands, but we know that it's not going to be achieved through through those means. So I'm hopeful, though I see a lot of good things happening in the church. I don't want to be kind of all down and depressed about the state of the church, I think actually there's a lot of good things happening, and especially in the US, actually, as much as I've used them as an example, there's lots of great examples of churches that are really transcending those issues and and so I'm still very hopeful and confident, actually, that the church is wounded and broken as it often is, can actually still be used by God, because we have a wounded and broken Savior, and he can redeem even, you know, those of us who are stumbling along, trying to trying to get it right off and failing,
Chris Bright 59:11
yeah, brilliant. Well, it's probably a brilliant place to call time on the interview. Justin, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I think the I just encourage everyone to get, get the book, listen to the podcast as well. It's just fantastic. And I think that this is gonna be really helpful for all church leaders to think through these things and think about how this interacts with their own church. And so, yeah, make sure that you pick up those things. Justin, thank you so much for joining me today.
Justin Brierley 59:42
Really great to be with you. Thank you very much for having me on well. Thank
Chris Bright 59:46
you so much for listening to the podcast today. I really enjoyed that conversation with Justin. I'm sure you did as well. If you did, why don't you drop a like and give us a comment as well, and give us your thoughts as well. I would love to hear that and give us a review and a raise. Meeting, but all those things really help us with our reach as well. I'll see you again for another podcast very soon. Bye, bye. You.
