In public debates with
Dawkins, he dismissed the claims of the “New Atheists”
that Christianity was a
fraud. Dawkins and his sort, McGrath now says,
“were aggressively asserting
atheist beliefs, but posing as if they were
telling incontestable
truths”.
Theologian Alister McGrath: Christianity is back because it
answers the big questions
The Telegraph
Theologian Alister McGrath:
Christianity is back because it answers
the big questions
Story by Peter Stanford
03 Nov ….
Alister McGrath is releasing a new book, Rethinking Christianity:
A Thoughtful Guide to a Life-Changing Faith - Andrew Crowley for The
Telegraph
Last year, a survey
for the Bible Society, carried out by YouGov, made headlines. The number of Gen Z Britons
attending church services, it declared, had soared by
16 per cent between 2018 and 2024. The news led to discussions in Parliament,
and Church conferences trumpeting this “quiet revival”.
What made the claims
so believable was a parallel narrative, more anecdotal but also more
widespread, about young people embracing religion. You heard it everywhere, in
opinion pieces, features and online chatter. It was the subject of entire
books, such as Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s
Search for Religion by the award-winning young writer Lamorna Ash.
Yet, even as interest
in Christianity became more vocal, the statistics came into question. The Bible Society report was
contested, and eventually withdrawn; the British Social Attitudes Survey then
reported, over exactly the same period, a 9 per cent fall in 18 to 34-year-olds
who described themselves as “religious”. Given the level of claim and
counter-claim, this has become ground where angels fear to tread.
Alister McGrath is
well aware. A former professor of divinity, now emeritus professor in science
and religion at the University of Oxford … one of Britain’s best known and most
respected Christian intellectuals.
This mild-mannered
73-year-old chooses his words with great care in his north Oxford flat as we
try to sort out what is and isn’t happening.
McGrath is now emeritus professor in science and religion at the
University of Oxford –
Andrew Crowley for The Telegraph
The central thesis of
his new book, Rethinking Christianity, is that what the likes of
Ash heard is absolutely correct.
The sea of faith
around these islands is rising. “I am seeing,” he tells me, “a growth in young
people wanting to talk about Christianity. Others have seen it, but right now
no one really wants to emphasise it. It is probably best just to let it
happen.”
The burnt fingers at
the Bible Society, coupled with a still extant British reluctance to talk about
Christianity – “We don’t do God”, as Alastair Campbell once put it, on behalf
of Tony Blair – appear to have warned many commentators off. Not McGrath, though.
This academic and author, best known as the biographer and champion of CS
Lewis – both men were born in Belfast, albeit McGrath’s accent
gives no hint of it – likes to step up when others hold back. He was, 20 years
ago, the first leading Christian to lock horns in public with Richard Dawkins, following the
publication of the evolutionary biologist’s global bestseller, The God
Delusion.
In public debates
with Dawkins, he dismissed the claims of the “New Atheists” that Christianity
was a fraud. Dawkins and his sort, McGrath now says, “were aggressively
asserting atheist beliefs, but posing as if they were telling incontestable
truths”.
Damien Mackey: But see e.g. my article:
Hawking and Dawkins - science fiction
cosmology
(2) Hawking and
Dawkins - science fiction cosmology
In response, McGrath
and his wife, Joanna Collicutt, a clinical psychologist and Anglican vicar,
published a strong defence of religion titled The Dawkins Delusion.
“I probably unwisely allowed myself to have a reasonably high profile,” he
reflects.
Dawkins has, in
recent weeks, been celebrating the 20th anniversary of The God Delusion,
making appearances and writing articles (including in this paper). But the scientist
is the deluded one, McGrath suggests. “The New Atheism seems to have tanked.
It’s on its way out, because people have seen that it was never really
answering the big questions.”
McGrath connects the
revival of interest in Christianity with those years. “After my book came out
in 2007,” he says, “a lot of young people who have come to Oxford contacted me,
wanting to talk and tell me what their experiences were.” He thinks of those
youngsters as two distinct groups: those who sought him out in the immediate
aftermath of The Dawkins Delusion, and those who’ve done the same
in the past decade. (In between, McGrath removed himself from the fray for six
years, from 2008 to 2014, teaching at King’s College, London.)
“In the first
period,” he explains, “their questions were all very defensive. ‘How on earth
do we defend Christianity in the face of this [New Atheist] onslaught?’
They were mainly
Christians – but [there were] also those outside Christianity who were
interested in it but thought it was now an intellectual no-go area thanks to
Dawkins.”
In response to Richard Dawkins (photographed for The Telegraph in July),
McGrath published
a strong defence of religion titled The Dawkins Delusion - Andrew
Crowley for The Telegraph
In 2014, after he had
returned to Oxford and become professor of science and religion, the requests
to meet him started coming in again. This time, however, the discussions were
very different. “The tone and the subject of the questions had changed. In these
conversations, there was a revival of interest – of people looking, and seeing
Christianity as able to answer the questions they were posing.”
In McGrath’s
experience, an increasingly uncertain world –
politically, socially, economically and environmentally – has made many young
people look again at religion. So, when they ask to talk to him, what guidance
does he give them?
“That as human beings
we are all looking for meaning, significance, purpose – and more than that. In
my view, Christianity can engage all of these significantly and persuasively.
This goes beyond beliefs, to where we’re dealing with the deepest longings and
aspirations of humanity.”
….
McGrath has a clear
advantage, to a new generation of seekers, in helping them hear those answers.
He has walked the same path. He was a convinced atheist when he arrived at
Oxford in 1971 as an 18-year-old undergraduate to study chemistry. “I grew up
in the 1960s,” he recalls, “and got caught up in the atheist zeitgeist. I was
convinced we were all on the brink of a new progressive, godless age.”
Among other things,
in the sectarian atmosphere of 1960s Northern Ireland – torn between
Protestantism and Catholicism – atheism felt like an escape. “As a 16-year-old,
it was obvious. No religion, no religious tensions, no violence. End of
problem.”
His parents weren’t
“particularly religious”, he says, though enough for young Alister to keep his
atheism to himself. As he arrived in Oxford, however, he was looking forward to
meeting other atheists and deepening his attachment to it.
“But most atheists I
met – and there were plenty, because it was so fashionable – just assumed that
atheism was the obvious thing for an intelligent person to embrace. It did not
require any further intellectual justification.” (Rather like Dawkins, as McGrath
sees him.)
And then, among
McGrath’s fellow chemists, this serious-minded atheist undergraduate found
Christians who were only too willing to challenge him in conversation. “And
they eventually overcame the seawalls of my defence, if I can put it like
that.”
McGrath began going
to church. It was CS Lewis “more than anyone”, though, who brought him back to
God. “Reading his books was my introduction to an intellectually intelligent
form of Christianity that was also highly accessible. Through him, I saw that Christianity
was not just something at a spiritual level, but could be sustained
intellectually.”
He continued his
chemistry work to postgraduate level, but at the same time read for a theology
degree.
CS Lewis’s books provided an ‘introduction to an intellectually
intelligent form of Christianity’: McGrath (pictured at Oxford in 2005) -
Corbis via Getty Images/Andrew Fox
It made him the
perfect candidate in 2014 for Oxford’s professorship in science and religion.
Those two spheres have, in the past four centuries, had a difficult
relationship. Take the case of Galileo Galilei, declared a heretic in 1633 and
put under house arrest for daring to contradict Rome and insist that the Earth
revolved around the Sun.
Damien Mackey: But, for quite a different twist on
Galileo, see my article:
Machiavelli in the name Achitophel, Galileo
Galilei in the name Gamaliel
(3) Machiavelli in
the name Achitophel, Galileo Galilei in the name Gamaliel
But McGrath suggests
that he is witnessing a new rapprochement between the disciplines.
“It is much more
convivial now. A lot more scientists are now feeling more confident in talking
about their faith. Science is very good at helping us understand how our world
functions, but when it comes to moral values or existential meaning – well, no.”
What of artificial
intelligence? “I could use AI to tell me where to buy pizza, but it doesn’t
know what a pizza is. It is a linguistic world which is derived from observing
human beings.” Still, he doesn’t think it’s to be dismissed. “We need to have
our eyes wide open at the deep questions it raises, and the risk of crossing a
particularly dangerous frontier.”
If he’s sceptical of
the claims being made about AI, what about the charge regularly directed at
the Church
of England – namely, that it’s in terminal decline?
“I am very
sympathetic to Anglicanism, and attend my local Anglican church, but I was
disappointed by Justin Welby, who wasn’t particularly inspirational or an
original thinker. And Sarah Mullally is the same.”
….
The BBC isn’t
helping, he believes, having cut its religious output hugely in
recent decades. “It is losing its way in terms of coverage of religion. I do
find myself wishing that they would just have serious theologians just
talking…” He pauses for a moment, then adds, in a rare flash of humour: “But I
appreciate that that would not attract very many listeners.”
On the positive side,
though, he feels he is “seeing a quiet re-entry of religion into the political
domain”. He points to the Prime Minister, who speaks of the influence of his
Catholic upbringing, and the Leader of the Opposition, who has spoken openly
about her relationship with faith. I add that there are noisier candidates:
Reform, like other Right-wing groups across Europe, has been trying to draw
Christianity into their arguments around national identity; one proposed
policy, for instance, would ban disused Christian churches from being
repurposed as mosques. What does McGrath think of such actors? “There is this
new interest [in Christianity], and different people are taking that in
different directions,” he says diplomatically. “Some are more appropriate than
others.”
What he wants to see
above all: a return of Christian virtues to public life. “We are living in a
culture where what is good is ‘what I want’. What we need is for people to be
challenged, with a concept of good that is bigger than any one of us.”
Rethinking Christianity: A
Thoughtful Guide to a Life-Changing Faith (TN
Nelson, £14.99) is out now
