Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.
Well, perhaps the most significant trend of the last decade in faith and religion has been the rise of the nuns.
Now, by now, most people understand that there's never been a risk of an invasion of Catholic women in habits, but rather this is about the notable increase, especially among the young, of the religious unaffiliated. Often marked by a rejection of church and clear doctrine, the nuns were the fastest growing religious demographic in America. But that trend is now over. In fact, while there are still plenty of cynical and skeptical young people rejecting the baggage of their Christian upbringings, there's now also a notable group of spiritually curious young people who are rejecting the baggage of secularism. That's especially the case in the United Kingdom.
where very few young people have any Christian baggage to reject. Since they never went to church in the first place, but they're now quite interested. And at the same time, there's this growing list of prominent atheists and skeptics who changed their tune about Christianity.
Some of the very same prominent voices of the 90s who told us that religion poisons everything and that God's a delusion now proclaim the importance of faith for the flourishing of society and for acquiring meaning in life. Others, like American philosopher and mathematician David Berlinski and the New Truth Rising film, point to the damage that's been done to Western civilization by woke ideology. As former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia John Anderson puts it in the same film, the West is now sputtering and dying because of all of these alternative fuels that we've been trying.
Now, recently, I interviewed podcaster and author Justin Briarly about this phenomenon.
something that he has called the surprising rebirth of belief in God. Here's what he had to say. It is a bit of a mixed bag what's going on. You described a vibe shift in the US, and I think we've been seeing a similar-ish kind of vibe shift in various quarters here. And part of it is people looking for an identity, you know, something that they can sort of bed down in.
And for a lot of people, I think they're rediscovering, in a sense, what you could call cultural Christianity as an identity marker to say, look, we're not very pleased with all the other forms of identity that are currently on offer around us. Be it, you know, in the case of Ayan Hurse Yale, she's pointed out there's sort of woke ideologies on the left, there's Islam, there's authoritarian regimes around the world, there's lots of other options. And so she was sort of, in that viral article she wrote a couple of years ago now, when she said, Why I'm now a Christian, she was sort of pointing to the fact we need Christianity to make sense of ourselves as a civilization, as a culture. Of course, a lot of people criticized her, and we're happy to point out that Richard Dawkins also wants some form of cultural Christianity. That doesn't mean he wants Christ.
Yeah. But I think there's a sort of, as you say, there's a sort of transition phase. There's a spectrum here. And you've got, in a sense, at one end, those who are perhaps more cynically co-opting Christianity for a purely cultural agenda, if you like. And even people, you know, thoroughgoing atheists like Richard Dawkins could, in a sense, sign up for something like that.
What you've got somewhere in the middle is people who both recognize the cultural value of Christianity and all it's given us in the West, but are also sort of quite attracted to it as well. But perhaps are struggling to sort of commit to the supernatural claims and so on. And I think you might put someone like Tom Holland in that category. He absolutely recognizes and wrote a best-selling book on the way that Christianity has completely shaped the moral instincts of the West. And yet he struggles to believe in the supernatural to some extent.
Now, interestingly, he does find himself in church on many Sundays. And he says when he goes to London's oldest church, St. Bartholomew the Great, he feels he can believe, he can be there, he can, you know. And so you find people who are sort of on that cusp and almost, you know. Want to jump in.
And then I think you find people who have gone on that intellectual journey and have jumped in. And I would include Ayan Hersiali on that, you know, who's who, after writing that article, also gave some very moving interviews about her personal journey to faith and the way in which it was really recognizing that Christ was the solution to her, a personal meaning crisis that led her to embrace Christ.
So I've seen sort of, you know, across the spectrum, there's this interesting thing happening, but it is often beginning with people recognizing. The world views or the worldview that we've currently embraced in the West just isn't working out and it's causing them to look again at the Christian story. To hear my entire conversation with Justin Briarly about this re-emergence of belief in God and this so-called quiet revival in Western culture, check out the special bonus episode of the Breakpoint podcast. Also, don't forget today is the global streaming premiere of Truth Rising, a joint project from the Colson Center and Focus on the Family about how we can live into our calling as Christians in this incredible cultural moment. See the documentary at truthrising.com slash Colson.
That's truthrising.com/slash Colson. For the Colson Center on John Stone Street with Breakpoint. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit us at breakpoint.org.
