Unbelievable ?

THE SURPRISING REBIRTH OF BELIEF IN GOD:
Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again
By Justin Brierley
Tyndale House. 249 pages. £17.99
ISBN 976 1 4964 6677 8 

Sometimes we get the feeling that religion is dead or dying across the world, and that Christianity in particular is heading towards extinction in Western Society.

We know from Scripture that ultimately God’s word is powerful and His church will be built, even in the secular West, but this book is a useful reflection on how to counter the idea that we are in a season when belief in God is especially under threat. I warmly recommend it to encourage you to see that part of the way God is working is in the destruction of intellectual and philosophical ‘strongholds’.

Building out from his Unbelievable series on Premier Christian Radio and his own extensive research, Brierley shows that intellectually and culturally the idea of God is not dead, and the Bible’s account of creation and salvation is the most credible. He also illustrates that even non-Christians are realising this and wanting the Bible to be true, by using examples such as Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson, Tom Holland and Dave Rubin.

I learnt new things and revised many others, which will help in conversations with non-believers. Especially helpful was tracing the rise and fall of New Atheism and a reworking of many of the standard apologetic arguments such as design, consciousness, the reliability of the Scriptures, etc., It also has a great historical review which included a clarification of what really happened with the Copernicus controversy.

There was the occasional sentence or two that grated on me. He favourably quotes N.T. Wright describing the early church as gender blind in leadership (I don’t think so). He affirms that science can tell us how we began, but not the why or the who (I’m not sure the first half of that statement is correct), and he has a view of the kinds of churches that will be successful, which didn’t seem to include faithfulness to Christ and His word. These sentences might betray a particular theological approach to creation, science, gender and ecclesiology which I am not on board with, or they simply lack nuance, but they are minor blemishes in a thoroughly useful book which encouraged and equipped me to keep on witnessing in the public square.