Over the last few years, there have been some cultural shifts that have been encouraging for Christians. There have been a number of high profile intellectuals or public figures who have moved from atheism to some form of Christian faith, including Paul Kingsnorth and Ayyan Ali.
The individual shifts reflect something of a cultural shift. When I was growing up, there were three major cultural positions and they were all anti-Christianity. Scientific materialism, or the New Atheism, which thought faith was a backward and destructive delusion to be thrown off. Marxist materialism, which thought religion was “opium for the masses”, fooling people into accept injustice in this life with promise of an afterlife. And individual expressivism which argued for individual freedom and pleasure seeking and saw religion as oppressive.
But in recent times, the culture has shifted. Scientific materialism seems to have a certainty which is suspicious to post modern minds. Individual expressivism has seemingly led to harm to individuals and a loss of social bonds. Marxist critiques have morphed from a focus on economic class to other forms of privilege and group identities.
Some of the newer trends are positive about Christianity. This gives Churches a great opportunity- the new trends could be stepping stones to people becoming disciples of Jesus. But it also contains a new risk. We are so used to the culture being anti-Christianity that we are not used to dealing with people coming to church and being positive about church while not actually becoming disciples of Jesus.
Here are two trends I see, which create opportunities and challenges:
1) Christianity as foundation for civilization/cultural flourishing
Sometimes this is a recognition that religion provides a sort of communal unity that is necessary for civilisation. Other times, it is more explicitly the values and achievements of western civilization that are valued and Christianity is seen as a necessary foundation for the that civilisation.
The opportunity is that it is clear today that modern liberal and scientific atheism could only exist parasitic on values and institutions which it did not create and could not sustain. The optimistic trajectory of the 90s and early 2000s is long past and people can see things are broken in profound ways. This brokenness can no longer be plausibly blamed on the Christian past. Instead, Christianity is viewed as a potential solution. So people seriously consider Christianity or church going.
The danger is that a merely outward religion will lack the power to regenerate civilization or give eternal life to individuals. And that in our desire for these seekers to join us, we will fail to give the call for true discipleship- that if you would have Jesus you must love him more than father or mother or child… or civilisation. Augustine wrote “The City of God” in part because the Roman Empire had become Christian and then been shredded by barbarians. A true disciple of Jesus must follow Jesus not only when it helps build a civilisation, but even if civilisation falls.
2) Christianity as a mythic or concrete expression of a deeper wisdom
A number of “intellectual dark web” speakers like Jordan Peterson or Bret Weinstein (is Paul Vervaeke part of the dark webweb?) are arguing that there are deeper realities about how human beings function individually and as societies that religions handled and encoded. So the religions are not literally true. But successful religions have encoded a great deal of wisdom about how to live well as a human. And so it makes sense to attend the religious community local to you and take what is good, while always seeking the higher truth behind it. This approach to Christianity has parallels to the 2nd century gnostic movement, in which a secret teaching gave the literal stories of the Bible deeper meanings.
The opportunity is clearly that religion is now seen as a source of profound wisdom for life and understanding. But the danger is people saying words but meaning something quite different. In the end, the challenge is that Jesus is the only way (not one alternative alongside Buddha and Muhammad), and that he really is the crucified and risen King as a matter of history and not just myth.
Jots and Scribbles 
New Atheism’s critic of religion as maladaptive has long looked pretty stupid to me as an explanation for world history. The new approach – Christianity is adaptive (but untrue) I find a much more challenging opponent.
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Yes- although it is nothing new. The old liberalism philosophical idealism both had some similarities. C.S. Lewis’ Pilgrim’s Regress charts his journey to faith including through Idealism.
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