In Psalm 14:1 we are told that ‘the fool says in his heart there is no God’.
Richard Dawkins has been such a fool for so long that it is almost possible to feel sorry for him. The man who, as chief spokesman of the New Atheists, thundered out his condemnation of all religions, but particularly Christianity, is reduced to a rather lonely figure trying to work out just how far he can backtrack on his maledictions without losing all credibility.
A Cultural Christian
The man who once wrote that parents who send their children to Sunday School are guilty of child abuse has now declared himself to be a ‘cultural Christian’. He cherishes the cultural artifacts and traditions of Christianity, from hymns and Christmas carols to beautiful parish churches and old-fashioned liberalism. He ‘feels the Christian ethos’, and considers the UK a Christian country and that ‘to substitute any alternative religion would be truly dreadful’.
The man who once wrote that parents who send their children to Sunday School are guilty of child abuse has now declared himself to be a ‘cultural Christian’.
However, whilst valuing the outworking of Christianity, he continues to reject the actual religion. Against reason, he really does think you can somehow retain cultural Christianity and all that Christianity has given the world whilst advocating the total rejection of the Christian belief which underpins it. Which is like saying you can retain a magnificent cathedral after undermining the foundations on which it is built.
Take away Christianity and all of value which it has produced crumbles away. If Christianity didn’t exist there would be a very different ‘cultural’ context; which is the real danger facing the West today.
Dawkins has declared that he was ‘slightly horrified’ to see lights celebrating Ramadan in central London during Easter and worries about a ‘replacement’ in this regard. He says the construction of mosques across Europe concerns him, and that if offered the choice between Christianity and Islam, he’d choose Christianity ‘every single time’. Dawkins considers himself on ‘Team Christianity’.
Take away Christianity and all of value which it has produced crumbles away.
Dawkins – Hirsi Ali Debate
Recently Dawkins met former New Atheist ally, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, onstage at the inaugural Dissident Dialogues conference in New York to discuss religion. When Hirsi Ali announced her conversion last year, she emphasised the role of Christianity in creating and preserving Western civilisation. This caused Dawkins, like some Christians, to reject her profession of faith. In an open letter arguing that Hirsi Ali was not in fact a Christian, he wrote: ‘Seriously, Ayaan? You, a Christian? You are no more a Christian than I am.’
He continued: ‘Christianity makes factual claims. They believe in a divine father figure who designed the universe, listens to our prayers, is privy to our every thought. You surely don’t believe that? Do you believe Jesus rose from the grave three days after being placed there? Of course you don’t.’
This time, having developed as a Christian over the year, Hirsi Ali was clearer in saying that she thought Christianity was more than a useful device for protecting Western civilisation. ‘On the personal level, yes, I choose to believe in God. And I think that there, we might say, let’s agree to disagree,’ she said. ‘I think it’s something subjective, and it’s a choice and there are things that you see and perceive that a different person cannot perceive.’
‘I came here prepared to persuade you, Ayaan, that you’re not a Christian. I think you are a Christian and I think Christianity is nonsense.’
To his credit Dawkins was prepared to admit that he had changed his mind about Ali’s faith and the central claim of his open letter in response to her conversion. ‘I came here prepared to persuade you, Ayaan, that you’re not a Christian. I think you are a Christian and I think Christianity is nonsense.’
Hirsi Ali explained to Dawkins that a Christian framework underlies Western thinking and when that is taken away, we should beware what follows. ‘What you value in Christianity is something that really is absolutely necessary to pass on to the next generation,’ she told Dawkins. ‘And we have failed the next generation by taking away from them that moral framework and telling them it’s nonsense and false. We have also not protected them from the external forces that come for their hearts, minds and souls.’
Islam
During the debate, Ayaan Hirsi Ali said that she regrets her role in the New Atheism movement. The New Atheists had hoped that as religion declined, as they thought, the masses would turn to reason to guide them. Experience instead indicates that having rejected Christ, people have adopted worse and less reasonable beliefs, from conspiracy theories to Islam.
In particular Hirsi Ali said that she now thinks that she made a major error in conflating Christianity and Islam in her attacks on religion when she was an atheist. ‘I do regret doing that,’ she said. ‘I’m guilty of having said all faiths, all perceptions of God are the same and are equally damaging, so . . . I have come to regret the damage that I’ve done.’
Experience instead indicates that having rejected Christ, people have adopted worse and less reasonable beliefs, from conspiracy theories to Islam.
Having been brought up as a Muslim, Hirsi Ali has insight into the impact of Islam as a worldview. Before a US Homeland Security Committee meeting she said: ‘Islam is part religion, and part a political-military doctrine; the part that is a political doctrine contains a world-view, a system of laws and a moral code that is totally incompatible with our constitution, our laws, and our way of life.’ This is the one area where the debating protagonists agreed: the danger to the West created by the encroachment of Islam.
To Dawkins’s ‘slight horror’, Islam is growing in the West as Christianity is shrinking. Unlike a fading Christianity which is becoming a mere cultural expression, Islam is confident and willing to assert its spiritual legitimacy. In a multi-faith world why, when the Church is increasingly unconvinced of its own identity and hesitates to preach a biblical gospel, would anyone choose an uncertain and enfeebled Christianity?
As Ayaan Hirsi Ali has realised, and Richard Dawkins has still to learn, like any growing thing Christianity in the West must recover its roots or die.
The Rev. Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack is a retired Church of Scotland minister; now a member of the Free Church of Scotland. Check out his many incisive articles on his blog, A Grain of Sand.
