I mean. And the interesting thing is, you know, I wrote the
book. It got published in September twenty twenty three, but even since publication,
there's been fascinating new examples of this. So I an hersty Aali who
I'm sure you're aware of the story of who basically wrote that viral article for
Unheard as a former new atheist herself, who had come from a very you
know, come out of a very fundamentalist Muslim background in the past, just
saying it turns out atheism cannot sustain a meaningful life, and I've decided to
embrace Christianity. And that's just such an interesting example of I think the thesis
of the book kind of happening in real time because it feels like something's changing,
you know, secular, intelligent thinkers are giving Christianity another look, and
I find that quite exciting. This is Jonathan Pjel Welcome to the Symbolic World.
So hello everyone. I am very happy to be here with Justin Brierly.
Mostly you will know his work, you know, for many years he
was the host of Unbelievable, and he is now working on new podcasts coming
out of a book called The Surprising Rebirth of the belief in God, and
it is completely in line with all the things that we've been doing. He's
talking to everybody that is around this resurgence of the belief in God, the
end of the new Atheist, the surprising characters that are converting to Christianity,
who are coming close to Christianity, and so justin it's really great to have
you with me. Oh, thank you. It's an absolute pleasure to be
on the show, Jonathan as a regular listener myself, So thanks for having
me. So tell me a bit about this new project. I mean,
it's not that new. It's been going on now for more than a year,
I think. Yeah, Well, the book itself was published by September,
so it is fairly new. And the most recent thing, though,
is a new podcast documentary series that is really based on the book, and
that's been going for just a few months. And that's really a much deeper
dive in a way, because I get to talk to all kinds of people,
feature all kinds of voices, weave it all together with some narration and
music, and really tell the story really of what I'm calling the surprising rebirth
of belief in God. And the subtitle of the book and the podcast is
why new atheism grew old and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again. And in
many ways it does come out though of those you know, many years,
you know, over a decade and a half hosting conversations between Christians and atheists
and Unbelievable and the way that I saw those conversations changing in the last several
years, and that was really what prompted the genesis of the book and then
the podcast. So tell me a bit about that, because I mean it's
true that in some ways you would be the perfect person to notice the transformation.
So maybe help us see what it is that you start to notice,
and maybe about when you started to see it and what was different in the
way that the atheists and the Christians were engaging with you. Yeah. Well,
I started hosting these conversations on this this Unbelievable show around two thousand and
five. This was before we started podcasting. It was just a radio show
to begin with. But once we started podcasting, we started to you know,
pick up a lot of listeners, not just Christians, but also non
Christians atheists who were tuning in for these discussions between atheists and Christians. That
I was hosting, and and really it was around the time that new atheism
was building up ahead of Steam. So it was just around the time Richard
Dawkins was publishing The God Delusion. You had a real growth of that kind
of online atheist scene in the UK. Not long after we had the Atheist
Bus campaign, where we had buses rolling around London saying there's probably no God,
now stop worrying and enjoy your life. So there was there was a
real kind of dynamic sense in which you know, this very specific, quite
dogmatic form of non belief was presenting itself and that was reflected in the conversations
we had, you know. So it was often these new atheist type characters
who would be coming on opposite Christian apologists to debate the existence of God and
whether Christianity was evil and can we trust the Bible? And so that was
great, really interesting. I really, you know, cut my teeth in
Christian apologetics in those early years and was able to sort of, you know,
kind of put together my own sense of how to understand Christianity at an
intellectual level at least. But I did notice especially kind of from the sort
of I guess from about twenty fifteen onwards, there just was a kind of
noticeable shift in well, firstly the number of non Christians atheists coming on who
were actually disassociating themselves from New atheism, saying I'm not a Richard Dawkins kind
of age, because I think there was almost a sense that it had become
a bit shrill and dogmatic and almost quasi religious in itself. And also just
many more secular folk that I was featuring on the show who were actually a
lot more open to the value of Christianity, weren't dismissing it as readily as
the new atheists were. And I started to bump into people like Douglas Murray,
for instance, who you know, arguably was very much part of the
new atheist set when he sort of lost his faith in his early twenties.
He was, you know, going for lunch regularly with Christopher Hitchens and that
sort of thing. But actually, in latter years, I think basically realized
I'm basically bred of Christian stock, I don't believe in God necessarily, I'm
not a Christian, but he calls himself a Christian atheist, And I just
started to see more and more people like that coming through who were just recognizing
that fundamentally atheism cannot provide all the answers for life, and that actually we
still owe an enormous debt to the cultural and spiritual and moral value that Christianity
is granted the West. Essentially. Wow, and so in twenty fifteen sounds
about right to me. And so it's like, you know, it's something
that seems to be happening to the culture. And have you seen also the
new atheists also go into certain directors because one of the things I've noticed is
how the new atheists, because in some ways there was a weird secret desire
for something more that they ended up becoming more and more ideological in their approach,
like even more politically motivated, you know, being influenced by by a
certain ideology. I don't know if it's something that you notice happening at some
point when the atheists were no longer just attacking Christianity, when they actually had
to now propose a social world, like they had to propose something that we
can we can start to see something else here. And I know I totally
did. I mean I was kind of an interested bystander for a lot of
this, but because of my world did intersect with New Atheism quite quite frequently.
I was often sort of seeing some of these dramas unfold in the New
atheist community. So in the book and the podcast I do go into some
detail about the way that innerly there was a lot of argument, debate,
and a kind of unraveling really of the movement because of it. So it
was around I think twenty eleven really that I think there was this particular moment
called that came to be called Elevator Gate, which really set the tone for
the way in which New Atheism would start to unravel. And this was an
atheist conference happening in Dublin in Ireland, and one of the speakers, Rebecca
Watson, who was a sort of online atheist commentator under the name Skeptic,
was talking at this conference about the problem that the atheist movement had with women,
that it was misogynistic, patriarchal, there was a lot of sexism in
this kind of very male, white dominated movement. And well, she then
had sort of late night drinks with some of the other speakers, which included
Richard Dawkins, and on her way to her hotel room, you know,
early ours of the morning, she basically got propositioned by one of the attendees
of the conference in the elevation. So she wrote about this later on her
blog and said, this is the problem with you know, the atheist movement,
exactly what I was already describing and getting propositioned and so on. Well,
that might have been the end of it, except that Richard Dawkins himself
weighed in on this sort of by posting a very highly sarcastic kind of response
blog to Rebecca Watson called dim Muslima in which he, you know, very
sarcastically compared her troubles to a Muslim woman, you know, who's getting her
hands cut off, you know, for disobeying her husband or something like that,
and just said, you know, but pity your poor American sisters who
have to put up with people asking them for coffee in an elevator. Well,
this just poured gasoline on the whole thing, and suddenly I do honestly
see elevigator Gate as the point at which the movement kind of split basically between
those on the kind of Rebecca Watson's side who were very interested in atheism not
just being about a denial of God but about being for something. So it
was at this point that people started saying, we need an eth and plus
we need a movement that is also about social justice and feminism and LGBT rights
and so on. And then you had the Richard Dawkins kind of crowd,
who you know, went very you know, we're not into that at all
and said we just want science and reason and common sense and you know,
an oasis of freethinking. And so the movement really split, and I would
say it was almost like the culture Wars kind of came early in that sense
for New atheism. That was the thing that broke the movement apart. And
the kind of arguments that these atheist figures started having within the movement like completely
dwarfed any arguments they were having with their Christian counterparts, because it ended up
with a not you know, atheist conferences being canceled because people weren't prepared to
share a stage any longer. So I watched all this from the sidelines,
and it was just an interesting reminder that, yeah, movements kind of come
and go, and this one very much founded as soon as it tried to
do something more than just be this denial of God, tried to build anything
more than that, Suddenly the whole thing just just fell apart very quickly.
Yeah, and you see it. It's still it still exists in the online
word. What you have these people that have made a career as atheists,
but you know, it's like they just make video after video after video about
how religion is stupid, and you think, okay, like this is interesting.
I mean, it's interesting that that's it. Like that's your that's your
thing, that's your stick, and that's fine. But uh, there's a
manner in which, like you said, is soon as you try to propose
a mode of unity, then all of a sudden you're in trouble. And
if you and if you're not careful, then you're surprised, you know,
with like what is it Matt Dillahunty talking about women with penises and you're like,
what happened? How did we get from like Richard Dawkins biologists, scientists
who basically, you know, all categories are now exploded and we're in a
we're in a weird postmodern and reality. I think the interesting thing about it
is for me, it's it's kind of meant that the cultural ground does all
shift in the process because people who were formally happy bedfellows like Dilla Hunt and
Dawkins now are not on speaking terms any longer. You know, Dawkins got
you know, his Humanist of the Year award rescinded by the American Humanist Association
because he's been quite you know, outspoken on transgender and so on. You
know. And so you find then this weird sort of changing where actually suddenly
secular atheist kind of more conservative minded folk kind of then seem to sort of
form alliances with Christians who maybe are kind of sympathetic to those issues. And
you find that the secular atheists who are kind of more on the woke side
kind of suddenly they're kind of more in keeping with their kind of other woke
brethren. So it's a kind of you know, it felt like the game
changed quite a bit once the Culture Wars came and just kind of messed up
everyone's categories and they realized we were not sure we actually agree with each other
on anything after all, And so we're to you is the most like when
you hear these characters talk about their their return to Christianity or they're coming close
to Christianity, you know, what is what is the thing that's most salient
you that that pops out as you know, this is what's going on in
these transformationsuse they're happening all at the same time, so it's like it's not
just an individual thing, it's a there's something happening in the culture. Yeah,
that's right. I think I think there's there's a few different things going
on. I think one kind of in a sense small part of it,
and I think it was just symptomatic in some ways the new atheist movement kind
of coming and rising and falling. Is that generally there is this you know,
meaning crisis in our culture, which which you and many others have pointed
out, and and it's it's on the basis of the fact that people have
lost a story essentially to live in, and the story that materialist secularism offered
just ended has just not proved capable of building a flourishing, meaningful life for
people. And so what I see is a lot of these secular thinkers now
sort of realizing that the atheist project is kind of dead on its feet,
and so they're basically just saying, well, look, let's let's look around
and see what's here, and oh, hey, it turns out the Christian
story has actually provided people that sense of meaning, purpose and identity for millennia,
and they're just willing to give it a second look in all honesty,
and it's almost like they had It's almost like they had to go through some
of these folks, I think, a kind of teenage atheist phase almost before
they kind of came out on the other side realizing, ah, there are
other ways to understand the world than just this kind of very one dimensional flat
science explains everything kind of mode of thinking. And so yeah, I do
draw out the stories of a number of those people, some of whom have
kind of crossed the line to Christian faith, Others who seem to be teaching
on the brink of it, others who seem to be just kind of acknowledging
its value. But maybe I don't know what it's going to take ultimately for
them to kind of cross the line themselves. I mean. And the interesting
thing is, you know, I wrote the book. It got published in
September twenty twenty three, but even sit publication, there's been fascinating new examples
of this. So I an HERSTI Ali who I'm sure you're aware of the
story of who you know, basically wrote that viral article for Unheard as a
former new atheist herself who had come from a very you know, come out
of a very fundamentalist Muslim background in the past, just saying it turns out
atheism cannot sustain a meaningful life, and I've decided to embrace Christianity. And
that's just such an interesting example of I think the thesis of the book kind
of happening in real time because it feels like something's changing, you know,
secular, intelligent thinkers are giving Christianity another look, and I find that quite
exciting. Yeah. One of the things that I've noticed is, you know,
this is basically experience in my own world, which is the Orthodox Church,
you know, in North America. But we are seeing waves of converts,
I mean, you know, perishes, some are doubling, tripling,
like just massive amount of conversions. But the conversions they have a certain characteristic,
which is their intellectual conversions, you know, and it's not it's not
as much the kind of usual I'm not usual, but the story of someone
who maybe hit rock bottom, who's been having all these problems and turned to
God, you know, and found God in their struggle and in their their
suffering. But it's really people that are you know, university graduated, you
know, that are professionals that are that are thinking, that are reading,
that are extremely that are quite intelligent, who are actually dealing with the meaning
crisis, and that are looking to find meaning. And so that's to me
is very interesting. I don't know if that's something that you've noticed as well
in these in this movement, that they're that it doesn't look like early Christianity
with slaves and poor people and women and people that had no recourse basically finding
the God of love. And you know, in this in this possibility of
of of Christ and now right now it seems like it's actually an elite that's
converting. Yes, yeah, I think I think there is something in that.
I mean, and another aspect of this is arguably that it's quite a
male dominated sort of sort of demographic. Now again, I think I think
that kind of ties into the fact that you know, when you look out
at the average audience for the people turning up for say a Jordan Peterson lecture,
it is highly male and it probably is the same demographic you've just described.
Who are you find a converting to Eastern Orthodoxy, and there's I think
it's something to do with the idea that people have just comeing to the end
of their resources. I think Christianity has always appealed in a sense to those
who who obviously find themselves in that place destitute, you know, dried out
and everything else. And in a sense that's always been where Christianity has found
its first fruits, if you like. Of people are who are just desperate
for something and they find it in christ. But I think that the more
intellectual sort of ones who sort of for a good while being able to live
on their own resources and kind of assume that they had life figured out at
some level, or at least, you know, if they watched enough,
read enough God delusion books, they could kind of convince themselves that life had
basically been explained. I just think sometimes it takes something like us collapsing into
the tribal cultural wars that we're currently facing, or the threat of Putin invading
a democratic country, or the rise of Ai and everything suddenly like these kind
of tipping point events suddenly I think kind of remind people a of their mortality
and b that we haven't got it all figured out, and there's just a
sense in which I see a lot of the chickens are coming home to roost,
if you like, in the postmodern West and all that Enlightenment stuff that's
happened, and it just feels like this is the moment when now it's,
as you say, those elites who are suddenly realizing I don't have this figured
out. I am, you know, basically depressed, even though I've got
more technology than I could ever have dreamed of and more material prosperity than any
of my forbear has ever had, and yet I'm more unhappy than any of
them. There's just something about this moment, and again the male thing.
I don't know what your thoughts are on that, Jonathan, but I'm just
wondering whether that's something to do with the fact that as we've lost that story,
particularly, it's hit men in a way where they've lost something of their
identity, that there's an identity crisis thing going on here, and for whatever
reason, suddenly, when it's presented well, the Christian story suddenly gives people
a sense of identity that they were probably looking for all along. I think
that's right. I think that you know this is annoying to This is annoying
to the secular listener. But there is a way in which the man,
especially in our cultures, is the vector of identity. Right, There's a
reason why women would take the name of their husbands there, you know,
there's there's a reason in which the idea of the Saint Paul presents the idea
of the head and the body, these types of images that is representing the
Christian tradition. And so when there's an attack on identity in general, uh,
and on vectors of of of identity, then men will definitely suffer.
And we can see that. And there has been a kind of organized attack
on maculinity, you know for the past several decades, you know, the
Homer Simpson, Idiot Father and et cetera, et cetera, like this constant
attack on on on masculinity. And so it seems also that in some ways
men are the most difficult position in that regard, in the regard the question
of story and identity and purpose and stuff. And so I think you're right
that in some ways Christianity and you can see a lot of people convert.
There isn't just Christianity that's that's coming towards us. Right, there's a lot
of neopaganism, there's a lot of Jim bro you know, yeah, I
mean there's there's the Andrew Taits school of masculinity that that's kind of in competition
with the kind of the biblical kind of form of that. So it's yeah,
absolutely, there's there's other possible routes that this could go, and that
that that is the great danger. And one of one of the sort of
one of the metaphors I use in the book is, you know, you
know when GK. Chesterton said, when people, you know, stop believing
in God, they don't there after believe in nothing. They have the capacity
to believe in anything. And I think, and I think, if there
is something coming back on the tide, you know, if if if you
know Matthew Arnold's famous Dover Beach tide has gone out of faith, if it
is coming back in again. Some people have said, well, how do
you know it's going to be Christianity that comes back in again? There could
be all kinds of other things. And we're obviously seeing that because the religious
inclinations never go away, that search for meaning and purpose has to get filled
by something. So I guess I'm I'm sort of I'm optimistic that it's gonna
ultimately even Andrew Taite school of you know, religion will ultimately fail because it
isn't It's always going to be a weak heresy or parody of the Christian thing.
But that's that's in a sense, that's me saying that as a Christian.
You know, that's something I kind of take on faith because I do
believe there's there's something bigger than us. That's that's ultimately you know, going
on here. Yeah, But I think also that Christ has revealed something about
reality that once it's been revealed, cannot be taken back. So once you
once you see that the notion that self sacrificial love is the is the source
of our relationship, that it's the source of healthy relationships, the source of
of of even hierarchies in the world, that that's actually how proper hierarchies function
is through self sacrificial love. You can't really take that back, and you
can try, but it ends up being, like you said, it kind
of caricature. There's something antichrist about the reaction to it. There's no way,
there's no way to really fully gate now from that story. You know.
That's one of the reasons why I try to help people understand. I
try to help people understand that it's like you're in the Christian story, folks.
You can't you can't avoid it anymore. If you try to get out
of it, you only the only thing you can do is become Antichrist.
Uh. And And it's not like a moral thing that I'm not trying to
guilt you into anything. I'm just saying it's just how It's just how it
is once you there are some things that once you know, you can't know
anymore. It's like the genie is out of the bottle. You can't exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's that. I think that's true
about about about Christianity. And so what do you see coming down the line?
Like what do you see? I mean, I don't want you to
I don't want if you don't feel comfortable saying it, but you know,
because now there's this thing going on, like this this movement that's happening,
how do you see it develop it? Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm
not a good profit of these things, and all I'm really pointing out is
what I see happening, right, now, which is this kind of yeah,
just just this really interesting conversation that started again with people taking Christianity seriously
and kind of the door being opened for you know, a quite significant number
of people, by the likes of Jordan person and even you know Tom Holland,
who you know, I think is one of the best unsung evangelists the
UK has. Right now, Most of the people I meet at the moment
who are seriously taking Christianity seriously again, they've they've basically been reading Tom Holland's
Dominion, you know, and understanding that they are basically products of the Christian
story at a fundamental level. So I find that all very exciting. Now,
where is it going? I mean, my hope and prayer is that
we might be seeing, you know, the next great Revival. I mean
that doesn't mean that it's going to be a revival that looks like previous revivals,
but it's going to be whatever needs to happen in our moment. I
think, having said that, it could get worse before it gets better,
because you know, we all know where certainly the statistics on church attendance and
religiosity and so on are in the West. So I'm not saying that suddenly
we're going to be seeing you know, the pusel filled and churches bursting at
the seams. But I do feel like there's a there's a kind of winnowing
happening of the church itself at the moment. There's kind of a lot of
models that were kind of superficial or not fit for purpose are sort of having
to be broken down. And I think that all is part of the process
is there's there's almost like there's always been, I think this kind of birth
and redeath, sorry, death and rebirth of the church in various generations,
and I just wonder whether we're going through that now. And you've seen obviously
in some of the scandals in parts of the Catholic Church, but equally in
the you know, in my area, this sort of more evangelical sort of
church where you've had lots of celebrity pastor scandals and certain ways of doing church
which are obviously toxic, are not kind of actually giving life and doing you
know, bringing people God in the way that they're meant to. And so
so I feel like there's there's that going on one hand, but there's also
this kind of bubbling up of something quite exciting on the other hand, and
that I want to sort of just ask the church to, yeah, absolutely
be realistic about the bad stuff, but also to maybe have some hope and
get excited about the good stuff and ask, well, what can we do
to nurture that and to kind of learn the lessons that we need to learn
to make sure that we shepherd this movement in a way that's helpful. As
I say, it could go off in bad directions. You know, there's
always the danger that it turns into some kind of quasi Christian nationalism or something
like that. You know, there's all kinds of things that will come in
and try to vuy I think for what is actually the true work of the
spirit that I think is going on at some deeper level in the lives of
these people and the people who are seeking meaning. So that's all just to
say, I don't know exactly where it's going, but I just have a
sense that the wind is blowing and it feels like something's changed in the atmosphere
quite significantly, and that actually that if the church, if we're Christians,
can sort of just lean into that and start to answer the questions people are
actually asking right now. That would be a really good start. I spent
you know, most of my career kind of doing that traditional apologetics. You
know, here's five reasons to believe in God and for reasons to be the
Resurrection. I just feel like now is possibly the moment to actually step a
little back from that, not saying that's not important sometimes, but to just
help people understand why they would want this to be true in the first place,
and that that's kind of where we're at. I think in our culture,
people suddenly realizing I want something to be true, and kind of helping
them to realize and then maybe you know, later on you can show them
that in fact it is true, you know, with with some of that
traditional apologetics. But it's like at the moment, it feels like people are
are just at that point of realizing that they want there to be a bigger
world than the one they've actually been presented with. And so do you see
yourself like your approach apologetics, do you see that it has changed in the
past few years, like the way that you're talking to people. I think
it has in all honesty, because, as I say, you know,
the first half of my career sort of hosting these shows was really kind of
in that bread and butter sort of science versus faith, you know, can
we you know, five arguments for God kind of stuff, And as say,
it was all good, kind of intellectually kind of rigorous stuff that helped
me to kind of get a handle on that. But I quickly realized that
there's relatively few people ultimately who actually step into something on the basis of that.
It might be an important part of the process, but there's always at
the end of the day, there's an imaginative element to this where people have
to kind of I don't know, their mind has to be renewed in some
way where their imagination kind of gets baptized as much as their their intellect kind
of gets convinced. And I've never met someone in all n ste if I
just look at it in the cold light of day who just had some intellectual
conversion. There's always a sort of spiritual imaginative component going on. And I
know it's kind of too cliched almost to say, but C. S.
Lewis was obviously a brilliant exponent of doing this because he did that traditional apologetics
so near Christianity and the problem of pain and that kind of thing. But
I think where he was at his most fruitful, where he resonated the most
with people, is when he wrote the Narnia stories and things like that,
where he created a world that people wanted to be true, and then he
said to them, well, what if this world does in fact exist?
What if you're actually living in this world? And for me, that's a
very powerful, you know, way into the Christian faith, and I think
that we need to sort of recapture some of that in the way we approached
people today. Hm hmm. Yeah, obviously I totally agree with you in
some ways. You know. That's why I've been focusing my attention on storytelling
quite a bit recently, you know, to to help people as much as
possible. See that, and so have you seen I'm curious what you see
the role of artists being in in this, because you know, it's the
world of apologetics is usually a world, like you said, of scientists of
kind of theologian, often very systematic thinkers, and so how do you see
artists playing a role in what you're describing. I think that what I would
love to see is is artists And I'm again not the first place to say
this, but but artists stop. Who are Christians stopping doing quote unquote Christian
art that is basically just a knockoff of secular art but with Jesus in the
in the frame kind of thing. I just think we need to do great
art because at anytime you do great art, true art, you are representing
Christ at some level. And to that extent, yeah, I just want
folk who do find themselves, who do call themselves Christian, to just do
their art as well as they can and to sort of, yeah, just
to put it out in the public sphere and to I mean one of the
things I you know, what's been fascinating is doing this new documentary podcast series,
The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. I ended up for various reasons
moving on from hosting The Unbelievable Show about a year ago, and it was
kind of to some extent it was It wasn't a move I'd completely planned out,
but it did give me suddenly an opportunity to do something very different.
And I thought, I've got this book coming out, and I just this
thought dropped into my soul. You know what, Now that I've got some
time and space, I would love to do a really good documentary podcast series
based on the book. I just felt like there was a story to be
told here and and so, you know, in God's providence, I sort
of had this time and space to kind of work on something that I would
never have been able to work on, you know, in my previous role.
And I've poured a lot of time and effort into sort of trying to
create something that's not just information but is actually a bit more of an experience.
It's that it's it brings something across, not just through the people and
the voices, but through the music and the kind of the way it's woven
together in something that is a little bit more artistic. Now I'm not saying
it's some Oscar worthy, you know, production, but it's what I've what
I've noticed releasing that is that the response has been really quite different to the
kind of these more sort of just kind of brains on legs debates that you
know, that I hosted for many years. It's it's kind of like people
suddenly feel able to engage with it at a different level because they feel like
they're entering into a story. So so many of the people who've got back
to me, whether they're Christian or non Christian have said, Yeah, I
feel like this, this resonates with me. I feel like this is telling
my story. I kind of, you know, had all those memories of
the new atheist phase and I've kind of you know, moved on in my
thinking and and it's just like it. It just reminded me that that there's
something about doing something in a storytelling mode, in an artistic mode, in
an imaginative mode that just does connect with people on a different level. And
I'm kind of really enjoying that, if I'm honest, and I feel like
that's where Christians need to try and almost like sometimes we need to put down
the kind of the manual on you know, five ways to convert someone in
five minutes and just sort of start again, say let's just create something people
will enjoy, people will appreciate, people will love, and then see what
God does with that, because I think that's what art is. Ultimately,
if it's used in a really didactic, top down, sort of overanalyzed way,
it stops being art and people kind of know that they're being preached to
and know that they're being sort of sold something. And that for me,
is where Christians who want to be artists should start to focus themselves, stop
trying to kind of do the thing, you know, do the thing,
you know, anticipate what this art is going to do to someone, and
just do the art, you know, and it will speak for itself in
that way. Yeah, it's an interesting moment right now because for many years
Christians were caught in that world where they basically made propaganda, you know,
especially in the highly produced world of music or of movies and television. You
know, they just basically made Christian propaganda. But now we're at an interesting
time when Hollywood itself has become propaganda. And so it's actually opening a very
interesting space for Christians and religious people to do like C. S. Lewis
and Tokien did, which is basically tell stories that have the right worldview,
that have the right perspective, that is a complete perspective, right, that
isn't just me kind of And I'm seeing that, like you interviewed Marnshaw and
Paul kings North and a few artist types, and I can see that they
get that right away, right, the possibility of using the poetry of Christ
as a means to affect the world, not through argument and through kind of
convincing, but just like you said, following in entering into a story.
And I think it's why, in a funny way, you know, these
profits from outside the church like Peterson and Holland and others have actually been so
effective actually drawing people towards Christianity. It's because they're not going at it as
kind of you know, three point evangelists. They're they're just opening it up
and saying, here's a story, and isn't it interesting? And what would
happen if you know, you you started to step into it. They're not
you know, they don't have a plan, I think, to convert people.
But people are being converted. And it's because it's it's this much more
sort of natural, holistic way of doing things where where where people. I
mean, the thing about especially you know, Jordan Peterson that I find with
him is the reason I think he connects with people is because they genuinely feel
like he cares about them, like he cares about their soul basically. And
and when he you know, you know, breaks down in tears on stage,
it's it's not manufactured. It's a kind of it's a kind of real,
a real reality that kind of breaks through the intellectual firewall that I think
you get actually with a lot of the public thinkers and things, and and
I just think there's something about that. There's there's something about the that's very
attractive to people, I think, And and you can't manufacture it, you
know, you can't then say, you know, to the evangelist, well
you need to do the Jordan Peterson thing and start crying on stage, because
that's the way to get them in. It's it's just got to be real,
you know. And that's and so whether it's art, whether it's you
know, Jordan Peterson on the stage, people connect with with real stuff,
and that's where I think we have to go in that sense. Yeah,
that I think that that's right. I mean, since we're talking about Jordan,
I am curious to because you kind of were there at the outset.
I remember you interviewed Jordan quite early in his you know, Skyrocket to to
to fame, and I'm wondering how you see Jordan's role in this transformation,
especially the new ative transformation, if you see if you feel like he's played
some role in changing the way people proceed religious I mean, you could probably
answer this question far better than I could in all honestly, Jonathan, but
the I mean, the reality is Yeah. I remember in twenty seventeen,
that was when I first started to hear the name Jordan Peterson being banded around
and people saying, hey, you should get this guy, really interesting,
you know, Canadian psychologist on your show justin He's having these amazing sellout lectures
on the Bible. And I was thought, oh, that sounds interesting,
you know. And I heard he you know, was making some waves as
well around the C sixteen villain all that. But I finally kind of got
my opportunity. Actually, in early twenty eighteen, I was starting a series
of shows from Unbelievable called The Big Conversation, and I Peterson was just about
to release twelve Rules for Life, and he happened to come over to the
UK for a kind of almost pre released sort of mini tour, and I
remember sort of getting in touch with the publicist at the time saying, I'd
love to book, you know, Dr Peterson onto my show. I'm going
to hopefully bringing on with a sort of atheist psychologist, a debate meaning and
God kind of thing, and she said, yeah, that should be fine.
Yeah, we got room in to schedule, So that was fine,
and I just remember a series of emails from her as the time drew near,
where she said, all this, this man's far more popular than I
was expecting him to be, and could we just whittle down your time a
bit because I need to take him over to the BBC afterwards. And it
was It was interesting because I even then I could see something was going on,
and they had sort of, you know, around the time he came
over, they booked kind of hastily booked sort of a thousand seater auditorium and
it sold out, you know, in hours, and so they booked a
second one and that sold out. And this was before the book was even
properly released. And then the book came out, and funnily enough, just
a day or two after I recorded my show with Peterson, he had that
he recorded that viral interview with Kathy Newman you may remember, where you know,
they kind of debate the gender pay gap and that kind of thing.
So then it just exploded and everyone was suddenly, it seemed, talking about
Jordan Peterson. So I was kind of sitting on this show that I just
recorded as well, but I wasn't going to be releasing mine for a few
months, you know, because we weren't going to start this series yet.
But when when we did, obviously it caught fire and you know, brought
you know, I can thank honestly Jordan for the fact that our YouTube channel
kind of got going at that point because of that video. But it's I
guess what I noticed, you know, a more fundamental level was that,
Yeah, this was a classic example of a completely different conversation because I brought
him on with this atheist psychologist, Susan Blackmore, to debate the question of
whether we can make sense of life without God. And you know, I
didn't, in that sense, bring Jordan on as a Christian guest, so
it was kind of an unusual show in that way. I'd normally have a
Christian opposite, you know, an atheist or something like that, but he
could have if you had just been casually listening, you could easily thought he
was a Christian sort of guest because he was defending the idea of, you
know, the fact that the only way we can talk of value as humans
is that we're made in the image of God, and you know, and
it was just the most fascinating thing. And I as soon as that show
went out, suddenly I had a huge influx of new listeners, people getting
in touch. A very good friend now actually called called Dean in Australia who
you know, stumbled across the unbelievable show because of having Peterson on, and
just people who are basically agnostics but really interested and just looking for something.
And I just realized there's this whole sort of outside these kind of quite nerdy
Christian atheist apologetics debates, there's actually this whole demographic who are just basically looking
for something and they've kind of looked into the Sam Harris and the Dawkins way
of it and it just hasn't quite worked. And suddenly Jordan Peterson comes along,
and I don't know, it just opens a door for them. It's
like, for whatever reason, he speaks language that they can understan, they
can kind of get their heads around faith and religion in a new way.
And suddenly it's like a door opens for them. And and as like a
good number of them I think are walking through that door. Mhmm. Yeah,
that's the when I I remember watching that interview and also thinking he's bringing
people on a in a place that they're not used to. He's saying things
that people are not used to hearing and kind of crashing some of the argument,
the normal arguments that people have. Remember even argued with her about the
idea that memes then affect genes, right, trying to say that it's like,
if there's this idea that memes, that memes are just a a you
know, an emergent property. But he was he said, then the meme
affects the development of the gene through the way that humans act. And and
it's like I could see her like she had never thought about that in her
entire life, and I thought, ah, and it's weird because it's an
argument that Jordan us that he hasn't even touched. After that, and I
thought, that's the type of argument. They can help people understand the idea
that at least understand that top down meaning is real, that constraint from above,
it's something that you can't avoid even in your even in your biological kind
of evolutionary way, and that that way of arguing is a way to help
secudar people understand that that that when we talk about, you know, idea
meaning coming down from heaven or names coming down from heaven, that it happens
even in the biological sphere. So anyway that I remember that interview, I
remember loving that there's some I mean, it was only a short interview in
all honesty, you know, we we had about fifty minutes, and but
we packed an awful lot in and and I just, yeah, there was
some absolutely stunning moments in that one. I mean, the one, the
one that I particularly remember is is Jordan Beatson essentially saying to Susan Blackmore,
well, I don't really think you're an atheist. And she kind of got
somewhat offended by this, you know, what do you mean I don't believe
in God? And he basically did his thing and saying, well, no,
you do have something that He's got to you. It's that you know.
And and and obviously she kind of, you know, went back and
forth on him on that. But it was interesting because it did introduce me,
i think, to the first time, to this quite nuanced kind of
way in which Peterson and yourself to some extent, kind of talk about God.
Because again, as he has been on many interviews, he wasn't too
willing to be drawn on exactly what he means by God. But he was
willing to say, we will have something that functions as God in our life,
and again I saw. I just think that whole conversation has been quite
interesting. I think it's sometimes confusing for people because they are it's like,
uh, you know, I wish I could just get a straight answer on
this. But I think what I've I'm I guess even I am beginning to
learn, is that so many, so often that conversation is already being held
in sort of rationalistic, naturalistic terms, you know, when you say,
just define God for me and then then we'll we'll decide whether he exists or
not kind of thing. Actually, and I just think Jordan is just one
of these people. He says, I'm not going to play the game that
way. Okay, that's because I'm immediately going to fall into your trap basically,
And I just found that quite refreshing that he was kind of I don't
think he was being evasive in that sense, he was just not willing to
sort of fall into that specific debate, which you know how that's going to
go kind of thing. So yeah, yeah, a lot of people make
fun of Jordan because of that that these moments where he says, well,
what do you mean by God? What do you mean by believe? What
do you mean? And and I think that I understand why they make fun
of him, but I think that they're He's basically trying to say, when
you're talking about the source of reality, when you're talking, when you're when
you're that's the conversation you're having, You're saying, what is the source of
meaning? What is the source of reality? What is the source of all
things? Then if you try to use a language that reduces that to propositions,
then you're already in the wrong sphere. And so you have the problem
of you have you have the problem of again that we're falling into a trap,
which is, like you said, if I if I try to define
God like I try to define the species of a dog, then then the
Christian is lost at the outset. And there the truth is that in our
own Christian tradition, there is an apophatic idea. There is an idea that
God is not totally definable, that God cannot be completely captured by meaning.
And it's not a way of evading, it's a way of saying, the
source of all things cannot be captured by things like that's just how it's actually
just a kind of normal argument for the same reason that how can I say
this, like, you'll never get to the Big Bang even in your science,
because you can't get to the origin in the system. The origin the
origin is behind the system of something, And that's a difficult argument for people
understand. But I think that there's something about JORDANU intuitively yeah once and I
think and I think, you know, there's always that danger in my world
that we want everything kind of buttoned down and kind of explained and neatly,
sort of systematically kind of done. And I think in that sense, Peterson
sort of has sort of frustrated both Christians and atheists at that level because he's
not willing to be put in those boxes in that way. But I found
that but in an interesting way, that's part of his appeal I think for
many people is that he's sort of not kind of using the typical language of
either side, and so he's he's kind of That's why I think it opens
it up for people in a strange way, because it's it's a bit more
expansive and they feel like this isn't the kind of the thing I heard in
Sunday School. But it's not that it's not kind of you know, the
Dawkins lecture either that I was at. So, yeah, I just think
there's something going on there that means that it's yeah, sometimes hard to pin
down in the way because people like to have things very black and white,
But at the same time, it's kind of opening up the possibilities for people
in other ways, you know. And so in your new in this new
project, in this new documentary series, what are the things that have surprised
you because you kind of had a perception and the right perception, that something's
happening in culture, and so we need to investigate this and understand it.
But what are some of the things that that you didn't expect to see?
Maybe I think some of it is is the people you know that I encounter
who have become Christians, and some of them are really surprising stories. You
know. You know Paul kings North quite well, and again he's someone who
was himself completely shocked, surprised by the fact that he became a Christian because
it was that was not the thing that he was expecting would provide the answers.
You know, he thought he knew what Christianity was. You know,
there's that sense in which I think you can almost become inoculated to Christianity if
you've kind of received a small shot of it, you know, at some
point thinking that you've had the real thing, and then you discover later that
are no. It turns out the real thing was something altogether different and bigger,
and and he you know, went through, you know, sort of
teenage atheist phase. He kind of then spent a long time in sort of
in Buddhism, felt like he still needed to worship something though. There was
that kind of deep sense that the world was enchanted and nature that she loved
so much, and so he tried wicker you know for a while, and
you know, was out in the woods kind of doing nature religion and worship.
But again in a very sort of really interesting series of events in his
own life where at one point his wife, out of the blue, again
not a Christian, told him he was going to become a Christian. And
then he was having dreams about Jesus and he was suddenly having all these correspondences
from people he hadn't realized were Christians in his life, and it just there
was just like he says, it was almost like he got dragged out of
wicker and into It's orthodoxy in fact in the end. So it's I just
find that really interesting because again you've got someone who's highly intelli, you know,
person twenty first century modern person, but who who suddenly finds that the
story they've been looking for a kind of a story to make sense of life,
and suddenly that the last story they expected to do it was the one
that did it. And I just am finding kind of increasing examples of that
that again in a funny way, that that sort of story of Ian hersty
Aali And I'm only mentioning kind of the big, well known once here.
There's lots and lots of other smaller, less well known stories that I could
mention. But again, I just find it so interesting that suddenly, you
know, in this moment, she comes out and says, actually, I'm
not an atheist anymore. I And she doesn't kind of give a you know,
credle statement of belief exactly in Christianity, but what she does say is
atheism isn't enough, and I need what whatever it is that this person Jesus
represents. That's what I'm looking for in my life. And again I just
find I would that you could have knocked me over with a feather when when
she dropped that article, because I was like, what this is? This
is a bit like St. Paul on the Road to Damascus. Here this
was a proper new atheist one that you know, she shared the stages with
Harris and Dawkins, so if it could happen to her, it could happen
to anyone, you know. And so so these I do find these genuine
surprising. I feel like something's changed in the atmosphere that it's possible for those
kinds of stories to suddenly be happening. So that's probably the bit I find
most exciting, most surprising. I think in a way, there's lots of
other surprising elements to it, you know, as I said, the way
that the ground has shifted so completely, so that I see kind of unusual
bedfellows now with some of the atheist interlocators who are now sharing stages with Christians,
who are you know, buddying up and kind of collaborating in various ways.
So many interesting commonversations that you're having with with people that you might not
have ever thought to you would be having, you know, ten years ago,
because I think there's been a kind of convergence of lots of things and
and so I I don't know how that's all going to shake out, and
it's not all necessarily going to be positive, and people are going to go
off in different directions with this, but I do just find that that the
whole thing is sort of getting shaken up, stirred around. And I feel
like, you know, again this is my me speaking as a Christian,
that God's doing something, you know, in the process of all that,
and and I just yeah, quite excited about it. Well, everybody,
you check out Justin's book, The Surprising Rebirth of the Belief in God and
his the documentary series re Enchanting. Like I said at the outset, it's
really interesting. He's talking to all the people that similar people that we're talking
to there is you know, he's in the he's perceived some of the similar
things that everybody's watching this as see that there's something happening. There's a deep
shift in culture, and definitely there is a return of the sacred and the
possibility of seeing Christ freshly again. And so Justin, thanks so much for
all the work you do. Oh yes, You're so welcome, Jonathan.
It's been absolute privileged to be on. Just one slight sort of correction there,
which is the re Enchanting podcast is a slightly different thing to the Surprising
Rebirth of Belief in God podcast, but we're using quite a lot of material
from that in the documentary series, so they're very much connected in many ways.
Where's the best place people can find you're working. Yeah, justin Briley
dot com is my website, so you can sign up to the newsletter,
do all the usual things there, but you'll get links to the podcast,
to the book and to re Enchanting as well if you want to follow some
of the conversations we have on that other podcast. But yeah, justin Briley
dot com. All right, thanks Justin, Thank you so much.