Dawkins’ admiration for “cultural” Christianity shouldn’t be recent. What has modified is the dawning realisation of how much now we have lost.
The Christian web was set ablaze with comments from uber-atheist Professor Richard Dawkins on Easter Sunday. He said he considers himself a “cultural Christian” and that he values the traditions of the religion.
Many commentators didn’t realise that his words by themselves should not recent – Dawkins has been describing himself like this since 2007, although he still adamantly disbelieves in God. What he means is that he likes Christmas carols, beautiful cathedrals, and he’s keen on the meek and mild version of Anglicanism that after prospered on this country.
But the cultural atmosphere has modified significantly since then, when the books of the “recent atheists” like Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens were bestsellers. Today there’s more public discussion of Christian contribution to civilisation, and a couple of famous people have turn out to be believers, similar to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a friend of Dawkins.
The decline of the West seems to have prompted nostalgia in regards to the past in addition to real concern that something very essential has been lost. For some, similar to Ali, there seems to have been greater than only a desire for the cultural effects, but a private faith too. I actually have previously argued that Christianity only matters whether it is true – and the powerful transformations it may well usher in individuals who do imagine is one manifestation of its power, in addition to evidence of its truth.
In the interview with LBC, released on Easter Sunday, Dawkins said he enjoyed “living in a culturally Christian country although I don’t imagine a word of the Christian faith.” This includes the virgin birth and the resurrection, he said. “The things that Christians imagine are literally nonsense.” The interviewer, Rachel Johnson, discussed her own wrestling with faith and the miraculous claims of Christianity. The full interview is offered on YouTube.
Dawkins was also not changing his tune when he made critical comments about Islam and its treatment of ladies and gay people. “If I had to choose from Christianity and Islam, I’d select Christianity each time,” he said. “It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion, in a way that I believe Islam shouldn’t be.”
What has modified though, is his awareness of the fact that Islam is now being promoted within the UK in some places, similar to lights for Ramadan on Oxford Street, or messages from Islamic scriptures on train station noticeboards – each occurred throughout the Christian period of Lent, for which there was no similar promotion. Dawkins said he was “barely horrified” about this and that he supported Christianity as a “bulwark” against Islam. He seems nostalgic for the culture of Christendom, and he has previously spoken against the rise of extremes of recent “woke” ideology, too.
Multiple Christians identified that Dawkins himself has contributed to the change he’s lamenting. Memes flourished about sawing off the branch you’re sitting on, sticking a branch within the wheels of the bike you’re riding, or the cartoon “I would like things to be different” who then utters “oh no” when observing the wreckage caused. Some didn’t pull their punches: “Evidence yet again that the good professors could be absolute morons,” said conservative commentator Laura Perrins on X. “He has done a lot damage to Christianity, cultural and otherwise. Did he really think nothing would fill the void?”
However it could possibly be said that Dawkins hasn’t really contributed that much to the decline. The poor arguments of his ilk have in some people prompted a move towards faith, and caused other positive effects similar to sharpening the Church’s mental capabilities. The deterioration of Christian belief within the UK has been gradual and an extended time coming: writers CS Lewis and GK Chesterton, for instance, predicted the trajectory many many years ago. Dawkins’ personal contribution has been minimal.
What can also be recent is a more widespread questioning of the dogma of progressivism – the relentless pursuit of improvement while sidelining or completely rejecting tradition, which in practice has often included Christian belief. This momentum is perceived as thing by most individuals today, unaware that it is a reasonably recent idea: previous generations were more respectful of their history. Attempts to re-engineer an imaginary “higher world” often result in unexpected consequences, as Dawkins appears to be learning as he mourns the lack of Christian culture while rejecting the tenets that had created and sustained it.
Esme Partridge in Unherd slammed Dawkins comments as “naivety”. She argued his attitude is comparable to a different huge social change: his generation’s stance on the sexual revolution. They personally benefitted from the old morals, yet at the identical time put the longer term availability of such positive effects in query by attacking their foundations.
“Dawkins’s belief that it is feasible to reap the cultural advantages of Christianity while publicly undermining its legitimacy is maybe an expression of this generational mentality,” she wrote. This was also the attitude of Enlightenment thinkers similar to Locke and Montesquieu, who believed that liberal values could be upheld without Christianity. Partridge points out that this has been shown to be false too, as they’ve mutated into “anarchic systems of self-interest which undermine the virtues upon which liberalism was originally premised.”
She adds her voice to the calls for a renewal. “Like any organism, Christianity must recuperate its roots, or it can die — a fact of life which, as an evolutionary biologist, Dawkins ought to understand,” she said.
Of course, faithful Christians live to tell the tale, and have been debating and praying about these issues for years, well before Dawkins got here on the scene. As society’s lamentations grow, and the negative effects turn out to be starker, can anyone show the way in which back?
Heather Tomlinson is a Christian journalist. Find her on Substack at http://heathertomlinson.substack.com
