One of essentially the most notorious atheists has had a “come to Jesus” moment. He’s also discovered, in the end, a option to undermine the Christian religion he loathes. And, unlike his previous efforts, this one could actually work.
Richard Dawkins, the creator of The God Delusion, was amongst essentially the most recognized proponents of New Atheism, a movement to reject the existence of God that had its golden era 15 or 20 years ago. Indeed, he was one among the movement’s “4 horsemen,” together with Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.
What was “recent” about all of this was hardly the arguments, which were normally warmed-over Bertrand Russell. It was the fighting mood of all of it. Audiences could feel a vicarious sense of “aren’t we naughty?” counterculturalism after they heard Hitchens ridiculing not only televangelists or abusive priests but Mother Teresa as a fraud. This theatricality eventually wore thin, until even fellow atheists seemed embarrassed by it.
But now Dawkins emerges again, this time in a viral video arguing for Christianity … form of. He notes the plummeting of church attendance and Christian identification in his country, the United Kingdom, and says that, on one level, he’s glad to see it. Yet alternatively, Dawkins continues, he’s “barely horrified” to see the promotion of Ramadan within the UK. After all, he’s a Christian in a Christian country.
Lest anyone be confused, Dawkins made clear that he’s a “cultural Christian, … not a believer.” He loves the hymns and the Christmas carols and the cathedrals—the whole lot about Christianity except, well, the Christ. “I prefer to live in a culturally Christian country,” Dawkins said, “although I don’t imagine a single word of the Christian faith.”
In this case, cultural Christian has a definite meaning for Dawkins, which amounts to “not Muslim.” It’s a way of defining who we and they are based on national customs, not on any concern for who (or if) God is.
I immediately considered a segment from the tv series Ramy, through which the lead character, played by Ramy Youssef, talks with a Jewish businessman about similarities between the American Jewish and American Muslim experiences. One of the most important similarities, the Ramy character says, is “Christmaslessness.”
I can’t consider a single one among my Jewish or Muslim friends and acquaintances who would define being a Jew or a Muslim that way (nor, I’m sure, would Youssef say that’s all of it). But I think there are some people for whom that feeling is a primary piece of their identity in America, for whom the difficulty isn’t whether God was really there at Sinai or at Mecca but quite who is an element of us and who’s them. The type of “Christianity” Dawkins proposes just replaces “Christmaslessness” with “Christmasfulness,” “Easterfulness,” or, most accurately, “Ramadanlessness.”
Fifteen or so years ago, some Christian friends of mine were frightened of New Atheism. They took the “4 horsemen” language as a signal of some type of catastrophe of which these atheists were the vanguard. The project didn’t work, though. Yes, certain parts of the Western world have continued to secularize, but of all the explanations for a loss of religion, the arguments of The God Delusion probably aren’t one among them.
If I were a Screwtape, a literal devil’s advocate, advising atheists on how best to truly destroy the church, Dawkins’ form of explicitly disenchanted cultural Christianity just isn’t what I’d propose. Overt atheism won’t work, no less than at first. People are drawn to belong, they usually are drawn to worship. I’d, nevertheless, propose the fundamental impulse of what Dawkins said, though tied to rhetoric that also sounds religious. Attacking Christianity rarely works; co-opting it often does.
The urge to make religion the option to prove one’s cultural identity against “outsiders” will at all times find an eager audience. For those that worship their flesh—defined when it comes to race, region, class, political identity, whatever—having a mascot they’ll call “God” will at all times be useful. The projection of all that they love about their very own people, nation, and selves onto an unquestionable and unquestioning mascot can construct cohesion. They might even call that mascot “Jesus.”
This form of “Christianity” hollows out the Christian religion much more efficiently than straightforward attempts to persuade those that God is a delusion. It defeats Christianity by replacing the living God with a God who’s, in actual fact, a delusion.
It works to suppress the conscience that, within the deepest night, says, The God you’re worshiping is a projection of your group; the group you’re worshiping is a projection of yourself. It does away with a Christian faith that calls not for external conformity but for a recent birth, a renewing of the mind, a union with the living Christ. Then it inhabits the husk of that religion, paganizing it until one can toss away the shell.
That final change doesn’t take long. And these blood-and-soil religions are never content to valorize their very own blood and their very own soil. They eventually move on to shedding other people’s blood, stealing other people’s soil.
The problem with Dawkins’s “cultural Christianity,” then, just isn’t that he says it out loud; it’s that many individuals hold the identical view and won’t say it … yet. Christianity just isn’t about national anthems and village chapels and candlelight carol sings. It’s definitely not about using the levers of culture or the state to coerce other people to pretend that they’re Christians after they should not.
If the gospel isn’t real, the gospel doesn’t work. Genuine paganism will win out over pretend Christianity each time.
The apostle Paul warned that within the last days false teachers would use whatever people lust for—pleasure, power, belonging, self—to introduce a form of religion “having a type of godliness but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:5). The devil is sensible enough to make use of hole, cultural Christianity to make us atheists in the long term, to appreciate that the most effective option to take down a cross is to exchange it with a culture, a crown, or a cathedral—or a Christmas tree.
But remember: Jesus is alive and aware, and he’s a horseman too.
Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.
