New Atheists for Christ

A Review of Coming to Faith Through Dawkins: 12 Essays on the Pathway from New Atheism to Christianity

If in the early 2000s someone had said that New Atheism would be digging its own grave by the 2020s, I’m not sure anyone would have believed it. New Atheism was an edgier and bolder form of unbelief promoted by such energetic and quick-witted figures as Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins (dubbed the Four Horsemen of the movement), who published bestselling critiques of religion and packed out auditoriums with people eager to hear their takedowns of Christianity. But now, in 2024, Hitchens and Dennett are deceased; Sam Harris seems more interested in meditation and “spirituality without religion”;¹ and Richard Dawkins says he is a “cultural Christian.”²

What in the world has happened? Part of the answer can be found in Coming to Faith Through Dawkins, a compilation of essays from a variety of converts to Christianity whose stories intersect with Dawkins and the New Atheism. For anyone looking to get a basic grasp of both the allure of the movement and how its shine rubbed off, this book is a good place to start. McGrath and Alexander are the perfect editors for the project, as they are both topflight academics in the realm of science and religion, and they have interacted extensively with the New Atheism both intellectually and personally.

Dawkins’s Paradoxical Deliverances

McGrath begins with a helpful foreword that maps out the movement right up to current happenings on the ground. The cultural mood has shifted, he notes, “as many who had initially embraced the New Atheism found that it failed to deliver the secure knowledge they longed for or a sustainable vision of the ‘good life.’” He lays out five key elements of what is leading many people away from atheism and toward a reconsideration of God.

• Dawkins’s public attacks on Christianity ironically “generated a surge of interest in exploring religious faith.”

• Dawkins’s own arguments in his bestselling The God Delusion have been heavily criticized by “leading atheist philosophers who were alarmed at the damage they thought his shrill and superficial engagement with life’s deepest questions was doing to the intellectual reputation of atheism.”

• Dawkins’s outlook on religion was deeply shaped by “an uncritical acceptance of the ‘warfare’ model of the relation of science and religion.”

• Dawkins’s trenchant certitude actually mirrored the “religious fundamentalism” he critiqued.

• Dawkins’s growing celebrity and cult of personality increasingly appeared as “a new religious movement, with its infallible prophets and authoritative texts,” mirroring as well the very dogmas and practices he critiqued.

New Christians

These themes and more are woven throughout the essays of the twelve contributors, who represent a wide range of countries, life experiences, and professions. They are scientists, historians, professors, pastors, lawyers, engineers, and artists, and readers will find their stories accessible, genuine, and inspiring. Most of all, readers will come away with a renewed sense of the mysterious ways in which God makes all things work together to bring people to himself—even through such an unlikely “evangelist” as Richard Dawkins.

Notes
1. Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (2014).
2. Walter Sánchez Silva, “Famous Atheist Richard Dawkins Says He Considers Himself a ‘Cultural Christian’,” National Catholic Register (April 3, 2024).