[This is the fifth article in a series on New Atheism. Read parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.]
Which Christians are particularly vulnerable to New Atheism’s polemics? The first group is teenagers and young adults growing up in some kind of Christian framework. This group will generally be relatively ignorant of the content of the Christian faith and how it can answer challenges such as that presented by New Atheism, as they haven’t had time to mature and sink their roots down deep. They are in the process of transitioning into the man or woman they are going to be and so are usually, whether they realize it or not, coming to conclusions about where they stand in relation to the God they have grown up with. They are in the process of deciding whether or not, and if so to what degree, their life will be a pursuit of the kingdom of God.
Many are looking for something to believe in, something bigger than them, that can divide the world into straightforward black-and-white categories (though not all, because some are looking for a reason to justify living a self-centred life). Here New Atheism and good Christian youth ministries are fairly evenly matched. New Atheism is nothing if not an ideology that offers people the chance to be part of something bigger than themselves, and offers a fairly simple ‘us and them’ way of interpreting the world. But most Christians involved in ministry to people in this age group have grasped this feature of the youth demographic and pitch the gospel and its implications accordingly. New Atheism’s style of polemics is tailor-made for this group, but its advantage is blunted wherever Christian youth ministries are prepared to forgo imposing on youth a concern for nuance and subtlety, which is more a hallmark of older adults.
I’d suggest that the quality that makes this group vulnerable is also where the solution lies. For this group, what they primarily need is more knowledge, either explicitly in response to New Atheism arguments, or implicitly before the problem begins as an inoculation. Teaching, especially with an eye to the ‘relationship of science and religion’ question (e.g. whether science has all the answers, but also whether religion is fundamentally a source of evil in the world) can fairly quickly bring people in this group up to speed. And for most people in this group it is a relatively straightforward matter to show why New Atheism’s arguments are not overly compelling.
The second group are adults who have been Christians for some time, and who have lived on the basis that the gospel is true. Now they find themselves reconsidering that commitment and the conviction behind it. This gives their dilemma a different flavour from those in the first group.
Whereas teens and young adults are weighing up what to do with their heritage, whether to embrace it and how much if so, older adults are re-evaluating their lives to this point. Younger adults will be generally making their decision ‘aspirationally’—weighing up what sort of future life they want and, where there is reflection on the present, they will likely be looking mostly to the adult Christians around them to decide whether they want to be that kind of person when they ‘grow up’. Older adults have lived that life: now they are querying if what they got is what was advertised, or as compelling or convincing as it was before. Unlike the first group, they need not so much a reason to believe (and hence basic teaching) as a reason not to disbelieve—not to step back from (or drift away from) their current convictions and commitments. In general, I think people in this group need more troubleshooting to identify where the problem exists for them, the area that has begun to cause a significant question mark to appear over the truth and goodness of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Often this group needs a different style of communication to that of the first group when addressing these issues. This group has lived the kind of life that you have when you live by faith in the crucified Lord. They have experienced the ambiguities, the paradoxes, the things hard to explain. In differing ways, these have raised a question over the validity of the way of life lived under the cross. So a simple reassertion of black-and-white is often highly counter-productive. However, the more liberal approach of trying to reconstruct a Christian faith with fewer doctrines and more grey areas is also a dead end. What this group often needs is an attempt to acknowledge these ambiguous aspects of life, but that expounds the faith in such a way that it comprehends them, even if tensions remain. The battle lies not just in teaching the fundamentals in the abstract but in relating them to the world they live in, how these truths shed light on their experiences and continue to ring true despite the tensions. This group knows the answers but hasn’t internalized them, or has struck a snag in working their implications out in daily life. Some attention to the details of how the rubber hits the road will usually provide the most help for this group.
[This article is part of an 8-part series: read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.]
