Jason Daye 
Welcome to FrontStage backstage. This week, we have a hand-picked highlight that we believe you will find valuable. If you do, we invite you to listen to the full conversation. You can find the link to the complete episode in the description, as always, please Like, Comment, Subscribe, and Share, so we can continue to bring you meaningful ministry content, helping you, pastors, and ministry leaders, just like you, flourish in both life and leadership. Are you ready? Let's go.

Alister McGrath 
The new Atheism really began to appear about 2006 when Richard Dawkins wrote his book The God Delusion, and it captured media headlines. Christopher Hitchens joined them. 2007 God is not great, and for a lot of people, this was the future. We're entering a dramatic new phase in Western culture. It's all going to be atheist. Every thinking person needs to be an atheist. And it's all very dramatic, and people like me got involved in this discussion, but it has moved on, and in many ways, what Dennis Alexander and I found was that people were coming to our offices, in effect, saying we want to know more about science and religion type things because we've read Richard Dawkins, but it doesn't really make sense. And what we were noticing is more than that, a lot of these people would say, well, it didn't make sense. And in fact, when we began to look into what Richard Dawkins was saying, it was clearly inadequate, it was clearly badly argued. And so we thought, Well, look, this guy is really critiquing Christianity. Can we trust this guy? Maybe we need to check this out for ourselves. And so one of the constant themes in these conversations was we thought Dawkins was right, but we thought we better check it out, and when we did, it wasn't. And so we have a stream of very intelligent people, often people who are in their 20s, win effect said, Look, Dawkins was the stimulus that brought the faith, because he made us think about Christianity, which otherwise we wouldn't have done. So this is really interesting. And so Dennis Alexander and I thought, Well, look, we ought to do something about this. So we persuaded 12 very interesting people, men and women from five different nations, to tell their stories in their own way, in their own words, to say, look what happened. And so we have 12 narratives. Sometimes it's about their faith being stimulated by Dawkins. Quite often it's about coming to faith because of Dawkins, and that's a twist to the new Atheism story, which nobody expected. And I think this would be really interesting for pastors, because these guys are telling stories. They're saying, Here's what made me change my mind. And you know, I think we can all learn from this, because you can, in effect, weave us into sermons. You can use these guys in the book as examples to say, well, you know, Dawkins thought he was great, but look at this guy. Here's what she said. And this is really important. So I think this book will give you a lot of help in preaching, in apologetics, and it will encourage you, I think, in your ministry.

Jason Daye 
Yeah, I love that. Alistair and the encouragement piece, I think, is huge, because so often we look around at the world, right? And we think, Oh, man, everything is looking rough, you know, all they're all these ideologies, all these different cultural, you know, pushes that seem to be warring against Jesus, you know, in the kingdom. And sometimes we can get discouraged by that. But as you've shared that these are phenomenal stories of people who faced, you know, what culture was throwing at them, and yet, through that, we're able to discover the hope and the truth of Jesus, which is incredibly encouraging. Alistair, what? What are some of the elements that you saw in these different stories that stood out to you the most in how these people were navigating and how Jesus was, you know, the spirit was interacting with them in their, you know, search, maybe, well,

Alister McGrath 
I think that's a really good question, because you may well find that pastors will pick up on these things and say, Hey, this could really help me in my ministry. Let me tell you the themes that keep coming up. One of them is that as people read Dawkins and, to a lesser extent, Hitchens, they felt these guys are overreaching. You know, they're drawing conclusions which go way beyond the evidence, and that made them suspicious. Look, these guys are kind way over interpreting things. It's not that simple, and that's one of the reasons why they felt they're going to check this out. That's the first thing to say that Dawkins overreaches. He goes way beyond what the evidence is about. Secondly, one of the things that many of these people bring up in their personal testimonies is they were quite astonished by the arrogance of the new Atheism. In other words, you know, we are the right guys. Religious people are just idiots. They aren't worth taking seriously this idea of condescension, and people thought, thought this can't be right. These guys are, in effect, dismissing faith. They're not taking it seriously. They're not engaging them properly. Maybe there's something they don't want us to know. Maybe they're frightened about something. Let's go and find out for ourselves. Now, that's a very interesting point. A third point that comes up again and again is, hey, these guys are critiquing Christianity. Okay, well, fair enough. But what they are doing is using criteria to judge the gospel that they don't apply to their own views. In other words, they're in effect saying, Well, I can critique you, but you can't critique me. And again, people thought, this is, this is just not fair. It's not balanced. And so you find a lot of material in here, but people saying, in effect, look, I thought there's something in England, we would say, fishy here, you know, this is there's something not right. And people began to say, look, they're trying to hide something. We're going to find these things out for ourselves. We're going to check this out for ourselves. So three themes there, I think you could easily weave into your preaching, your teaching, and you may well find, as you talk about this with church members, that actually, along say, Hey, I know exactly what you mean. And it may well be you're able to, in effect, help members of your congregations minister to people who they know, who have been impacted by the new Atheism. And that's a really important point. This book may help you to help keep it in your congregation, reach out beyond the church to people who they know have been affected by Dawkins or Hitchens. There's a lot here that might be really useful.

Jason Daye 
Yeah, yeah. No, no, I agree. And as I read through those are a lot of the thoughts that were going through my head was the practicality of this. And this is not something, honestly, Alistair, until I received this book that I honestly, really even thought of, or considered, or, you know, saw those connections. So again, thank you for drawing this together for us, because it does help us. I think missionally in ministry, think through how people are receiving information, how people are processing information, thinking about these bigger questions, and then, what are the opportunities for us as Christ followers? You know, it's interesting. Alistair, it seems like oftentimes, when you know differing ideologies arise or cultural beliefs arise, such as new Atheism, that oftentimes, you know our first response from the church is simply to just defend. Right, just to defend, defend, defend. But as I got more deeply into this book, I began to think through there are probably better ways, not that defense is bad, but there are probably other ways that we can begin to look for the opportunities, the opportunities that these ideologies, these cultural thrusts, open up, the questions that they open up. Can you talk to us a bit, Alistair, about how we in ministry as Christ followers, in our relationships? Maybe can look at some of these different ideologies, some of these different things, and look at them in a way that might be more effective when it comes to ministry and engagement with those around us.

Alister McGrath 
Well, Jason, that's a really good question. So let me talk a bit about that. I mean, when you look at things like the new Atheism, what you are seeing is people who are looking for something that's going to really satisfy, and they want you all to say there's something I can buy into. Very often, they do so because they've had a bad experience, perhaps a bad experience of a pastor or a church or something. Very often, it's a reactive thing, that they're running away from something and looking for something they think is better. I think is better. I think there are a number of things we can tease out. Here's the first of them. Actually, there are very few people who actually became excited about the new Atheism, who are still excited about the new Atheism. In other words, as a very high attrition rate, people are to use religious language. They're lapsing. They're walking away from the new Atheism because it didn't deliver what it promised. Now that's a really important point, because as a pastor, you could easily craft a wonderful sermon about the disappointment, the disillusionment of the new Atheism, because both those themes are there in this book. People again, again, saying we were disillusioned. It did not deliver what promised. It's all based on false premises. That's a major theme. So one thing to bring out in this very clearly is there's this deep sense that this movement did not deliver what promised. Next thing to point out is this, and the new Atheism really rested on sloganeering, in other words, very aggressive rhetoric. You know, God is a delusion. Religious people are mad or bad or sad, or possibly all three. And I think that one of the things we need to do is to find ways of forming friendships with people which are going to, in effect, give us a personal link to have those significant conversations, which you say, Look, you know, I know you don't believe in God, but can I tell you why it's so important? And one of the things about this book is it shows how important telling personal stories is. And what I want to say, first of all, to pastors listening, but secondly, to anybody who's listening, is that telling your own story of what brought you to faith and what keeps you in faith can be extremely important. One of the great things about this book is there are 12 narratives, 12 stories of, in effect, disillusionment with Richard Dawkins. And it doesn't stop there. Because they say, Well, look, there has to be something better than this. Let's find it. And they find it in Christ. They find it in the Christian faith. And I think that's a really important point, because it's not just saying, look, a new Atheism is wrong. What we need to show is that we can offer something better. In other words, we are not just negative critics saying you're wrong. We're saying, Look, I'm really disappointed, because you clearly haven't found something very exciting. I think I have found, let me tell you about Christianity and why it is so good. So in effect, what these people find is that Dawkins stimulated them to explore Christianity, and they liked what they found. So I think that's a very encouraging thing, a because people are saying new Atheism old, and they're saying, but there's something better, which we found, and that ought to encourage all of us, the Christian energy, that the Christian faith, that the gospel, is still able to speak powerfully and meaningfully into people's lives. And we've got to figure out ways of keeping these conversations going so people can hear this news and begin to reflect on the difference it might make to them.

Jason Daye 
FrontStage, backstage is a ministry of PastorServe. Here at PastorServe, we love walking alongside of pastors and ministry leaders. If you'd like to learn details on how you might qualify for a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, please visit PastorServe.org/freesession now FrontStage. Backstage is more than just another podcast. In fact, we create an entire toolkit that complements every single conversation. You can find this toolkit at PastorServe.org/network for this episode, and for every episode in the toolkit, you'll find a number of resources, including our ministry leaders' growth guide. In the growth guide, you'll find both questions and insights that are pulled from the conversation that you and the leaders at your local church or ministry can process together to consider how this content relates to your particular ministry context. Again, you can find the toolkit at PastorServe.org/network. Now we hope that you are finding this content valuable, and if so, we'd love for you to share, comment, like, follow, subscribe, that engagement is incredibly important, and also please take a moment to give us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your engagement and your reviews help other pastors and ministry leaders help find this valuable content. I'm Jason Daye, and I'm encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. Thank you, and God Bless You.