Justin Brierley Goes From Unbelievable To Re-Enchanting – Christianity Today

Stroll round central London, and likewise you’ll snappy effect the capital’s infamous crimson buses, their facets decorated with adverts for upcoming movies, trend lines, or beauty merchandise. But in January 2009, they confronted the metropolis with a more inviting message: “There’s potentially no God. Now stop traumatic and journey your lifestyles.”

Created by the comedy author Ariane Sherine and backed by the British Humanist Affiliation and basic atheist Richard Dawkins, the “no God” campaign took scheme at some point soon of the heady days of Original Atheism. Dawkins’s The God Delusion had been promoting in copious numbers—honest one contribution to a public discourse hanging in its contempt for spiritual faith. Delusion became once one of the kinder epithets utilized; it became once no longer irregular to hear faith condemned as indoctrination, even abuse.

In a tiny studio on Chapter Avenue, no longer a ways from Westminster Abbey, nonetheless, one 29-year-broken-down became once trying to inject some civility into the dialog. Justin Brierley started his Amazing? present on Premier—a Christian radio effect in Britain—in 2005, offering believers the different to take a seat down down with an atheist and focus on thru their respective positions. It became once, in step with Brierley, no longer a universally widespread addition to the time table.

“A form of listeners at the time acknowledged, ‘That is a horrible belief because it is doubtless you’ll additionally be bringing these atheists on to argue for atheism,’” he recalled. Of us expressed fears that Christians will be “shaken in their faith.” Objectors had some extent, he conceded: “The layout became once somewhat fleshy-on, and it didn’t pull its punches.”

But 900 episodes later, the host stands by his reasoning.

“Within the long flee, in case your faith can’t face as much as a pair of advanced questions, then it is doubtless you’ll additionally honest bear received to quiz whether it’s a faith price having,” Brierley acknowledged. “There’s a roughly enhance that requires a particular quantity of uncomfortable questioning, nonetheless somewhat fancy the butterfly rising from the chrysalis, it is going to be advanced and painful nonetheless finally it makes you stronger.”

Brierley took his first job at Premier Christian Radio 22 years within the past. In that time, he has grown a shipshape and largely on-line target market with an lumber for food for in-depth, unashamedly intellectual debate about Christianity’s claims to truth.

In doing so, he has forged a occupation as a outstanding Christian apologist. It’s a position that he has arrived at by an irregular route—as mediator somewhat than preacher. His instrument is the correctly-timed quiz offered in carrier of the listener somewhat than the monologue delivered to the camera.

His story also tells us one thing regarding the evolution of apologetics in 21st-century Britain, where the procure, somewhat than the institutional church, has performed host to debates regarding the extensive questions of lifestyles, the universe, and the total lot.

From humble beginnings—his first present featured an Anglican pal and his atheist neighbor—Brierley went on to host guests including Philip Pullman, Tim Keller, and William Lane Craig. His “Huge Conversations” sequence featured Jordan Peterson on the psychology of belief and Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins debating belief and biology.

With the introduction of podcasting—Brierley became once an earlier adopter—the present gathered an colossal on-line following, with nonbelievers outstanding amongst them.

Scroll thru hundreds of feedback under the YouTube movies of these debates, and a customary theme is reward for Brierley’s web hosting.

“This guy is the supreme moderator on earth,” wrote one interested contributor gazing the controversy between Christian theologian Keith Ward and atheist thinker Daniel Dennett. “I became once very impressed by the host,” wrote one other. “He became once even-handed, entirely free of aggression, and he consistently saved the dialog within the target market’s idea and interest. Even even though I’m an atheist and fully convinced of Dennett’s space, I felt completely welcome as a listener, and I’ll for sure attain lend a hand to this channel!”

N. T. Wright, who is featured on many of Brierley’s exhibits (including an “Request of N. T. Wright The relaxation” sequence), describes him as a “pure” moderator. “He is conscious of when to steered a speaker, suggestions to blueprint out one thing that became once implicit nonetheless no longer somewhat particular but, and when to add a contemporary point that can turn the dialog in contemporary instructions,” the British theologian acknowledged. Wright cites as a fave his have dialog with the historian Tom Holland. “We each realized lots,” he acknowledged, “no longer honest from one one other nonetheless from what Justin became once in an enviornment to blueprint out from us.”

Writer and broadcaster Elizabeth Oldfield, whose podcast The Sacred has won a shipshape target market for its sensitive, probing interviews, describes Brierley as “honest intensely personable. He appears to be like fancy somebody who is enticing on this planet of tips and has spoken to plenty of intellectual giants with a remarkably low level of ego.”

“He has more of a web based hosting posture,” Oldfield added. “He’s no longer been asserting, ‘That is my startling contemporary apologetics argument,’ or ‘That is how I definitely bear the solutions to how Christians wants to be doing this.’ It’s been a mighty more hospitable maintaining of inform for conversations.”

Brierley remembers to “greet folk with heat,” she seen, a definitely necessary missional ability. “Acknowledge the presence of those that don’t accept as true with you, name that they are welcome, look to uncover issues from their point of stare, and quiz the questions that they’re going to additionally honest bear. It’s that valid empathy for—and liking of—folk with completely different views that shouldn’t be uncommon, nonetheless it definitely does definitely feel somewhat uncommon.”

For those weary of ailing-tempered exchanges, Amazing?, which Brierley left in 2023, stood out for its civility. But while half of the appeal became once the present’s exploration of philosophical, existential questions and in-depth engagement with science, there became once also a hazard that listeners could additionally gather lost in belief.

Survey a debate in action, even though, and likewise you’ll uncover Brierley politely look clarification from a speaker or try to summarize an extremely dense argument. You’ll also look Brierley’s accurate interest in atheistic arguments. “I’ve consistently acknowledged I’d mighty somewhat [hear from] a definitely dogmatic atheist than ‘I definitely don’t care’ apathetic agnosticism,” he acknowledged.

Whereas the present is essentially identified for its atheist-versus-Christian layout, Amazing? soon broadened to incorporate conversations between those of varied faiths and between Christians with completely different theological convictions. Rapidly after the demise of Osama bin Encumbered in Would possibly perhaps well well honest 2011, Brierley hosted an intensive Islamist, Anjem Choudary, in a dialogue about whether the earlier Al Qaeda leader represented “the honest face of Islam.”

Debates could additionally gather heated, Brierley recalled, critically those between Christians and Muslims. In some circumstances, guests who had honed their craft at Speakers’ Nook, a bit of London’s Hyde Park that has hosted public debates since the mid-1800s (and where arrests every now and then rob scheme), brought a more combative technique to the studio.

But for essentially the most half, the conversations illustrated the price of being face to face. Guests joined Brierley at Premier’s recording inform in London, leaning over microphones round a white table, with Brierley as moderator within the heart.

By the purpose the pandemic pushed conversations onto Zoom, familiarity and rapport were already built up: In 2022, Dawkins challenged fellow scientist Collins on miracles with bafflement somewhat than contempt.

Brierley’s differ of guests is distinguished given present debates about “no-platforming,” or “canceling,” public figures, with British bigger ed regulators monitoring speaker rejections by universities amid rising concerns regarding the protection of free speech.

Amazing? hosted Jordan Peterson, who in 2019 had his provide of a visiting fellowship at Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity rescinded, moreover to author Douglas Murray, who has argued that European civilization is demise by suicide because immigration.

Brierley believes that a pair of of his invitations were in error “because their views were potentially both so rude or a minority space that it wouldn’t bear made sense to provide them a platform.” But he’s collected “no longer a fan of cancel custom.”

He maintains that the layout of the present—matching every customer with somebody who had an opposing “substantive point of stare”—served an necessary feature. To illustrate, some listeners criticized his decision to characteristic a young-earth creationist. “But the fact is there are lots—critically within the US—of young-earth creationists,” Brierley acknowledged, “so is it ideal to honest ignore their standpoint?”

Brierley grew up within the Jesus Navy, a British incarnation of the Jesus Crawl, followed by time in self sustaining charismatic church buildings. He remembers having a “stable uncover community” and a “vibrant faith” in those years. It wasn’t except his arrival at Balliol Faculty, Oxford College—where he studied philosophy, politics, and economics from 1998 to 2001—that he first encountered Christians of alternative traditions or even “honest onerous-boiled skepticism about Christianity.”

Having grown up with a “very experiential” introduction to Christianity, he began to envision the intellectual underpinnings of his faith, reading apologists that incorporated a fellow Oxford alum, C. S. Lewis.

He became once also half of the Christian Arts and Drama Society, a pupil community that staged evangelistic skits within the metropolis’s streets. One custom gripping a performance within the sq. out of doorways the Radcliffe Digicam, a infamous 18th-century library, on mornings when students would return, a minute bit worse for wear, from all-evening parties.

“I’m particular plenty of these sketches had somewhat of a draw back factor to them,” he acknowledged. “But they were also our honest correct, heartfelt attempts to talk faith in a particular manner to the pupil body; there were attention-grabbing conversations that came about off the lend a hand of them.”

It proved worthwhile training for his work at Premier Christian Radio. He started working there rapidly after graduation, finding out the ropes as a presenter, including time as a sidekick on the effect’s weekday Inspirational Breakfast present hosted by radio aged John Pantry. Three years in, he pitched Amazing?, which snappy grew to turn out to be a flagship present.

Its success occurred in parallel with a broader shift in public debate to on-line platforms thru YouTube, podcasting, and social media. Someone, technically, could additionally make a following. Among Brierley’s standard interlocutors on the present became once Alex O’Connor, who based his Cosmic Skeptic YouTube channel while collected a pupil at Oxford.

This construction has “broken down the adjust that many church buildings or church denominations once had,” Brierley acknowledged. Congregants now bear gather entry to to a wealth of facts, including attempts to debunk spiritual tenets, at the click on of a button.

There were “casualties from that, who realized it advanced to live a Christian,” Brierley infamous, “partly because that they had been perhaps uncovered to a definitely one-dimensional create of Christianity, and with out notice it became once advanced to transpose that valid into a mighty wider category.”

But the procure is now “half of our day to day lifestyles,” he added, and church buildings are left finding out to adapt. There are some issues that it will no longer replace, such because the face-to-face community realized in native church buildings, even though the transition from on-line exploration to lifestyles in a local church can
be uncomfortable.

“Church in person is no longer delivered by project of an algorithm, and that’s the topic,” he acknowledged. “We’re used to having our very explicit interests met in this on-line world now…. Then, while you switch up at your native church and it appears to be like it’s no longer Tim Keller preaching, or it’s no longer Jordan Peterson handing over a message, there’s a sense of disappointment.”

These on this creep need to be taught that Christianity is “no longer attention-grabbing intellectuals providing you with hourlong philosophical treatises,” Brierley acknowledged.

“The general point of Christianity is seeing God’s grace within the day to day and real…. It’s all very correctly to glide on these intellectual flights of finding out and deep tips, nonetheless if it will’t be translated into the way it is doubtless you’ll additionally be living your lifestyles next to somebody who you honest uncover completely disturbing, it is roughly pointless.”

Brierley’s 2023 e book, The Comely Rebirth of Belief in God, suggests that church buildings within the UK could additionally honest look more contemporary folk, including those that bear begun to explore Christianity on-line, hasten thru their doorways. The e book’s thesis is that that the “Sea of Faith” described as being in “depression” retreat by the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold could additionally genuinely be coming lend a hand in.

He writes regarding the radical alternate within the tone and substance of public dialog round faith—a shift from the “bombastic debates” he hoped to diffuse on Amazing? to one thing mighty more belief to be and unprecedented. To boot to giving a eulogy for the Original Atheism of the early 2000s, the e book explores the trajectory of excessive-profile public figures “bowled over by the persevering with resonance of the Christian faith.”

It’s a story that sits in stark inequity to statistical measures of belief in Britain, where a rising percentage of the public (more than half of) identify as “no faith” and church attendance continues its precipitous decline.

Closing October, the interval in-between results of a 3-year search titled “Exploring Atheism” were introduced at London’s Conway Corridor. The authors steered that Britain had entered its first “atheist age,” with more atheists than theists. Brierley is careful to qualify that his e book is no longer describing a revival, nonetheless perchance “the starting effect instances of a revival.”

“That you simply can well usually watch the way folk are truly speaking about faith within the public sq.,” he acknowledged. “The extensive quiz is, are these folk honest the utilization of it as a sociopolitical instrument, a worthwhile fiction? And arguably a pair of of them are. But I also look a necessity of these those that appear to be attracted on an stunning, private level to Christianity.”

He cites the instance of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, once hailed because the fifth “horsewoman” of the Original Atheists, who has spoken publicly and candidly about her conversion to Christianity.

Oldfield, one other conclude observer of the climate, describes a shift within the heart of gravity from the hostility of Original Atheism to an acknowledgement of the inheritance of Christian traditions and establishments “with a create of wistful envy.”

Among those that bear raised concerns regarding the trend is Luke Bretherton, regius professor of honest and pastoral theology at Oxford, who warned of the tendency to treat Christianity as “an endangered species to be protected on particular reservations or weaponized to defend Western custom from inner fall down and
external assault.”

Issues are also changing within apologetics. Oldfield no longer too long within the past sat alongside Brierley on a panel exploring the belief of a “rebirth” of Christianity, and, in a clip that grew to turn out to be broadly shared on social media, spoke of the “falling away of the delusion that we design selections in step with arguments.”

Sooner or later, she acknowledged, folk attain to conclusions in step with relationships—folk and “the stories that design sense to us.” For too long, she argued, Christians bear tried to meet demands for “desirable and orderly and scrumptious” responses to a “very thin, slim definition of motive.”

It’s a standpoint in tune with Apologetics with out Apology. On this e book, British theologian Elaine Graham suggests that apologetics has “narrowed its focal point valid into a model of rational propositional argument.” She favors a contemporary model, an “invitation to inhabit an imaginative world, whereby spiritual faith ‘makes sense’ of journey.” Loads of the proponents she cites for this propositional create of apologetics are male, and plenty of of Brierley’s interlocutors, no longer no longer as much as within the early years of the present, were men too.

This day, Brierley shares Oldfield’s sense that folks are “in total more guided than they’re gripping to confess by their gut and by their emotion.” The identical applies to Christians, he acknowledged. “I collected think [Christianity] makes intellectual sense, nonetheless I wouldn’t be a Christian if I didn’t definitely feel that I encountered one thing if truth be told transcendent, that stirs my emotions.”

It’s vital that Jordan Peterson in total becomes emotional at some point soon of talks—a vulnerability that is severe to his appeal. “We’ve heard folk speaking forever about science and motive and it’s all been ideal, nonetheless folk want to join again with an valid sense of being human and that entails plenty of emotion,” Brierley acknowledged. “I receive it’s attain lend a hand again. and I am tickled that folks are no longer pushing apart that as honest delusional.”

Oldfield provides that she has “softened in the direction of a pair of of those more intellectual forms of apologetics.” Some folk, in total young men, need to engage in such debates “to enable themselves to drop all the way down to the emotional, existential level, to provide themselves permission that it’s price taking note of these metaphysical yearnings.”

Brierley left Premier, where he had served as theology and apologetics editor, in 2023. To boot to running the Comely Rebirth of Belief in God podcast, he now hosts the Re-Appealing podcast for Considered & Unseen. It’s a enterprise by the Centre for Cultural Undercover agent, launched by Anglican bishop Graham Tomlin to “encourage a renewal within the public idea of Christian faith.”

Brierley’s next open, due in April, is an update of an earlier e book: Why I’m Serene a Christian After Two Many years of Conversations with Sceptics and Atheists. The e book is a testament to the conclusion he reached as a pupil at Oxford: that believing in God is no longer a delusion nonetheless somewhat, as he places it in a single video, “a superbly real looking conclusion after we uncover at the fingerprints on our universe.”

Among those convinced by his argument is a viewer who, having watched one of his short YouTube movies (“How a Cube can present that God exists”), commented about having a die tattooed on their wrist.

Within the period in-between, on Sundays Brierley could be realized at the suburban United Reformed Church (URC) congregation led for honest about two decades by his wife, Lucy, who became once already exploring a call to ordination when they met at Oxford.

Justin became once playing Harry the Horse in a producing of Guys and Dolls “with a honest correct Original York accent,” Lucy remembers.

“I became once serving to at the lend a hand of the scenes and had been making exhaust of his makeup all week,” she acknowledged. “When he approached me at the solid celebration, it grew to turn out to be obvious that he belief we were assembly for the first time.”

They were engaged within six months and married 18 months later. She remembers “intense nonetheless exhilarating theological discussions” in their early years that widened their perspectives on Christian faith.

His occupation course did no longer surprise her, given his mind, communication abilities, faith, and “superbly mild—truly I’d declare unflappable—demeanor.”

Their church this day has bucked the trend of mainline decline in Britain, and their four children bear realized their have faith over the years.

Brierley speaks with immense affection about his wife’s ministry and the critical position it has performed in conserving his have standpoint in scheme.

“It keeps you grounded as to what honest issues are facing typical folk,” he acknowledged. At its most effective, the church is “where you truly look God in action within the lives of folk and within the day to day, mundane ways whereby we discontinue up serving every other, hurting every other, forgiving every other.”

Lucy sees their jobs as complementary. Whereas she disciples Christians in occasions of joy and disaster, journeying beside them in standard lifestyles, her husband taps thinkers and lecturers in dialog about God.

“We’re each coping with identical issues and spheres nonetheless from completely different angles,” she acknowledged. “What we’ve realized is that there could be a scheme for each within the Christian world …. Faith is a subject of the head and the heart, and our respective roles bear definitely shown us that.”

Whereas it’s worthwhile to bear a “first-payment apologist” available at church, she acknowledged, Brierley also performs within the music community, volunteers with the childhood community, and leads a dwelling community—all roles he brings up on his exhibits.

Christian faith comprises intellectual debate, nonetheless it definitely’s necessary, he acknowledged, “to remind listeners who are used to listening to all these weighty intellectual arguments that …what it is doubtless you’ll additionally be listening to is one niche bit that appeals to you.

“Valid Christianity is what my wife does: sitting next to the mattress of somebody who is demise or being desirous about serving to somebody who hasn’t received ample to pay the funds,” he acknowledged.

“That to me is the heart of Christianity … I’d no longer want any person to mistake these intellectual debates and conversations for the honest thing.”

Madeleine Davies is a reporter in London, where she covers the Church of England for Church Times.