Twenty years ago, many people expected religion in the West to keep shrinking until it disappeared. A group of bestselling atheist writers seemed to be leading the way. That future did not arrive. Justin Brierley, who hosted debates between Christians and atheists for seventeen and a half years, argues that this movement faded for two reasons. It came apart from the inside, and it never answered the question of what life is for. This guide follows that story in order, from its rise to its decline, and asks what the sequence actually shows.
You can work through it alone in one sitting or with a group over one or two meetings. The main exercise is a timeline. You will place the events Brierley describes in order. Then you will separate what happened from what he believes it means. Have a Bible open to Acts 17 and something to write on.
Start with the version you already carry
Before you read further, write down in two or three sentences what you think happened to the atheism of the 2000s. Did it win? Lose? Change shape? Where did you get that impression? It might have come from a sermon, a documentary, a friend who left the church, or a headline about a famous conversion.
Keep that note. At the end you will compare it with the sequence below and see what holds up.
Before the noise: unbelief as the default
The story does not begin with famous atheists. It begins with something quieter. Brierley, speaking from the United Kingdom, says that for many people atheism “just is the default for a lot of people in our culture.” He connects this to a long decline in Christianity’s influence over many generations. On his account, most such people never argued their way out of faith. They drifted into what he calls the “defacto option that most people just kind of find themselves falling into”.
This matters for the chronology. The loud atheism that came next did not create British secularism. It gave a name to something already there. Brierley describes people who were “just non-religious” beginning to see themselves specifically as people who did not believe in God. A label arrived for a condition that already existed.
He also places this inside a longer arc. In the conversation he argues that the West once shared a common Christian story that shaped its moral instincts. He says that story has faded “in the last, you know, couple of centuries.” That is a sweeping historical claim, and he states it as part of his argument. A group can treat it as his interpretation, one to test against other histories.
The loud years
Brierley locates the intensification in the early 2000s. He names four writers, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett, known as the four horsemen. Alongside their books he describes the growth of an online atheist movement. For a while, he says, “it felt quite edgy and cool,” and “it was in vogue” to call yourself an atheist.
What made it new, in his telling, was mostly tone. He gives one concrete event as an example. He recalls Dawkins speaking at the Reason Rally in Washington, DC, in 2012 and urging a large crowd to mock religion. He also mentions comedians and documentary makers in Britain and the US who made a show of ridiculing faith. The date and the crowd size are his recollection. A careful reader would check them before repeating them.
He also records how Christians reacted, and he is not flattering. He says “a lot of Christians kind of responded in kind,” using ridicule against ridicule. His verdict on that strategy is brief: “that’s not ultimately what we’re called to do.” For a timeline this is a useful entry. It reminds us that the church was a participant in this history, not only a bystander to it.
One more figure belongs to this period. Brierley describes Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born writer and politician who came out of a strict Islamic background. He says she joined the new atheist thinkers in the mid-2000s and shared stages with Dawkins and Harris.
The turn
Brierley says the movement faded “almost as quickly” as it rose. He gives two causes, and the order he gives them in is worth noticing.
The first is internal. He says there were “all kinds of internal issues” that led it to unravel. He does not describe them in this conversation, so a guide built on this source should not fill them in.
The second cause is the one he develops. He says the movement “ultimately didn’t answer people’s questions,” and he names the question it left open: what is the purpose of life? If the universe has no story, then you must invent your own meaning. He argues that people find this very hard to live out, however well it debates.
Then Hirsi Ali appears again, now as a turning point. Brierley recounts that she wrote a widely shared article titled Why I Am Now a Christian. He reports her reasons in two layers. Some were cultural and political: she felt secular humanism gave too little defense against threats she saw from fundamentalist Islam and from powers like Russia and China. Others were personal. According to Brierley, “those questions just actually never went away” for her, and she found that atheism gave her too little reason for living.
Where does the story stand now? Brierley says new atheism survives in certain corners of the internet but is “in no way the kind of cultural force it was” fifteen or twenty years earlier. In its place he senses something different: “I just feel like something’s changed in the atmosphere.” He describes “a new readiness for some people to try God,” especially among younger people. He says of them, “They’re really confused about who they’re meant to be.”
He does not claim a mass return to church. He argues the opposite of a simple victory: “people aren’t any less religious. They just kind of get religious about different things.” In his account, the space left by a faded Christian story has filled with New Age spirituality, mixed beliefs, politics, ideology and causes. That is a turn, but not a homecoming.
What a ringside seat can and cannot show
Brierley calls his years as host a good vantage point on these conversations, and that is a real kind of evidence. He has spoken with a great many atheists and Christians. He can say with authority what kinds of arguments came up, how the tone changed, and what his guests told him.
But notice what kind of claim “something’s changed in the atmosphere” is. It is a judgment formed over many years. It is not a survey. In this conversation he gives no figures for how many people left atheism or came to faith. A history guide should keep that line clear. The Reason Rally is an event with a date. Hirsi Ali’s essay is a document. The cooling of a public mood is an interpretation of many events. It may be a good interpretation, but it is still one.
Place matters too. Lisa Fields, opening the topic, offered a different starting point: “atheism is not a prominent thing in the African American community, but it is growing.” Put her sentence next to Brierley’s British story and the two run in opposite directions. Where he stands, unbelief had become the default and belief looks like it is returning. Where she points, belief remained the majority, and unbelief is the newcomer gaining ground. A headline about belief “making a comeback” fits one setting better than the other.
Brierley adds a caution of his own that keeps the story from becoming a single morality tale. He says the atheists he meets come for different reasons. For some it was a bad experience of religion. Others doubt that Jesus rose from the dead. For others the problem of evil is the main obstacle. A movement can fade while each of those reasons stays very much alive in particular people.
Build the timeline
This is the core exercise. It takes about twenty minutes. In a group, work in pairs and then compare.
- Draw a horizontal line. Mark rough periods along it: the long decline Brierley describes over generations, the early 2000s, the mid-2000s, 2012, the following decade, and the time of the conversation.
- Above the line, write only events a person could check with a date or a document. Examples from this guide: the four authors’ bestselling books, Hirsi Ali joining public atheist events, the Reason Rally, Hirsi Ali’s essay.
- Below the line, write the interpretations attached to those events. Examples: unbelief as Britain’s default, atheism feeling cool, the movement unraveling, a new openness to God, people becoming religious about causes.
- Next to each item below the line, write whose interpretation it is and what kind of evidence supports it. Is it testimony from many conversations, one person’s story, or a broad historical claim?
- Draw a second line under the first for the setting Lisa Fields describes. What would belong on it? What would you need to learn before you could fill it in honestly?
When you finish, look at the empty spaces. Many groups find that the line has plenty of interpretation and fewer checkable events than they expected. That is not a reason to dismiss the story. It shows you which parts you can repeat with confidence and which parts you should present as one observer’s reading.
An older scene of mockery and openness
Read Acts 17:16-34. Luke tells how Paul spoke in Athens, in front of a city full of idols, to philosophers who loved new ideas. This is narrative. It describes what happened on one occasion. It is not a command to repeat Paul’s speech word for word.
Pay attention to how the scene ends. Acts 17:32 reads: “And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.” Verse 34 adds that a few people joined Paul and believed, and it names two of them.
One audience, three responses: mockery, curiosity and belief, all happening at once. Earlier in the speech, Acts 17:26-27 says God “hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us.” Paul places the Athenians’ search inside a history that God governs.
Be careful with the comparison. Athens is not modern Britain or any American community. The point is narrower. The Bible itself records an age when mockery and openness lived side by side. If your timeline shows mockery fading and openness rising, the passage is a reminder that both can exist at once, and that neither one settles what any single listener will do.
Look also at Ecclesiastes 3:11: “He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” Where the KJV has world in this verse, many modern translations have eternity. Ecclesiastes is wisdom writing, and it is not describing any modern movement. But it does name a longing for the whole story, beginning to end, that people cannot fully satisfy. That matches the question Brierley says new atheism could not answer.
Questions for discussion
- Compare the note you wrote at the start with your finished timeline. What did you have right? What turned out to be interpretation you had absorbed as fact?
- Brierley lists the movement’s internal troubles first and its failure to supply meaning second, but develops only the second. If you could research one of them further, which would you choose, and why?
- Brierley reports two kinds of reasons for Hirsi Ali’s change, cultural and political on one side and personal on the other. What would be lost if a Christian retold her story using only one kind?
- Lisa Fields describes a community where unbelief is growing from a small base. What questions would you need answered before you could say whether Brierley’s story applies there?
- Brierley says that early on he assumed “all the burden of proof was on me” as the Christian, and later saw that atheists also had beliefs to explain. Where in your own conversations have you carried the whole burden? Was that fair?
- If people “get religious about different things” when they leave faith, what has taken that place in the circles you know? Try naming examples near you, not only far away.
For whoever is leading
This topic easily becomes a celebration, as if the other side lost and the church won. Brierley’s own account works against that reading. He faults Christians who answered ridicule with ridicule. He also warns that “sometimes we’re caught answering the questions of a previous generation.” If your group starts cheering, return them to the timeline and ask which entries are documents and which are moods.
Some people in the room may have left faith for a while, or may love someone who has. Do not ask anyone to explain why. Brierley and Fields both cautioned against tracing someone’s unbelief to their family history unless the person raises it themselves. Let the history stay history. Keep personal stories voluntary.
If time is short, skip the second timeline line and spend the extra minutes on question four.
One thing to carry out of the room
Brierley sums up his reading of the long view in one sentence: “Christian history has always been a history of, as I say, of death and rebirth.” That is his conviction, rooted in a God who died and was raised. It is not a forecast you can measure. This week, as you hear claims about faith rising or falling, practice the habit from your timeline. Ask what actually happened and when. Then ask who is interpreting it, and from where.