Contemplating the New Atheism

"Every generation gets the atheism it deserves!" - Michael Hanby

So many of the books and articles against the new atheism have been as pedestrian, patronizing, and dismissive mirroring the same kind of rhetoric the new atheists employ against the religious and Christians.  Maybe the sheer hypocrisy and harsh judgments people have experienced from church people leads us to the out right hostility people see coming from the new atheism?  Sometimes Christianity harshest critics are the very people we need to listen and respond to.  Certainly when it comes to skeptics and people who have been hurt by the church, the church needs to pay attention more and listen to the concerns of her critics.  When it comes to the church's own cultural idolatries, these need to rightly be challenged and discarded.

As I have been studying the church fathers, the concept of mystery (more to come in the next post on this), the apophatic tradition and contemplative Christianity, one needs to first understand that God is not an object or a philosophical idea to study.  God is a person to encounter!  I am reminded of the great contemplative Thomas Merton who once said that "the atheist's experience of God is purely negative whereas the apophatic contemplative is negatively positive."  A real difference between Christians and atheists are Christians read the Scripture as an icon, image, and full of Christ whereas the atheists read it as logic, argument, and a flat book.

Besides the gross lack of discipleship and Christian imagination in many churches, the new world we all find ourselves in privileges the modern narrative of interpreting life through the lens of science that reduces all reality to the explainable and natural as well as having little to no room for mystery and God.  The fragmentation we all face as Christians, skeptics, and atheists effects us all.  Fragmentation, loss of identity, and interpretive pluralism rule our brave new world.  In place of the church, the modern state now competes as the sole place at the table to ensure people's values and security.

In the midst of all this, the church seems to resort to name calling and criticizing the world rather than being the place where the world can find refuge and healing.  What the world needs to see is not more apologists combating atheists but more followers of Jesus turning this world right side up with the gospel of Jesus Christ.