The central thesis of his new book, Rethinking Christianity, is that what the likes of Ash heard is absolutely correct. The sea of faith around these islands is rising. “I am seeing,” he tells me, “a growth in young people wanting to talk about Christianity. Others have seen it, but right now no one really wants to emphasise it. It is probably best just to let it happen.”
The burnt fingers at the Bible Society, coupled with a still extant British reluctance to talk about Christianity – “We don’t do God”, as Alastair Campbell once put it, on behalf of Tony Blair – appear to have warned many commentators off. Not McGrath, though. This academic and author, best known as the biographer and champion of CS Lewis – both men were born in Belfast, albeit McGrath’s accent gives no hint of it – likes to step up when others hold back. He was, 20 years ago, the first leading Christian to lock horns in public with Richard Dawkins, following the publication of the evolutionary biologist’s global bestseller, The God Delusion.
In public debates with Dawkins, he dismissed the claims of the “New Atheists” that Christianity was a fraud. Dawkins and his sort, McGrath now says, “were aggressively asserting atheist beliefs, but posing as if they were telling incontestable truths”. In response, McGrath and his wife, Joanna Collicutt, a clinical psychologist and Anglican vicar, published a strong defence of religion titled The Dawkins Delusion. “I probably unwisely allowed myself to have a reasonably high profile,” he reflects.
Dawkins has, in recent weeks, been celebrating the 20th anniversary of The God Delusion, making appearances and writing articles (including in this paper). But the scientist is the deluded one, McGrath suggests. “The New Atheism seems to have tanked. It’s on its way out, because people have seen that it was never really answering the big questions.”
Theologian Alister McGrath: Christianity is back because it answers the big questions https://t.co/4sDVPgWjTK
— Benedict Rogers 羅傑斯 (@benedictrogers) November 3, 2026
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