British intellectual announces return to Christianity

April 17, 2009

In a series of articles and interviews published this month, British intellectual A. N. Wilson, who became an atheist two decades ago, has announced his return to the practice of the Christian faith.

“Like most educated people in Britain and Northern Europe (I was born in 1950), I have grown up in a culture that is overwhelmingly secular and anti-religious,” he recounts. “The universities, broadcasters and media generally are not merely non-religious, they are positively anti. To my shame, I believe it was this that made me lose faith and heart in my youth. It felt so uncool to be religious.”

Wilson adds:

I was drawn, over and over again, to the disconcerting recognition that so very many of the people I had most admired and loved, either in life or in books, had been believers … Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist “explanations” for our mysterious human existence simply won’t do-- on an intellectual level. The phenomenon of language alone should give us pause … No, the existence of language is one of the many phenomena-- of which love and music are the two strongest-- which suggest that human beings are very much more than collections of meat. They convince me that we are spiritual beings, and that the religion of the incarnation, asserting that God made humanity in His image, and continually restores humanity in His image, is simply true. As a working blueprint for life, as a template against which to measure experience, it fits.

 

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Further information:

• Religion of hatred: Why we should no longer be cowed by the chattering classes ruling Britain who sneer at Christianity (Daily Mail)
• Why I believe again (New Statesman)
• Can you love God and agree with Darwin? (New Statesman)
• A. N. Wilson (Wikipedia)