evangelical 360°

Ep. 23 / The Unexpected Resurgence of Belief in God ► Justin Brierley

• Host Brian Stiller • Season 1 • Episode 23

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What if everything you thought you knew about religion's decline in the West was wrong? Justin Brierley, award-winning broadcaster and author of "The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God," reveals the remarkable cultural shift happening beneath our noses.

After fifteen years hosting conversations between atheists and Christians, Brierley noticed something unexpected. The New Atheism movement that dominated cultural discourse in the 2000s has rapidly faded, with many of its former champions now focusing on culture war issues rather than critiquing religion. Meanwhile, secular intellectuals like Jordan Peterson and historian Tom Holland have begun publicly appreciating Christianity's cultural contributions, even as they personally struggle with belief.

Most surprisingly, younger generations—particularly Gen Z—are showing unprecedented openness to faith. Recent UK surveys reveal Gen Z are half as likely to be atheist as their parents and grandparents. Unlike previous generations who rebelled against a Christian upbringing, today's young people have no religious background to reject. For them, exploring Christianity represents something novel, even countercultural.

This spiritual renaissance emerges against a backdrop of what psychologists call a "meaning crisis." Despite material prosperity and technological advancement, rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide continue to climb. Many who've tried individualistic "spiritual but not religious" approaches find themselves still searching for something more substantive.

What makes this movement distinctive is that many seekers aren't looking for watered-down spirituality. Instead, they're drawn to traditional expressions of faith that offer rigorous community, challenging moral frameworks, and transcendent mystery. As Brierley observes, "they want something weird" that stands apart from secular culture.

For churches navigating this cultural moment, the opportunity is substantial but requires discernment. The communities seeing growth aren't necessarily those chasing relevance, but those confidently offering Christianity's distinctive alternative to a fragmented, increasingly dehumanized world. Share your thoughts using #Evangelical360 and subscribe for more conversations with Christian changemakers worldwide.

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Brian Stiller:

Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. I'm your host, brian Stiller, and I'm pleased to share with you another conversation with leaders, changemakers and influencers having an impact on Christian life around the world. We'd love you to be a part of the podcast by sharing this episode using hashtag Evangelical360 and by joining the conversation on YouTube in the comments below. My guest today is Justin Brierley, author and award-winning broadcaster from the UK.

Brian Stiller:

In his book, the Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, justin challenges our assumptions that faith in the West is on the decline. Through his examination of the new atheism, he highlights the surprising number of secular thinkers who are considering Christianity once again. How did this come about and what has reversed the perception that the Christian faith is for non-thinkers? Listen in as Justin shares with us the remarkable story of how the tides have turned. Justin, thank you so much for being with us today. The story of your research and podcast and writing is remarkable. Your book, the Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again. How did you come to this conclusion? What were you seeing in your research and your writing?

Justin Brierley:

Well, I'd been in the privileged position of hosting conversations between atheists and Christians here in the UK for a period of over 15 years, beginning in the mid-2000s and on a show called Unbelievable. What I noticed was that in that time there was a real shift in the way that those conversations were playing out. It began in the heyday of New Atheism, when characters like Richard Dawkins, sam Harris, christopher Hitchens these so-called four horsemen of the new atheism were riding high in the bestseller charts with their anti-God books, and that was very much the flavour and tone of the conversations and debates that I was hosting from the mid-2000s onwards. But then I started to notice, as time went on, a lot more people distancing themselves from this new atheist movement. I noticed a lot more secular people reconsidering the value of Christian faith and the emergence of characters like Jordan Peterson, a secular Canadian psychologist, but who was not there, saying religion's bad for you, but saying actually maybe we need to look at the Bible to find meaning and purpose in life, and then bumping into other similar characters on this side of the pond, people like the historian Tom Holland and his book Dominion, asking whether we can make sense of the moral instincts of the West without the Christian story and so on, and I just increasingly noticed that as quickly as this new atheist movement had gained a head of steam, it waned very quickly as well, and it left behind a lot of questions, people asking the questions about meaning and purpose and identity.

Justin Brierley:

Those hadn't gone away, and suddenly I found that there seemed to be a new openness to engaging the Bible again, the Christian story, to the value of church, and so I suppose this idea for a book dropped into my mind around 2020, 2021, as I started to realize that something was changing the culture. The metaphor that I ended up picking up for it was this idea that the tide is turning. For me, that seems to have been continuing to happen. The tide seems to be continuing to turn. We are living more and more in an era when people are taking Christianity seriously again for various reasons, and so that was really where the book and then the subsequent podcast documentary series came from.

Brian Stiller:

Justin? Are there cultural factors that are driving this new interest?

Justin Brierley:

Lots of them, I think. I think one of them is the fact that the new atheism, as it stood, failed to answer people's fundamental questions, as I said, but people still had those questions. I think, when you put that together with the fact that our culture is increasingly, it seems, coming apart at the seams, with the culture, wars and the way in which technology, as much as it can be a great help, can also be a great hindrance to people's lives, the fact that we're living increasingly in what psychologists call a meaning crisis, where people don't have a rooted sense of who they are through a tradition or a community or a story, a religious story I think what we're seeing is the culmination of all of these things coming together in a way that's suddenly bringing about the conditions that could catalyse a new interest in Christian faith. It's remarkable to me, for instance, that having sketched out this thesis and the book was published in 2023, suddenly all kinds of factors seemed to fall into place that seemed to confirm the thesis, that suddenly people are ready to hear this again.

Justin Brierley:

There was the well-publicised story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, former new atheist, herself declaring that she had become a Christian. Her story really did fit the thesis of my book that essentially secular liberalism just isn't enough for people now. They need something like the Christian story to make sense of life. Likewise, seeing the rise in religiosity that we're seeing now in the polls among young people, especially Gen Z A recent survey here in the UK showed that Gen Z are half as likely to be atheist as their parents and grandparents there's this sudden new wave of openness Now. That could go in lots of different directions, because spirituality does not necessarily equal Christianity, but I think it shows that there's a new kind of opportunity that's been opening up and a sort of a possibility that people are seen historically where there is a rise of faith of inclination towards spirituality out of atheism, or is this a fairly new phenomenon?

Justin Brierley:

Well, the new atheism was a somewhat new phenomenon in as much as it was a very dogmatically anti-theistic form of atheism. Obviously, atheism has existed for a long time, you know. Since enlightenment, essentially onwards, there has been that sort of drive towards a more rationalistic, atheistic kind of way of looking at life. I think the new atheism, though, was a slightly different manifestation of it. In the early 2000s, especially driven by 9-11 and some of the concerns about religious extremism, the mistake the new atheist made was to sort of just treat all religions as equally dangerous, and clearly they're not. I think a lot of them have actually changed their tune quite significantly. When even a new atheist like Richard Dawkins starts calling himself a cultural Christian, you realise the ground has shifted quite a lot, and he's come to possibly appreciate the fact that Christianity is quite distinct from other religions.

Justin Brierley:

What I would say you do find commonality with in terms of previous occasions is that whenever the ground shifts underneath us, whenever there's instability generally in a culture, people do look for something solid to stand on again, and one example I could point to of this is and in the UK especially, shortly after World War II, a period of great societal change and turmoil, there was a significant upturn, like CS Lewis, dorothy Sayers and others, and so Bishop Graham Tomlin, who I work with on a podcast called Re-Enchanting, has sort of charted these sorts of moments in history, and I just wonder whether we may be seeing something similar happening.

Justin Brierley:

We're living again in very fractious, uncertain, divided times on the edge of Europe, political convulsions. And you throw into that what happens when you suddenly throw everything up in the air with the internet revolution, social media and the effect it's having on young people, I think you're creating the kinds of conditions in which people start to look for something solid again, and many people, I think, are actually, and I think it's now being borne out by the statistics. Turning back to church, interestingly and that's perhaps not well, I've called it the surprising rebirth of believing God. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. This does happen. People look for something to ground themselves in again.

Brian Stiller:

Justin, is this more of a personal spirituality movement or is it an intellectual, philosophical inquiry into the issues of faith, given our new understanding of our global enterprise? Or is it a combination?

Justin Brierley:

of both. I'm going to say it's a combination, because I think there's two different things that I've been charting in this surprising rebirth movement. One is, yes, this extraordinary sort of phenomenon of a number of others who are just seem to be opening up to the value of faith and saying, actually it turns, a lot of those voices, whether they be Christian or not, starting to kind of, you know sort of at this cultural level, starting to open up the possibility that we might want to reinvestigate the Christian story. But I think that's being met, as it were, from the ground up by what I've described as this meaning crisis, this idea that people are feeling unhappy, unsettled. We live in a more technologically, materially prosperous age than ever before and yet the mental health crisis is skyrocketing. Suicide is the leading cause of death among men. It's extraordinary, isn't it, that the more we seem to add to our knowledge and ability, the less we seem to be able to be happy.

Justin Brierley:

And I think what's happening is the confluence of these two things the people who are talking about faith in a new way again, and the emergence of this meaning crisis. This dissatisfaction with the culture we find ourselves in, is leading both people back to Christianity, to the story, that kind of grounded Western culture, the story that, from generations of people, did give them a sense of meaning and purpose and identity. And people are very surprised and I bump into them all the time now, people who are saying, well, I've just started going to church and it turns out it's speaking to me in ways I never expected and I find that very exciting. But it's it's. It's not a simple picture, because there's all kinds of mixed motives that go into that. There's all kinds of political aspects to this. There's an opportunity, but, as ever, the church needs to be very wise in the way it engages the harvest that's potentially there in front of it.

Brian Stiller:

What are the demographics of this search? Is it with the Gen Z or is it in the baby boomers? Where does it rest primarily?

Justin Brierley:

the ones who are turning up for Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson and all of the YouTube and podcast influencers who are opening the door to reinvestigating Christian faith. There's been a huge surge of those, but I think that tips quickly into the Gen Z category as well. The thing with the Gen Z is, again, all of these polls that have been coming out in the US, australia, the UK, showing, in particular, a rise in the number of young men who are going back to church, taking religion seriously. Not so much among young women, interestingly, and I think what's happening there is. It reflects the fact that there's been a separation politically between young men and young women. Again, this has come out in various surveys that young men are skewing more conservative on average than young women.

Justin Brierley:

Well, one of the early episodes of the next season of my podcast series is going to be looking specifically at this issue that we're suddenly seeing this influx of young men, gen Z men, who are looking for faith and quite traditional forms of Christianity. I think it's a lot to do with a sort of male identity crisis that's been brewing in the West for quite a long time. Suddenly, young men who are feeling rootless, dispossessed, even sort of unwelcome to some extent they're going in lots of directions, some of them pretty unhealthy, the Andrew Tate form of very misogynistic, macho kind of you know influencers like that, but also a certain demographic bumping into're seeing just this extraordinary wave of young men suddenly turning up in their churches. And these are Gen Z men by and large, young men who are willing to give the Christian story a go.

Justin Brierley:

And interestingly, the thing about Gen Z is they haven't in a way been inoculated against religion in the way that their parents and grandparents have been inoculated against religion in the way that their parents and grandparents have been, because they did exist the sort of Gen X and boomer generation in a kind of broadly culturally Christian culture. I think they thought they knew what Christianity was and could reject it. Most Gen Z have never been set foot inside church. They've got barely any biblical literacy. They really are genuinely unchurched, but in an ironic way that means they're not kicking against anything. They missed the new atheism. They were still in nappies when that happened that it's actually become kind of cool to go in the other. Whereas it was cool to reject religion when you were a boomer Gen Xer, it's become cool in the opposite way to do something weird like become a Christian now. So it's it's. It's a really interesting sort of flip that's happening among these, especially these Gen Z young men.

Brian Stiller:

My generation was faced the modernity. Modernity meaning truth can only be defined by scientific methods. It's got to be proven. So we were living in opposition to that kind of modernity and finding a faith over against that kind of scientism. But this new atheism that you describe seems to be something a little different than that. How do you understand that? The Gen Z response to a new kind of spirituality, this rebirth that you described? How does that relate to the modernity, the use of science as a way of defining truth?

Justin Brierley:

Well, I would say this was something that marked new atheism. It kind of took that rationalist enlightenment way of looking at life that everything can be essentially scientifically investigated, and it sort of turbocharged it. And it did result in these characters like Richard Dawkins and others believing that we could essentially do everything, we could build a sort of utopia if we just looked to science and reason and abandoned all our religious superstitions and so on. But in a funny way that was the end result of a sort of a long period that began, as I say, in the Enlightenment but it seems to have, for me, imploded quite quickly as well. The reason for that is that modernity kind of crashed into post-modernity, while science has benefited from the modern revolution At the same time, this growing postmodern culture that has especially accelerated since the 1960s has sort of collided with the new atheists and their love of science and reason. Because what it did was, instead of people embracing with the abandonment as the new atheist story of the Christian story, their hope was to bring in science and reason as the new story that people would leave their lives by. But that's not what happened. What happened was that the void that was left was not filled by science and reason, because science and reason can do lots of wonderful things, but it won't give you a meaningful existence, it won't tell you what you're worth and that sort of thing. And so people started inevitably to draw on all kinds of other, often quasi-religious, stories to fill that void. And so that's where you see, then, the extremes of both the left and the right, with, say, on the progressive left, this sort of sexuality and gender stories becoming those sacred stories that people put in the place of the God story to live their life by, or political mythologies on the right about save your figures in America, take your pick. They all have been grabbed onto in our general culture. Those are the stories people have tried to replace the Christian story with, because we need a story to live by and these are the next best thing. But of course, these stories all compete with each other. They create these culture wars, this tribalism, this toxicity in our culture.

Justin Brierley:

And what happened was that the new atheists suddenly found themselves, rather than ushering in this, having dismissed the Christian story, rather than welcoming in this utopia of science and reason, they found themselves battling all these other stories, these quasi-religious stories, and this was what they suddenly realised was that you just can't get. People are just innately religious, and if they're not religious about the Christian story, they'll become quite religious about something else, and it wasn't science and reason. So, ironically, that postmodern turn sort of came to bite the new atheists and it led to them completely changing direction. None of the new atheists now are critiquing organised religion. They're all engaged in the culture wars Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, it's all about the transgender wars and everything else. So we're in this very unusual moment where suddenly the postmodernism, it turns out, is what everyone had actually sort of hitched their wagon to, but it flies right in the face of defining sort of cultural marker, and I think they much preferred, as it were, the old enemy to the new enemies, if you like. That have now been introduced.

Brian Stiller:

Is this rebirth leading to a general interest in spirituality or does it, more specifically, focus itself on transcendence, on god or a god? How is this?

Justin Brierley:

unraveling. Well, I think, inevitably there are a lot of people who are in that I'm spiritual but not religious camp, and those are the people who sort of, yeah, they, they have that yearning, that sense that they want something transcendent, but they don't like organised religion, and there's quite a lot of those still around. What I think we're seeing the emergence of as another person put it to me recently is actually a different thing, a flip in that the people who are arguably religious but not spiritual, and that's people who actually want the structures of religion, they want the church going and they want the things that religion can offer at its best in terms of community and the values and so on, but what they struggle with is actually believing it, believing in Jesus or the resurrection. And you see this playing out in the lives of some of these secular intellectuals. I've talked about Tom Holland, the UK historian, who has absolutely, sort of, you know, become convinced that Christianity, the church, is the thing that gave us, you know, all the benefits of modern civilization essentially. But he struggles at a personal level to sort of believe in Jesus as the son of God and the resurrection. So he says to me, you know, in private conversations and public ones sometimes that he certainly has moments where he can believe it, but then it sort of fizzles out again. But the point is that he's going to church, he wants to be there and he knows that it does him some good and I'm sensing that quite a lot you might expect.

Justin Brierley:

Oh, people will just want sort of the kind of fuzzy spirituality without any of the commitments of religious observance.

Justin Brierley:

But actually I think that it's shifting in the direction of people realizing they really do want something more rigorous, more challenging. They've realized that I can't do this by myself and there's a real value in turning up and trying to make sense of this alongside other people on a regular basis. They've had a good long while to try the self-improvement, therapeutic, dayism kind of approach that's been on offer for a while in the culture. But we're still drowning in anxiety, depression, addiction. I think honestly the pornography addiction is doing as much as anything for young men to eventually drive them towards something in their desperation to have a better life that might look a bit like church and like something quite challenging. So I think there's a lot of those factors. People are realizing the spiritual but not religious fuzzy kind of version of spirituality just doesn't have the strength, the structure to actually change my life, and so I see a lot of people actually opting for something a lot more religious in that sense.

Brian Stiller:

So do you see personal transformation as being an attractive reason for people turning to God or turning to Christ in a specific way? Is personal transformation, more than intellectual resolve, at the heart of much of this rebirth?

Justin Brierley:

Yes, Well, I think, ultimately, there has to be a personal spiritual transformation, but I think people arrive at that in very different ways.

Justin Brierley:

I think a lot of people are going on quite an intellectual journey, becoming convinced that Christianity is really good for us, it's really useful in that sense, but struggling to get to the point of saying it's true, now I would say the only reason it's ever been useful is because it's true, and you're not hiding to nothing if you're just kind of interested in promoting Christian values and so on, without affirming the truth of the story. What I'm encouraged by, though, is seeing a lot of people who start at this place of sort of valuing Christianity for it, sort of as a utilitarian thing and going to church is probably good for you on average and then actually bumping into Jesus along the way, and for me that's my hope is that people won't just stay in this kind of intellectual, utilitarian view of Christianity, but that actually, in starting to realize the intellectual value and cultural value of Christianity, they'll realize there's a good reason for that. There's a person behind it who stands behind the whole of history, and I'm increasingly encountering those people who are going on that journey.

Brian Stiller:

How are churches responding to this rebirth? Are they open to the kind of questions that this rebirth is triggering, or are churches pretty much locked into their ritual and into their form of worship and way of thinking and doing things?

Justin Brierley:

Well, I get to talk to a lot of church leaders here in the UK and what I'm seeing on this side of the pond is certainly a lot of excitement and a lot of people who recognise what I'm talking about, who are seeing especially these young men turning up in their churches. I've got a friend who is the rector of St Alda's Church in Oxford, where I was a student myself, and he's talking about a huge wave of young people, unchurched young people coming through the doors looking for a better story. And it's not that they've changed what they're doing particularly. It's just that the tide seems to be turning in that city and there's just this openness and this desire to find out and to look for an alternative. I would say where churches could do with, if you like, thinking through the implications of this is to ask themselves well, what are the lessons we can learn from some of these secular intellectuals who are obviously scratching an itch among these young people, that they're building these huge platforms around? What are the questions they're answering? It may not be the same questions as 15 or 20 years ago, when the new atheism was predominant. So I would say one thing for church leaders to be aware of is that you may have kind of built a ministry around sort of apologetics and an intellectual approach to Christianity, and there's obviously a place for that. But actually that's not where most people are beginning now, because we're no longer in that new atheist phase where we were having to respond to those arguments.

Justin Brierley:

I think a lot of people engage in Christianity in a very emotional, directly experiential way, through the imagination. So maybe it's time to think about how do we address that when it comes to reaching out to people around us. So I think there are some lessons to be learned there. I think the church has to be ready to adapt and to try to do what it can to meet this growing wave of interest and these meaning seekers.

Justin Brierley:

But at the same time, a lot of what the church has always done is simply to be ready, you know, ready for when that tide turns, and be faithful and have the doors open and be willing to invite people into the community of the church, where we work this all out together. And that's what I'm seeing. As I say, I've seen a number of churches who are reporting quite interesting upturn in congregation. People walk through the doors, but not because they've particularly done anything strategically different. It's just they're doing what they've always done well, and now people seem to be ready to hear the message doing what they've always done well, and now people seem to be ready to hear the message.

Brian Stiller:

Justin, are you seeing in this rebirth any inclination towards issues of justice, the issues of poverty, those factors? Does that affect the interest that people have in discovering faith again?

Justin Brierley:

I think there is an important dimension of that, because a lot of obviously Gen Z, those are significant issues for them, issues around justice and poverty and so on. And I think sometimes where the intellectual side of that comes in is the question of where do we ground this interest and these values in justice and poverty and so on. And there's been some really interesting conversations I've had with people who have kind of come up short when it comes to politics, being able to deliver, and have realised it's hard to know how to take this forward without getting burned out and stressed out. I think the church has an important answer to that in terms of of how you live as a, you know with those issues and and, and, but do it through the power of Jesus. Having said all that, I think you know my my.

Justin Brierley:

In all honesty, most of the people I see in this surprising rebirth movement it's the reasons why they're coming to church are more, are more to do with their own personal burnout and the meaning crisis that they've encountered in their own life. And they've they've looked, they've tried to kind of adopt the secular, the liberal secular kind of values of their culture or they've tried to do it that way and it just hasn't worked. And so they're almost coming because they're looking for a better way of structuring their own life. That's the thing that has ultimately driven them to step into a church. So I think it's probably arguably more that personal dimension of what people are looking for that brings them into the purview of the church.

Brian Stiller:

We've seen over the last few years the success of Alpha as a program or as a means of bringing people into conversation on faith. Does this align with the response to the new atheism in the rebirth that you've described, to the new atheism in the rebirth that you've described?

Justin Brierley:

Yeah, I think Alpha has been tremendously influential and, again, from what I'm hearing from friends who run the Alpha courses, they're seeing a sudden uptick. There may be churches that have run Alpha for 20, 25 years, but it's really only recently that they're starting to suddenly see a real resurgence of interest and I'm very grateful for courses like Alpha, which do a great job, in my opinion, of presenting people with the Christian story and giving them the opportunity to talk it through over a meal with people who become their friends. I think that's one important aspect of this. I think taking people's questions seriously is a really important part of this. Giving people the space to work it through is a really important part of this. Giving people the space to work it through. There's a lot of confused and messed up people who are going to be coming in on this sort of meaning crisis, this wave, if you like.

Brian Stiller:

How do you see this evolving? You're at the beginning of this rebirth, as you've described, as it moves its way along. What do you anticipate? What are you seeing now?

Justin Brierley:

I'm not a great prophet of these things and I'm sort of really just trying to keep up with what is happening. What's really interesting to me is that I do think the thesis that I kind of published in my book in the sort of summer of 2023, I've just seen it growing and being confirmed in lots of interesting ways from all the influencers who are now showing an interest in faith or converting to a lot of these surveys and polls showing a renewed interest in faith, especially among Gen Z, and even anecdotal and increasingly, I think, real data to suggest actually that we're seeing a turning of the tide when it comes to churchgoing in the West. There's some really interesting early signs, certainly a stemming of the decline that has been just the story for a long time, certainly in the UK and elsewhere when this goes next. There are lots of different ways there are concerning good directions.

Justin Brierley:

I think there's a significant part that's tied into this movement, where there are people who have a political axe to grind and who want to arguably co does this. I was just recently at the ARC conference in London, which is a gathering of very conservatively minded politicians and cultural influencers with a lot of Christians, who arguably all have a lot of common cause in some of the things they want to see happen in culture. But I think there is a great danger of this movement, this spiritual awakening, being conflated with a kind of conservative cultural project and we need to be very careful about hitching our wagon, as it were, to any particular political party or movement in all of this. So that's just one area where I see things happening and I just want to be a voice helping the church to navigate those kinds of complexities.

Brian Stiller:

Justin, speaking to pastors and church leaders, given what you've observed in this rebirth of spirituality, what would you suggest would be helpful in congregational life to serve those that are in search for a spiritual rebirth?

Justin Brierley:

I would say help people to wish the Christianity were true. Let's use the imagination again. Let's lean into that right-brained way of helping people to encounter faith, the way that CS Lewis did, who was a brilliant thinker but also a wonderful storyteller, because the Narnia stories were probably the best way in which he reached people and made them wish that Christianity were true. That's going to take lots of different forms, but we need to be the storytellers and artists again of the gospel. I would encourage churches to do that and also to embrace the weird Keep Christianity. Weird is something I've heard from a number of these secular intellectuals showing an interest in faith. They're not looking for a sort of spiritual version of the humanism they already encounter in the culture around us. They're looking for something very distinctive and different, both in the worship, which they're not necessarily looking for a super seeker-friendly version of Christianity. They're looking for something quite mysterious and different to their everyday.

Justin Brierley:

I think they want to be challenged. Actually, they want something more rigorous. They don't just want to kind of self-help class when they go to church. They want to be challenged with what it means to be a follower of Christ and I think that's where you're seeing the most growth, actually in churches, where they do hold out the challenge of Christianity. Hold out the challenge of Christianity, I would say just continue to be at its best what the church always is, which is a community of people who are very different but gather around something that's bigger than themselves. That in itself is right now, in a culture which is becoming increasingly fragmented, increasingly dehumanised, where increasingly relationships are being mediated through technology and we can't even tell if we're talking to a human being online anymore or not, the church, the gathered church, will become an even more important place for people to find out what it means to be human. So let's keep making sure that happens too.

Brian Stiller:

Justin, thank you so much for being with us today, but also thank you for this important book you've written, the Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. Thanks again, and we look forward to having you again on Evangelical 360.

Justin Brierley:

Thank you so much for the interview. I was really glad to be with you.

Brian Stiller:

Thank you, justin, for joining us today and helping us see these new movements of faith in our society. Thank you for being a part of the podcast. Be sure to share this episode using hashtag Evangelical360 and join the conversation on YouTube. If you'd like to learn more about today's guest, be sure to check the show notes for links and info, and if you haven't already received my free e-book and newsletter, please go to brianstillercom. Thanks again, until next time.

Justin Brierley:

Don't miss the next interview. Be sure to subscribe to Evangelical 360 on YouTube. See you there.