Do cultural Christians like Richard Dawkins Need the Cross?
Dawkins said he needs our cathedrals, hymns, Christmas carols, and ethos. But should we give him the cross?
I had a difficult conversation with someone who’s roughly twice my age, about a year ago, during which I observed that we believe several things about Christianity, even if they’re inconsistent with the New Testament. Some people claim they’re Christians but believe next to nothing of what the Bible says.
For example, when a non-Muslim who has no zealous commitment to Christ in the way of water baptism, but attends church occasionally or is born to Christian parents, is asked in a public office to fill out a personal data form, they indicate Christianity as their religion without flinching.
At the time, I articulated this to my conversation partner as social Christianity and I said it was okay for such Christianity to exist.
To my surprise, he was devastated.
You see, I worship with the Church of Christ. We are on the conservative side of doctrinal issues, with an apt motto encompassing all we believe about God: “We speak where the Bible speaks…” My conversation partner and I attend the same congregation. So, it was shocking that I would observe such Christianity though the New Testament denounces weak faith in Christ.1
Months later, when Richard Dawkins publicly admitted to being a cultural Christian, like many people, I was surprised, though he simply articulated what I had said about social Christians.
So there are Christians who don’t believe in God? Yes. And Richard Dawkins is one of them.
Why then did Dawkins’ admission come as a surprise? He has spent much of his life as a leading atheist, a member of the Four Horsemen movement playing down the role of faith and proposing countless times to remove religion from public life. Konstantine Kisin says of Dawkins and his pairs, “Not content with proving that religion wasn’t true, they ventured further in attempting to prove religion was, at best, unnecessary and, more likely, harmful.”
What about cultural Christianity?
It is certain that Christian traditions, ethics, historical influence, and values such as compassion, forgiveness, and justice appeal to people irrespective of their religious convictions. Dennis Prager, a Jew, promotes Christmas and counts efforts to cancel it as an attack on American culture.
Cultural Christianity may be thought of simply as a label, I.e., “declaring a religious affiliation, as opposed to being “Muslim” or “Buddhist.” Madeleine Davies published a report on cultural Christianity recently, observing among other things that Dawkins “has happily owned the first label, joining Philip Pullman (a self-professed “Church of England atheist”) and, more recently, Elon Musk in rejecting all religious belief while holding in affection aspects of its cultural legacy, including sacred music.”
Citing Tom Holland’s impressive book Dominion, Davies subtly says that cultural Christianity is a Western inclination in debt to an indissoluble Christian heritage. Holland theorized to Davies that Christianity innoculates the West from thinking as the Nazis did that might is right. Christianity’s emphasis on love and the dignity of all persons nurses the appeal to the faith professed by cultural Christians.
What does the Bible say about cultural Christianity?
A remarkable metaphor I have seen about cultural Christianity is this, “They are branches that hang around the True Vine but have no true attachment.” The first time the word “Christian” was used, it was in response to a common observation that the earliest Christians imitated Christ. Cultural Christianity does not imitate Christ so the Bible has no mention of it.
However, by definition, we may glean references to cultural Christianity i.e. people laying claim to Christ or Christianity without a commitment, from the Bible:
It exists.2
Its root is unbelief.3
It’s a form of resistance.4
Jesus Christ permitted but did not accept it.5
It requires the zeal of Bible-believing Christians.6
So, do cultural Christians need the cross?
Yes. Some now, and others, down the road. So I propose believing Christians engage cultural Christians in two ways:
In the short term, they need the uncompromising truth of the cross.
In the long term, they need the open arms of the gospel.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Short term
This is the approach we must take when engaging the likes of Richard Dawkins, who vehemently opposed gospel preachers and convinced the public to eradicate religion. In the same interview, Dawkins repeatedly emphasizes that he believes nothing of the Bible, calling it “pernicious nonsense.” Dawkins wants the cultural benefits of Christianity and prefers to keep it that way as opposed to believing in Christ or replacing Christianity as a “decent religion” with any other such as Islam.
Perhaps the reason people feel entitled to invent such a thing as cultural Christianity is the age-old but convenient simplification of Christ as a “Moral Teacher.” Davies notes that the English are particularly susceptible to this, but neither Nietzsche nor CS Lewis would welcome it. Nietzsche observed:
“They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality,” but if “one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet.”
Similarly, CS Lewis warned, that it is the thing you must not say, for “let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
So in the short term, we must preach Christ immediately, completely and uncompromisingly despite the Western insistence on picking out His spiritual oracle. Cultural Christians with such deep atheistic imperviousness to Bible-believing faith should be given our love, our cathedrals, holidays, music, and more but we must give them the Cross too. Christ’s birth, death, burial, and resurrection was costly. Let Dawkins take up the cross.
Long term
The gospel is benevolent. Jesus Christ says, “It is not the healthy people who need a doctor.”7 The gospel is for those who need it most, for people with poor church attendance in the Church of England were found most likely to exit the church. We need not abandon them.
This does not mean the church should dilute its message, since, in reaching out to the social outcasts of that age, Jesus never stopped saying He was Christ, the Saviour. It means that Christianity’s gains in society, particularly Western ones, automatically (by birth or affiliation) admit many people on a journey to Christ. Others are far behind on that journey and may never get closer but some are gradually making their way to Christ. Our solemn duty is to refrain from hindering the latter while charging the former to earnest repentance.
Cultural Christians may use Christianity as therapy for their spiritual void but they will come and some are well on their way. Davies notes that the church has a post-reformation tradition that invites people to testify of their encounters with God. JD Vance, the vice president-elect of the United States of America, “felt the touch of God” in 2020.
What cultural Christians on a longer route to Christ must not do is assume that without the spiritual, metaphysical premises of the Christian faith, they can have a passive one. Madeleine Davies quotes Graham Tomlin as saying:
“The beating heart of Christian faith that gives rise to these beliefs – the equality of all people in the idea of human rights, a legal system that actually treats everyone equally – they’re all found in that belief that everyone is the object of divine love. It seems to me that you can’t have the ethics without the metaphysics, and sooner or later, that will play itself out. Without that transcendent metaphysics, the thing will begin to crumble longer term.”
The long-term approach suits those with little to no entrenched sentiments against the Messianic claims of Christ, the existence of God, and belief in the Bible’s inspiration.
We preach so that all men may come to God but everyone may not come at once. And if some are content with our fruits, we must give them more fruits to enjoy.
Dawkins now admits that replacing Christianity with another religion would be bad for Britain. Larry Siedentop, according to Davies, warned that underplaying Christianity’s role in the West would be dangerous.
“Secularism, with its premium on conscience, was “Europe’s noblest achievement” and “Christianity’s gift to the world”. It derived from the moral insights of Christianity: a belief in the moral equality of humankind. And yet it had come to be identified with “non-belief, with indifference and materialism”. This, he warned, “deprives Europe of moral authority, playing into the hands of those who are only too anxious to portray Europe as decadent and without conviction.”
Of course, the fear of losing its Christian heritage to intolerant religions or beliefs is no justification for Christianity in the West. The necessity for Christianity in the West is the same for all societies. God loves humanity and seeks to save us from sin and death through Jesus Christ.8
Tom Holland, Davies writes, cheers us on to preach this true gospel and remind cultural Christians where their beloved faith comes from:
“They come from believing in mad things, that there is a God who created all human beings equally, gave them an inherent dignity because they’re created in God’s image. You know, it comes from the belief that these were taught by a guy who got nailed to a cross and then rose from the dead and offers the promise of eternal glory in life. These are obviously, objectively to a rationalist perspective, mad things. But the madness is precisely what makes them so powerful and has made them so powerful.”
Modern Western society may claim the cultural traditions of Christianity but it cannot exist without the practice of Bible-believing Christianity.
The onus isn’t on cultural Christians to become Bible-believing Christians so that these traditions may remain. It’s on Bible-believing Christians to live out their faith in a way worthy of emulation so that all nations will journey to Christ, and in so doing, preserve a desirable culture.
Thanks for reading. Everything good will come.Revelation 3:15
Luke 6:46
Luke 22:37
Dawkins prefers cultural Christianity to Islam
Matthew 13:29-30
Romans 10:14
Matthew 9:12
Romans 5:8