Justin Brierly Archives

Cover image for "Why I'm Still a Christian" by Justin Brierly

Why I’m Still a Christian, Justin Brierly. Tyndale | Elevate (ISBN: 9781496466938) 2025.

Summary: After two decades of interviews with atheists and skeptics, the author explains why he still follows Christ.

Justin Brierly hosted a podcast called Unbelievable? for nearly two decades. During this time he interviewed numerous atheists, skeptics, and believers from other religions. Among his guests were Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, and Philip Pullman. They had spirited, no-holds-barred but civil conversations. Sometimes Brierly hosted dialogues between Christians and skeptics. Despite a steady diet of atheist and skeptic challenges to Christian belief, Brierly remains a Christian. In this book, he offers his reasons why, often elaborating these in the context of those conversations.

However, Brierly begins by explaining why he pursued these conversations. In short, he was tired of Christians talking to themselves in their own echo chambers. He wanted better conversations–ones that weren’t scripted but rather open-ended. He sought real dialogue between thoughtful skeptics and Christian believers. It wasn’t “safe.” He confesses that it caused him to struggle afresh with questions about his faith. But he created a space for honest discussion, something many seekers appreciated.

The next seven chapters offer Brierly’s reasons for believing in the context of issues raised in his discussions. These include:

God makes sense of human existence. He explores why there is something rather than nothing, the fine-tuning of the universe, and multiverse explanations.
God makes sense of human value. Why do we believe in human rights and dignity? Why are some things just wrong? While skeptics often concur with these judgments and live moral lives, Brierly argues Christianity provides the best explanation for why we value human beings.
God makes sense of human purpose. Humans are purpose-oriented creatures. But why is this so? Is it just biology? Should we worry about this or just enjoy life? The fact of our longings, as Lewis pointed out, may be best explained by the idea that we were made for another world.
The evidence for Jesus. Some, including Richard Dawkins, propose that the very existence of Jesus is a fiction. Others reinvent him into a guru, a zealot, or even a husband. He points to an interview with skeptic Bart Ehrman, who dismantles these claims, as well as pointing to Richard Bauckham’s work on the gospel as credible eyewitness accounts of Jesus.
Facts that only fit the resurrection. Perhaps the clearest evidence for the life of Jesus is the evidence of his death and his followers claims that he rose from the dead. But how is this plausible? Brierly discusses the “minimal facts” approach of Michael Licona and Gary Habermas including five facts best explained by the bodily resurrection of Jesus. He also considers objections to this approach.
The atheist’s greatest objection: suffering. He takes on board the serious challenge this poses and the limits of any explanation. He notes that the objection implies a moral basis to the universe and that doing away with God doesn’t do away with trying to explain suffering. He also notes the realities of human free will–that we are responsible for much of the world’s evil–and that we are in a spiritual war zone.
Atheism 2.0. Brierly addresses five “atheist memes” that have been raised by Richard Dawkins. One of these concerns a God who would send one to hell not being worth worshipping. We learn that Brierly is among those who would endorse an annihilationist rather than eternal conscious torment understanding of hell (as did John Stott).

In the final two chapters Brierly addresses those “deconstructing” their faith and those investigating Christianity. First, Brierly notes the reasons people “deconstruct” and then draws on a dialogue between Jon Steingard, a former Christian, and Sean McDowell. pointing the way toward reconstruction. Finally, Brierly talks about choosing to live in the Christian story, including “atheist prayer experiments,” the question of what evidence will convince someone to believe, and that above all, God seeks not belief but relationship. Ultimately, quoting Os Guinness, he asserts “The Christian faith is not true because it works; it works because it is true.”

What sets this book apart from other apologetic texts is that it roots reasons in real conversations rather than hypothetical topics. For many of us, it was conversations with skeptical friends that drove us to clarify our reasons for believing. Or it was our own investigation of Christianity, asking our own hard questions and honestly seeking answers. That’s what makes this such a helpful resource whether you are the Christian engaging a friend’s skepticism or a skeptic giving the faith an honest look.

There are no “silver bullets” or ‘lead pipe cinch” arguments here. What you have are reasons to believe that have proven sufficiently credible to sustain Brierly through two decades of conversations with skeptics. They’ve helped remove obstacles on the way to faith for some. That’s not everything. But it’s something to be reckoned with.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

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The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, Justin Brierly. Carol Stream: Tyndale Elevate, 2023.

Summary: A journalist and podcast host makes the case that we may be seeing a new wave of people coming to faith in God and why this is so.

This book opens with Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” which describes the ebbing of the “Sea of Faith” hearing “Its meloncholy, long, withdrawing roar.” It has seemed that we are in the midst of such a time. We have witnessed the rise of the New Atheism, a self-confident attack that ridiculed the irrationality, and indeed, the immorality of the God of Christianity. Various scandals of money, sex, and power in the churches, combined with the intertwining of church and extreme political positions sent many to the exits. We witnessed the rise of the “Nones” and a series of confessional blogs of people “deconstructing” their faith, often de-converting in the process.

Justin Brierly observes that tides that ebb also flow back, and he contends that he is also seeing a return to belief in God, with an embrace of Christianity by many but not all who do. He’s in a unique position to do so, hosting the Unbelieveable podcast, bringing together believing and secular thinkers in conversation, and being surprised at what is happening in the lives of some of his “secular” guests.

He begins with a chronicle of the rise and fall of the New Atheism movement, chronicling its self-destruction amid sexist and racist pronouncements, and its inability to come forward with meaningful proposals to replace what it was tearing down. Meanwhile, its challenge energized a new generation of Christian apologists who discovered that faith is often strongest under attack.

He describes the turn toward Christianity of figures like Jordan Peterson and Peter Boghassian, once an atheist firebrand who increasingly found himself siding with Christians. He recounts interviewing Douglas Murray, a gay, agnostic journalist haunted by the faith he once scorned. Ancient historian Tom Holland is another he discusses, who came to the realization that the Western view of the world, even in its secular humanist version, that stood in such sharp contrast with the ancients, was fundamentally Christian at its roots.

Brierly chronicles a crisis of meaning for which atheism did not have an answer. He recounts how actor David Suchet found that meaning in reading the Bible and goes on to discuss how various skeptics have rediscovered the Bible and the reasons for its reliability. Likewise, science, far from disproving faith raises intriguing questions of order and the fine-tuning of the universe and the unique conditions that produced and sustained life on earth. The war is not between science and faith but between scientists who do not believe and those who do, a matter of the heart and not the science. He singles out Francis Collins and Rosalind Picard as ones who changed their minds and have believed. He observes the self-defeating arguments of determinist materialists.

He concludes with the story of Paul Kingsnorth, a naturalist and one-time Wiccan and now Orthodox Christian, who believed because it was a story that made sense of his life. He argues that there are three things the church needs to do to prepare for a returning wave of people coming to faith:

Embrace both reason and imagination
Keep Christianity weird–that is, distinctively Christian
Create a community that counters cancel culture

This last is striking both for the idea of physical community amid increasing isolation, and the ability of the gospel to transcend difference–that allows difference without cancelling.

Brierly is careful throughout to distinguish genuine converts and those who simply have moved toward God. His ability to bring people who differ into conversation means he doesn’t expect neat packages. He also offers the challenge that this time, far from one about which Christians ought be depressed, can be a time of reinvigorated and intellectually stimulated faith. The stories also evidence the work of God as skeptics have dreams, read scripture, or simply take a hard look at the evidence around them.

It might be argued that Brierly is putting forward an overly optimistic case. Time will tell. I suspect that what he does is offer a counter-story to the pessimistic, doom and gloom stories filling much of evangelical publishing and press accounts. Brierly acknowledges the problems but also draws on the evidence of history that these never defeat God and that God is often at work amid these, birthing new life. His stories of real people suggest that what happened with them is possible for others. If you are wondering if there is any basis to hold out hope in a time of apparent decline, this is an account worth reading.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.