the great christian reset
29 - 01/26 /10:56
If social shifts begin among the elites, something may be stirring. While taking questions at the MacDonald–Laurier Institute last month, historian Niall Ferguson offered a prediction. “We’re probably in the early phase of a Christian revival, and this reawakening will be an antidote to the great ‘awokening’ that has caused so much harm. I very much hope that will be the case.”
Adapted from The Great Christian Reset by Jonathan Van Meryn
Ferguson is one of the world’s most influential intellectuals. Twenty years ago, during the New Atheist moment, it would have been difficult for anyone of his stature to affirm Christianity. 2023 Ferguson’s wife Ayaan Hirsi Ali declared she had become a Christian. Ferguson—who identifies as a “lapsed atheist”—and Hirsi Ali were baptized with their two sons in 2023. He reports they are now “practicing, devout Christians, and it has made a profound change to my life.”
Adapted from The Great Christian Reset by Jonathan Van Meryn
Ferguson is one of the world’s most influential intellectuals. Twenty years ago, during the New Atheist moment, it would have been difficult for anyone of his stature to affirm Christianity. 2023 Ferguson’s wife Ayaan Hirsi Ali declared she had become a Christian. Ferguson—who identifies as a “lapsed atheist”—and Hirsi Ali were baptized with their two sons in 2023. He reports they are now “practicing, devout Christians, and it has made a profound change to my life.”
The “first phase” of his coming to faith, was his realization that from a historical perspective “no society had been successfully organized on the basis of atheism.”
In his “second phase,” it became personal. In a 2024 interview with The Australian, Ferguson acknowledged one cannot be certain Christ rose from the dead. “Jesus taught us … there were things we couldn’t know. … One can’t reason one’s way to God. The nature of faith is that one accepts that these apparently far-fetched claims are true.”
Ferguson’s story is a microcosm of the struggle of intellectuals who want to believe but find themselves unable to force their modern minds to accept supernatural claims.
One example is author Louise Perry—The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. While researching, she found herself “reaching Christian conclusions against my will.” She had read The God Delusion at thirteen, and “thought it was fantastic … because I was thirteen.” Christianity, she observed, was true sociologically—to believe this is to be a “civilizational Christian.”
But is Christianity true supernaturally?
She and her husband now take their children to church. “Some weeks I believe, and some weeks I don’t.” She describes herself as a Christian but worries that having been raised in a secular home makes it impossible for her to truly believe. Still, she and her husband will send their children to a Christian school to “give our children the best chance of believing” that Christianity is both sociologically and supernaturally true.
Charles Murray, who has long acknowledged the civilizational value of Christianity, now calls himself a Christian. He describes his ongoing struggle in Taking Religion Seriously.
For the learned to learn to subject their intellect to God is impossible without divine grace. Niall Ferguson is learning this. “What strikes me, as a regular churchgoer now, not having been one before, is how much one learns every Sunday morning. Every hymn contains some new clue as to the relationship between us and God. I think the educational benefit of going to church almost equals the moral benefit, the uplift, the sense one gets of being somewhat reset.” ~
Blessings,
Dan Nygaard