The Twilight of Atheism.

The Twilight of Atheism By Alister McGrath Published by Doubleday, New York, 2004 ISBN: 0385500610 Hardcover, pp. 320, $35.95 CAN

I very much wanted to enjoy this book. A religiously observant person (and a cradle Catholic), I was seduced by the title. So all the non-believers around me were about to fade into their big nihildammerung? How encouraging! After wading through 279 pages, I figured I should have concentrated on something the author said in the two-page introduction: "The book is an expanded version of a speech I gave at a landmark debate on atheism in February 2002 at the Oxford Union." The learned participants in the debate had "a highly stimulating exchange" and a "memorable dinner beforehand," no doubt including copious quantities of the cup that cheers. Great fun for all concerned.

Unfortunately, although this debate speech may have been concise and well delivered, it has not translated well into a full-length book.

Alister McGrath is a professor of historical theology and principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. Among books he has written is the recently acclaimed In the Beginning: the story of the King James Bible and how it charmed a nation, a language, and a culture. McGrath's main premise in Twilight is that, "like a tidal wave crashing against the shoreline, atheism surged over the West, sweeping away its rivals, before itself gradually receding." This seems to be proved chiefly from his personal experience.

A Northern Ireland Protestant, he was, in the late 1960s, a high-school student at Methodist College, Belfast, which he describes as "very religious." By a threefold thought process, an interest in the natural sciences which he thought "offered perfectly adequate explanations for every aspect of reality," the inspiration of the utopian spirit of the era, and a knowledge of the troubled history of his homeland, McGrath made the decision to eject God from his life. He returned to Christianity after going up to Oxford in the 1970s. He gives little detail of his conversion process, merely intimating that to some extent he followed in the footsteps of C. S. Lewis. Nor is he specific as to which brand of Christianity he now practises; it is obviously not Catholicism. However, he gives a nod of approval to Catholicism, principally because he owns that this is a religion which allows "a direct encounter between the believer and spiritual realities" (p. 203). He likes our emphasis on the use of imagery, particularly of the visual type, to reinforce the faith of worshippers. He has good things to say about Greek Orthodoxy, in which worship is seen as a means of connecting with the divine. McGrath is critical of mainline Protestantism whose founders, such as Calvin and Zwingli, discounted the human imagination and not only banished all kinds of imagery from their churches but limited worship services to readings from the Bible and sermons on its contents. Protestant Eucharistic services in which the Lord's Supper became merely a service of remembrance led to a situation in which "Christ was known only as an absence." In McGrath's view it is only a small step from an absent God to a God who does not exist.

Within Protestantism, McGrath prefers the "experiential religions" whose forerunner, 18th century Pietism, emphasized "faith as an experience of the living God, ... a personal reality in the life of the believer." So far, so good.

However, he later launches into a discourse which reads, if not naively, at least over-optimistically, on the advance of Pentecostalism onto the religious scene. He argues that atheists have underestimated Christianity's power to re-invent itself. After the setbacks resulting from the Protestant Reformation with its "rather dry and cerebral forms of Christianity,", Pentecostalism, with its direct experience of God through the power of the Holy Spirit, inspiring believers to care for the poor, sick, and dispossessed, "has made huge inroads in working-class areas of Latin America, Africa, and Asia" (also, one assumes, in the "Bible Belt" of the USA). He connects this growth with the charismatic movement within Catholicism and claims that these groups--perhaps due to a "lack of intellectual sophistication"--have been largely ignored by the establishment, particularly by sociologists, who are meant to note such trends. He suggests that, with already over? billion adherents, and with immigration patterns from the Third World towards "the cities of the West", the presence and influence of Pentecostalism may well increase exponentially. One wonders here if he even took into account the very visible expansion of Islam into these same areas; the religion of the Muslim rates very few lines in this volume, yet it is this faith, particularly in its fundamental aspect, which registers most prominently on the scale of international attention.

McGrath makes a point of condemning what happened when atheism, after a false start in revolutionary France, eventually became the "state religion" of a bloc of nations which fell into line with the Communist ideology that had held Russia in thrall since 1917. He details the efforts of Lenin and Stalin to eliminate religion from the Soviet Union, efforts successful from the institutional angle but much less so when it came to eradicating the personal faith of the masses.

In asserting that atheism is on the decline, McGrath does differentiate between "fundamental" atheism--defined as "a firm and principled commitment to the non-existence of God"--and the more-prevalent current climate of agnosticism and indifference to religion. (This was noted in a recent C.I. News in Brief item, "Atheism and religious fervour," p. 28, June 2004, where the Vatican remarked on the decline of militant atheism

in tandem with the growth of religious indifference in Europe.) This pragmatic atheism, with God on the sidelines and Christian traditions and teaching marginalized by a materialistic culture, is more of a menace to religion than any "honest brand" of atheism. McGrath notes the post-modern emphasis on tolerance and respect for diversity and a recent resurgence of interest in matters spiritual. We have not come to the end of the tale of how either of these concepts will work out. Perhaps he will live to tell and comment on it.

Meantime, despite all this stirring stuff, we have here a rather imperfect tome. Although written in two parts, one could select and read either without missing out on any of the salient points I have indicated. The Twilight of Atheism also suffers from rather sloppy editing. Did you even read it over yourself, Mr. McGrath? Surely a good Northern Irishman would know that James II of England was the brother of Charles II, not his son (Charles II having had no legitimate offspring). After all, did not the same James go down to defeat at the Battle of the Boyne at the hands of that great Belfast hero, William of Orange? There is also a long, distracting section on the career of Madalyn Murray O'Hair--perhaps a sop to readers of this U.S. edition.

Having mentioned "tolerance" and "diversity", our national mantras, this reviewer pondered what the book would have to say to Canadian readers. Particularly in the sections on the upsurge of Pentecostalism, I wondered momentarily if I had strayed into the realm of fiction. Living in a land where 90% of opinion-makers are resolutely inimical to any open expression of faith, particularly in its traditional Christian aspects, I am skeptical of any reports of such revivals. One only has to recall the venom with which the media recently brought down Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day, an Evangelical Christian.

However, Mr. McGrath does know we are here, and gives Canada a half page of his final chapter. But, he says, "The nearest thing in the West to the Soviet model is ... Canada, which seems to think that a sense of community identity can only be created by eliminating any religious presence in the public arena"! He also quotes an Anglican bishop saying that, despite Canada's lauding of multiculturalism, it "is moving to eliminate references to the faiths that underpin that culture."