Hi friends, it's Justin Briley. Before we jump into today's show, I have some exciting news to share. The evidence for a rebirth of belief in God in the UK and beyond has been growing. Easter saw thousands of churches packed out. Surveys are showing a remarkable upturn in churchgoing and people are looking for God again. I believe the church is in a unique missional moment, and that's why I'd like to invite you to a conference responding to the rebirth.
taking place at All Souls Church London on Saturday the 22nd of November. Co-hosted by myself and Glenn Scrivener of Speak Life, we'll be joined by some very special guests and speakers as we help the church to be ready for this turning of the tide. This conference is for any Christian who wants to respond to the rebirth we're seeing.
Ticketing will be available soon, but for now, mark your diary and plan to be with us on Saturday the 22nd of November in London. More details to follow soon. For now, here's today's show. I apologise for interrupting our... but we bring you breaking news here on RT a major fire Notre Dame Cathedral in central Paris the latest pictures tonight Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris completely engulfed by
The flames appear to have started in the roof where extensive renovation work was being carried out. They quickly took hold. The cathedral's spire collapsed into the building. It's feared very little has been Huge crowds gathered in the streets around it. Many were in tears. Fire crews from across Paris have come here to save whatever they The silence, the quiet of people stunned by the destruction. French cultural artefact. the world. When weeping The city's beloved 800-year-old fire in 2019.
It served as a not only of the loss of an iconic building, I never thought I would live through something like this. I never thought that I would personally feel that separation of a work of art that you assumed would always be there would see me born, it would see me die. I never thought I would outlive a great work of art.
Just that image conjured up so much this building which has survived world wars and revolutions and you know eight centuries of history It was like something very precious to the Western soul was burning up before our eyes.
Perhaps more than anything, the burning of Notre Dame reflected the secularisation that had overtaken France in the past few hundred years. Ever since revolutionaries overthrew the rule of both the monarchy and the church in the 1700s, a precipitous decline in Catholic faith has been underway in the country. For generations France has been a famously secular culture. Over half the population now say they have no religion and church going has been at an historic low for decades.
Alongside secularization, Islam has been growing with the influx of migrant communities to France, making the loss of Christian identity in the country even more pronounced however rebirth often happens against all the odds and just before Christmas last year not bells rang out again. In the last hour, the world has got its first look inside the restored Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
President Emmanuel Macron is visiting the cathedral ahead of its official reopening next weekend more than five years. After it was devastated by fire with a ritual knocking the Archbishop of Paris marked the reopening of Notre Dame Saturday night just five years after the fire unveiling a restoration perhaps as extraordinary as was the destruction itself
A remarkable reconstruction project saw a transformed cathedral rise from The stained glass windows and original stones of Notre Dame now glowed luminously Centuries of grime were removed and the building with worshippers and visitors ever since but many also see the restoration of notre dame
Symbolic of a growing sense faith is also What do you want the restoration of Notre Dame to represent, not just for Christians here in Paris and in France, but for Christians and believers throughout the world? It means like a renewal of the faith because we are the whole continent where the faith is like... dying a little bit or at least we have the impression that it's from the past do you think perhaps some people will even appreciate it more
now that they almost lost her. I'm sure, yeah. And that they will feel it's not only about a building, but about the Virgin Mary and God that we are praising, celebrating. France's Catholic Church has been living through many barren years, as has Roman Catholicism in many other parts of the world, and arguably not without cause.
As well as institutional failings of the past, contemporary scandals around child abuse and cover-ups have severely damaged the reputation of the church and contributed to falling adherents across the West. Indeed, many have described a Catholic Church in crisis in a post-Christian world. Yet in recent years the headlines haven't always been so negative. Many saw Pope Francis as a positive example of compassionate and down to earth leadership.
Following his death at Easter this year, the world's eyes turned again to Vatican City, when white smoke heralded the election of Pope Leo XIV, There were plenty of political hot takes on what the papacy of the first US cardinal will mean for the world, but the celebration and hope on display by the faithful in St. Peter's Basilica also perhaps marks the beginning of a new era for Catholicism.
because, by many accounts, the Catholic Church itself seems to be on the verge of a revival as unlikely as the rebirth of Notre Dame from the ashes. There is something attractive to these students. about the fact that this is a very ancient tradition Nietzsche said that God is dead God said that Nietzsche's dead one of them was right
It turns out, the old eternal questions, they remain. So it was only really when I was an atheist, I started grappling with the Bible as a way of arguing against it, that I actually got face to face with actual Christian. belief. I mean, I often attend the Latin Mass. You see a lot of young people there and there is a hunger for traditional liturgy.
And that's what's happening, I think, is the more we emphasize, as you say, the weirdness of Christianity in its doctrinal claims, in its manner of presenting itself to the world, it'll be more compelling, not less. Today we explore the surprising turn in the Catholic Church from crisis to confidence as a new generation discovers an ancient church.
I'm Justin Briley and in this podcast series I'm bringing you the inside account of why a meaning crisis in the modern world and the search for a better story about life are leading many 21st century people to reconsider Christian faith. Welcome back to Season 2 of The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. Catholic revival. Why I'm still a Christian, after two decades of conversations with skeptics and atheists, the reason I believe. That's the title of my new book.
and it's available now. Read my case for faith after a lifetime hosting debates between atheists and Christians. Find out why God makes sense of human existence, value and purpose and learn how to respond to some of the toughest objections to faith. This is a book to inspire confidence in Christians and to help seekers explore the claims of Christian faith.
Why I'm Still a Christian is available now at justinbriley.com, where you can also get exclusive signed copies. Or, when you become a gold-level supporter of this show, you'll get a free signed copy of both my books. Click the link with today's show info to buy or to support. About 12,000 adults and teenagers were baptized on the day before Easter. This is a record number for a country like France.
almost half of the population says they do not believe in God. However, the latest data from the French bishops' conference show that despite the secularization, the number of people who are seeking to be baptized in the Catholic continues to increase. During the Easter vigil, about 7,000 adults and more than 5,000 teenagers were baptized. Muchas personas de mi edad... And today's young people are asking themselves, but what am I living for?
News of a remarkable upturn in adult and teenage baptisms in the Catholic Church in France made headlines last year when 12,000, the largest number in living memory, came forward to be received into the church. but remarkably it was surpassed again at the Easter Vigil this year with a 45% rise as almost 18,000 catechumens were baptised. and in both years the most unlikely age demographic are the ones most coming forward.
Who were the converts? It was driven mostly by young people, people under the age of 25. This is political commentator Michael Knowles, who came back to Catholic faith himself in his 20s, describing the surprising results from France. 45% increase among adults compared to last year, 33% rise among adolescents. So you see a big, a big drive here from young people. Now part of this might be because fewer adults were baptized when they were babies by their parents.
Two generations ago, everyone would be baptized even if you didn't believe it. Today, a lot of parents, Gen X parents, millennial parents, even boomer parents, just didn't baptize their kids because they don't believe in it. What's the point?
Church is just like every other day of the week. It's all kind of fake. It's all just, it's all happy clappy kind of for me. It's to entertain me, but it's not that entertaining. So whatever. Why would I, why would I give any credence or participation to it? And then those kids grow up, and they decided they want to be baptized. They received grace, I think, and in any case, they become baptized. In other words
Nietzsche said that God is dead. God said that Nietzsche is dead. One of them was right. And it turns out, They were But it's not just France that is seeing this unexpected revival among young people. Reports of rising numbers have been coming in from the Catholic Church in other parts of Europe, such as Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
And in my own country, the UK, the recent publication of The Quiet Revival, a landmark report from the Bible Society on rising church attendance among Gen Z, showed that Catholic churches were among those seeing the most young people returning to the pews. Speaking at World Youth Day 2023, which saw some one and a half million pilgrims gather for mass and an overnight vigil in Lisbon, Portugal, Bishop Robert Barron explained why young people are looking... faith.
I think it is tougher being a young person now, and the pandemic had a lot to do with it, but also the rise of the social media in its negative aspect.
love the social media you know I use it but it's got a very negative aspect and these young people they know this the numbers of anxiety and depression suicidal tendencies are all spiking among young people and a lot of us related to the social media I want them to come away with a sense of, you know, that world, you can use it, it's a tool, but that's not the real world.
The real world is the world of the worship of God, the service of the poor, community with one another. And that's what this day is all about. It's tougher being a young person now than it was when John Paul started these things a long time ago. It's tougher now.
which means we need Christ more than ever. And I want them to come away with a sense of Jesus who loves them, who walks with them, and wants to be the Lord of their life in a liberating way. If that message comes through, we got something good for them. The Catholic Church lays claim to a direct line of apostolic succession since the first century, when St Peter was first entrusted by Christ with the task of leading the church.
It has a long and sometimes turbulent history, but one which has shaped the history of many nations and the lives of countless generations. With its relatively unchanging traditions and moral teachings that span continents and whole civilizations, it has been a symbol of permanence in a fast changing world.
Throughout this podcast series we've charted the way the changes in our world have intensified in recent years as technology, social media and the rapid advance of ideologies on both the left and right have accelerated a meaning crisis in culture, often with young people at the epicenter. Post-Christian societies like France have sidelined the church and its central story for centuries, which is why the boom that the country is beginning to see in Catholic circles is so surprising.
This is after all the famously secular country that chose to include what appeared to be a drag queen parody of the Last Supper during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. They haven't been without controversy. We had that disastrous opening ceremony that saw world leaders left out in the rain. There were technical problems.
mocking Christianity including drag queens parody parodying The Last Supper the scene is clearly referencing The Last Supper the name of the a wordplay in French, which is la scène de la scène à Paris. Basically translated into English it means the scene of the last What do I see? Gross mockery. of the Last Supper. France felt evidently, as it's trying to put its best cultural foot forward, the right thing to do is to mock
this very central moment in Christianity. France, which used to be called the eldest daughter of the church, Paris that gave us Thomas Aquinas taught there, and Vincent de Paul was there, King Louis IX, St. Louis, France that sent Catholic missionaries all over the world. France, whose culture, and I mean the honoring of the individual and of human rights and of freedom, is grounded very much in Christianity, felt the right thing to do was to mock the Christian faith.
You know, a question I would pose, we all know the answer to, Would they ever have dared mock Islam in a similar way? I asked Tony Wilson, a British writer and broadcaster who spends much of the year in France, about how that infamous ceremony was received by the people he lives alongside.
The opening festival of the Olympic Games was a bit of a flop in many respects for France, and I think people acknowledge that generally. It was the biggest recruiter for Marine Le Pen ever, I think, because she was tweeting as soon as the... well before the event was over and because like many producers of events like that they're coming from a pretty liberal perspective And they can't stop themselves poking the bear. They just constantly want to... poke at what they see as irrational, old.
ideas that have had that time. How far those views, those ultra-liberal views, extend into France, I somehow doubt. I really don't feel that they express. the France that I live amongst, the French people I live near. I asked Wilson, himself a convert to Catholicism, what he makes of the surprising number of young people entering the church in France.
I think it fits well with your thesis that we're seeing the tide turning. I think those signs are there. I mean, the data is there that the number of people, the number of adults seeking baptism who've come from no faith commitment at all. has gone off And so that is certainly true. I mean, even in our own parish, we've got a young man, Marvin, he just appeared.
nowhere he's come from no faith background and he's being baptized this Easter so he even in our aging rural parish there are people turning up at the door There's no doubt that some of the new interest in Christianity in France is driven by cultural and political concerns. We began this season exploring the overlap of conservative politics with the rebirth of interest in faith. France has had long-running tensions between a growing Islamic population and the secular values of its republic.
Gracias. We've avenged the Prophet Muhammad, heard clearly in dramatic new footage showing Islamist militants Sharif and Saeed Kowatchi moments after the Shali Hebdo massacre. This is an act of an exception. and barbarism that has just happened here in Paris against a newspaper It had been 40 minutes. since the concert began. We heard detonations coming from behind.
And heard screams. The worst of the attacks unfolded here inside the Bataclan Theater where three terrorists and suicide vests burst into a packed concert and opened fire on the crowd. In all, 90 people were killed. Killed in the rap page. Tragic events such as the 2015 Charlie Hebdo killings and the Bataclan massacre in Paris, along with a spate of arson attacks on churches attributed to Islamic extremists, have only intensified the tensions.
It's perhaps inevitable that some of those concerned by the rise of Islam are looking for identity markers that offer more than the secular humanism of the state government. The same forces that are contributing to the rise of Marine Le Pen's far-right nationalist party may also be propelling some
towards traditional Catholicism. Tony Wilson is familiar with the mixed motives and complex cultural dynamics at play but says that what he mostly sees is genuine spiritual renewal, responding to a spiritual hunger, especially among Young. Over the past year, he's been charting the explosive growth of a Catholic student ministry in Toulouse, a city in southern France. It began when the leader of a Catholic mission network asked him a favor.
So I happened to drop into the conversation. He said, oh, there's a new young ordinand. He's in training in Toulouse at the moment, Antoine. Would you occasionally just go and support him, just take him out for lunch? And so I thought, right, okay, well, I'll do that. So I popped into Toulouse and made an appointment to take him to lunch. far away from it being an encouragement.
from me to him it was the other way around you know the encouragement was all going the other way and so we went to his ordination and the roof practically lifted off the cathedral it was the most amazing I think I can imagine going to really. It was quite extraordinary.
His bishop, Guy de Kerimel, put Father Antoine in the team with Father Damien who are responsible for the student mission. The student mission actually started about 15 years ago. So it's been... something that's been gathering some pace Seeing a missional opportunity, the Diocese of Toulouse has purchased and is in the process of redeveloping a former convent in the city as a student outreach centre.
and has repurposed six parish churches in student areas for evangelism and discipling of young people. Wilson says that Father Damien and Father Antoine, who lead the work, are encountering unprecedented openness among the student population. Father Antoine tells me he's stopped in the street by people asking if they can be baptised.
The numbers of people enrolling in the program which leads to baptism has gone up. Now I think the latest number is 240 since the start of this academic year. So it's a significant number of students. and their friends are bringing their friends and their friends' friends are bringing their friends as well. To what is a fairly traditional, maths. There aren't really any concessions to them being students.
Their view is that they're going to do liturgy, they're going to do it very well, and they're going to have their robes, they're going to have their incense, they will have polyphonic singing, they will do everything according to the rubrics of the Catholic Church. and yet it seems to be very, very popular. And I spent a very pleasant breakfast period with Father Damien where he was explaining how they work.
And I'd already been in morning prayer with him. And at the end of breakfast, he said, Oh, you'll have to excuse me. I've got an important meeting in an hour and I must go back and pray. So the whole thing... and underpinned by by a deep personal commitment. They have a daily hour of adoration. which both he, Father Damien, and Father Antoine lead with the students. So that's a period of silent prayer in the church where those priests are available to hear the confessions.
And... those two priests are carrying a huge weight on their shoulders actually and they understand it and they know that if they're not absolutely steeped in prayer that they would go under. Hearing Wilson's account of the way that the traditional mass and high church liturgical ceremony is drawing young converts, I couldn't help be reminded of the many occasions I've encountered those in the surprising rebirth movement
encouraging churches to keep Christianity weird. Those looking for a spiritual home today aren't necessarily looking for the pop culture seeker sensitive form of church that the boomers and Gen X converts built. within the Catholic Church, attempts at accommodating modern culture in some of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s and 70s never seemed to move the dial on the emptying out of churches by young people.
In contrast, however, the recent growth of a trad Catholic movement among younger people has been reported on by outlets such as Vanity Fair and The New York Times. including a return to the Latin mass and a tradition even of young women wearing veils. Rusty Reno editor of First Things magazine told me why he thinks young people are being drawn towards Catholicism. and some of its surprisingly traditional customs. Baby boomers like me have created a liquid world with no firm place to stand.
We've deconstructed marriage. We've ruined the traditional patterns for male-female interactions so that there's no courtship. Even the word courtship is alien to an 18-year-old. He or she wouldn't even know what I was talking about. We've undermined the foundations for economic prosperity for kind of middle class people through globalization. We've tolerated dramatic demographic change.
so we've liquefied baby boomers have embraced and created a liquid world and in that world a young person is desperate to find a solid place and it's the latin math It doesn't go back to the time of Jesus. It's a synthesis of liturgies after the Council of Trent. but it is a strange ancient language conducted with dignity and it radiates a kind of permanence and depths of root.
that would be naturally attractive to a young person in a liquid world where there's no firm anchors, no strong anchors, no firm place to stand. And so I think baby boomers project onto these young people ideological motivations. You know, they're rejecting the Second Vatican Council. They're fearful of change or whatever these ridiculous phrases might be.
When in fact it's just a very straightforward human, you know, because we are spiritual beings, a fundamental human need to have a strong anchor and a trustworthy foundation for one's life. So I find it perfectly natural and then just don't forget people think oh the young, you know Why aren't they more progressive or whatever? Well, hello, you know, they're rebelling against baby boomers like me who you know have all those ridiculous conceits.
So how do you rebel against the rebellious generation? You wear a veil to church. i mean can you imagine a university educated woman i mean that is a that is the most that is a powerful visible sign of a rejection of fundamental tenets of feminism Doesn't mean they don't want to be professionals doesn't mean they don't want to be successful in their career It doesn't mean they want to go back to mythical 1950s, but it does betoken a rejection of
feminist ideology it seems to me. Religion as the new rebellion among Gen Z is a concept we've encountered before. I asked Reno to expand on the idea. I remember being a university professor with one of my elderly colleagues who had grown up in Ireland. he was an irishman during the you know the time when the church was all powerful he said like we said we were talking about what's the greatest challenge we face in the classroom and he would say catholic fundamentalism
And I said, Mike, you're out of your mind. These students don't know anything about what the Catholic Church teaches. They don't have any basis on which to be fundamentalists. And that difference, his view versus my view, I think just says it all. That in an environment where... The other people feel like they've been deprived. They gravitate towards things that are full of demands and full of teaching. And, I mean, does it go too far sometimes? Of course. I think there is a kind of traddy...
Scrupulosity, that's a vice in the church. You know, laxness is a vice, but also scrupulosity is a vice. We overemphasize certain ritual elements at the expense of the core of the faith. And that certainly happened.
uh but i think in anything you have to ask yourself do we live in an age where we're at risk but we live in a neo-puritanical age i don't think so uh so what which risk would you want to court and i would say we want to risk If I was a priest or pastor, I would say, I'll take my chances on over-belief or the wrong kind of ardent belief. because i can correct that as opposed to unbelief or this kind of basic indifference i mean
We're living in a time when young people, they have no views of Christianity because they don't know anything about it. Maybe they know the word. But that's about it. So you can go through the school system in the United States and in Great Britain and learn nothing.
about Christianity. Well, is this bad? It's bad for our society, as Tom Holland points out, because Christianity is such an important foundation of many of the things we cherish about Western culture. Bad for our culture, bad for our society. Is it bad for evangelists? Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe the blank slate is more open. somebody who's been catechized in the anti-christian mentalities of the 20th century.
Reno's words reminded me of what others have told me that the new interest in church among Gen Z is partly down to the fact that most of them have never been to church before and they therefore don't have the religious baggage their Gen X and boomer parents and grandparents have. In a secular culture, being an atheist is no longer interesting or edgy, but being religious might be.
Whether it's a search for something solid in a liquid world, an unsatisfied spiritual hunger, or just old-fashioned teenage rebellion, the result is that against all expectations, young people are returning to the Catholic Church. Tony Wilson recounted his own experience attending a traditional Catholic mass and youth event at the start of term for the Toulouse student mission.
Like students all over the world, they all appeared at the last minute. So the cathedral, which has a capacity I think of around 2,000, just filled up in about five minutes. And so this was a mix of students who had been part of the parish for some time. Their friends and their acquaintances were coming in. I met quite a few of them after the event. And then trumpets sounded, everyone stood up.
you get this one procession coming down in this cloud of incense procession goes down the aisle almost floating in a cloud. And there's no doubting that you're in a moment set apart for the Lord. There's a holiness that is completely different to anything in everyday life and I think on reflection this is part of the attraction They know what a coffee shop looks like. We don't have to replicate one in church.
They've got one on the corner of their street. They can go to that with their mates. They don't want that in a church. they know what a good concept It feels like. They go to them all the time. They don't want that inner chair. They want to be presented with something which is holy and absolutely set apart. Of course, I'm speaking in generalities. I'm sure there are lots of students who do want a church with a good coffee shop and a good, you know what I mean. But there is something attractive.
to these students. about the fact that this is a very ancient tradition and I think they feel that they're in a time of great turmoil. There's a lot of shifting ground. You know, we're on a continent which has war on its soil at the moment with every prospect of that expanding. They've got a lot of pressure from social media, they've got a lot of pressure from housing costs which in cities are similar to the UK. So many, many of the issues that listeners around the world will be familiar with
pertain to these students as well. One of the things they're doing is they're saying, well, where is the solid ground on which I can stand? You know, where can I find something which is substantial? which isn't going to move, which isn't going to be different next year. There's an unchanging element to that. And I think that's why something like the Catholic Church is incredibly attractive.
It stands on a 2000 year tradition and it feels like it's not going anywhere quickly and it's going to be there for them next year and it's going to look pretty much like it looks this year. So I think that is an element. So this service is a liturgical service, the music is polyphonic, it's quite modern, it's not
ancient. Most of the service is in French. Some of it, some of the responses, the Agnes days in Latin, and there are various other aspects in Greek, you know, the Kyrie Eleison, for example. So it's just a fairly... ordinary mass but done with extreme reverence. And that is impressive when you see that taking place. with a cathedral of 2,000 people. It's quite impressive. The other thing was there's an attentiveness from the students. I was looking around and they are attentive at each moment.
And when that moment comes of consecration where the bishop over the bread and wine invokes the Holy Spirit to transform these elements into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. Everyone dropped to their knees. You know, this was a moment where we're in the presence of the king, you know, and we give the king the respect he is due. And everyone knew what they were about, what they were doing, why they were doing it. It was one of those moments of...
You just have to sit up and take notice. For these students, Wilson says it's not just about grand ceremonies with their smells and bells. It's matched by a passion for discipleship in everyday life. After that was over we all spilled out into the courtyard. And it was set up more for a carnival with lots of stands for various societies, Christian societies, that students can join.
So it was a bit like, if anybody is familiar with freshers week at university where you have all the stalls set out with everybody vying for your attention. Well these were exclusively Christian and they were all the ways in which these students could become discipled. So there were theology groups, there were groups for contemplative prayer, there were charismatic praise groups, there were working with the homeless groups, there were working with youth groups.
There were no end of ways in which people could express their faith in real concrete terms by joining one or more of these particular groups. And I think Antoine said there were 60 of these that people could join. They have this concept that they call their five vitamins, which are about... and reading the Bible and serving the poor, doing mission. All of these societies are about how can we give these students the vitamins they need in order to be good functional disciples.
And the aim is, by the two or three years that these students engage with the process, they will graduate. Most of them will end up somewhere else in France. Most of them will end up in a parish far less lively than the one they've been sent for. but they've been equipped with the skills to transform the atmosphere. to become missionary disciples wherever they are. And they know that's what their mission, they know their mission field.
outside the church. They know ultimately they're going to be out there in a parish that probably doesn't understand them, doesn't really appreciate what it is they're bringing, but they know they've got to transform the culture.
welcome back to the exorcist files a preternatural prying open of the paranormal plane i'm your co-host ryan buffet and today we wave farewell to interviews and q a's for a time and return to our regular scheduled demonic demolishing programming led by our very own priest with a catechetical feast Father.
The Exorcist Files became a hit podcast last year with dramatized retellings of the case files of Catholic exorcist Father Carlos Martins. So why has a show that deals in demonic deliverance and spiritual warfare becomes so popular. In this interview, Father Martins explains why the show is doing so well with a historically non-religious demographic.
The Pew research people, they divided the population up into segments, into demographic segments. And in the 18 to 29 category, The number of people that they surveyed that in a five-year period abandoned religion altogether and embraced nothingism. increased by one-third. So that's just in five years. At the same time, that same demographic, that same age group, 18 to 29-year-olds, 63% of them State it they believe it is possible for someone to become demonically
So you have two contradictory movements here. In this demographic that is increasingly abandoning religion altogether, Something is happening in their lives that is making them conclude the devil is real. And no one is speaking to this. No one is reaching out.
And so I started a process of this and, you know, how can I speak to this? Well, you know, so if I were to do just kind of lectures on spiritual work, essentially I would be attracting the same kind of people that I don't need to attract because they already believe and they already are aware of these kinds of realities. But if I were to do a dramatic 3D binaural reenactment of cases, that would likely get me some of that demographic.
that otherwise I would never reach them. And so that's what we did. And I knew that it wouldn't be ignored. But I never imagined it would have this explosive popularity. and so you know Blessed be God. It has reached Not just that demographic. And, you know, for many, many weeks, it was the number one downloaded podcast on Spotify, which Spotify is the app of choice. for that demographic that we use. So we hit our metrics and then some. We hit a success in exactly that.
after. Father Carlos Martins is far from the only Catholic priest finding an audience online. mike schmitz and you're listening to the bible in the year podcast where we encounter god's voice Scripture, the Bible in a is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story. This is day one.
Mike Schmitz's Bible in a Year podcast consistently tops the religion and spirituality charts with the Rosary in a Year podcast not far behind. Meanwhile, popular YouTube channels such as Pints with Aquinas, the Council of Trent and Bishop Barron's Word on Fire are all offering masses of high quality thoughtful and popular content consumed by believers and seekers alike.
It all underlines how the interest in the supernatural and a meaning crisis driving young people back towards faith is being met by a variety of increasingly influential online personalities ready to explain, share and defend the Catholic faith. faith. It seems to me that there's a fresh confidence in Catholic circles as a new generation of evangelists find their feet in both the online and offline world. And there have been plenty of high profile conversion stories to meet it.
Yeah, well, I mean I went to catechism. with my daughter and I was 45 years older than the next oldest kid. Talk about being behind. This is comedian Rob Schneider who came to fame through Saturday Night Live and films such as Juice Bigelow, American Gigolo. In 2023, he converted to Catholicism. And it was beautiful. I love it. And I think that it's always been there you know just come come to us you know it's like like jesus was always there's never far from me and um And I think finally...
It really did work for me. And why the Catholic Church works for me, anything involved with man is going to have problems. But you have to know that that's part of any organization. And that's going to have its flaws because it's just human beings involved in it. But if you get to the core of why the Catholic Church to me is it works for me is because it's the closest to the actual words of Jesus Christ. So you can be as close as you can to Jesus Christ.
And that proximity is something that has become very important to me as you see the world spin out and as a foundation for my children. spiritual foundation. You can build a house, but if you build a house without faith, like I say, it's a house of on sand. UK comedian Frank Skinner, who rose to fame alongside comedy partner David Baddiel, has also been increasingly open about his Catholic faith. He told me about walking away from faith as a young man in a devout West Bromwich family.
Leaving the Catholic Church was an enorm- in our family. was if I'd come back and said I'd killed three people in a pub it probably wouldn't have been a bigger deal. So that was very, very difficult. And then I stayed away from the church and I tried other churches. I became a faith tourist. I went to Anglican church. I tried. The Krista Dolphins.
anyway i tried all these things i read every anti-catholic thing i could get my hands on because i needed to be convinced that i'd done the right thing And I couldn't, after about five or six years of this, I started to get this real urge to go back and I thought, oh no, I can't. If I go back, I'm going to have to say to my family, you know all that torment and stuff, that was wrong.
Then I started going to church and just sitting at the back and not doing anything. In the end I went and saw a priest. I told him this whole story in more detail. And he's an old priest in Birmingham called Father Stibble. But he just went, and he did this gesture, just calling me towards him. He didn't say anything. And I said, what? He said, come on. I said, what? He said, come back. You wanna come back? Just come back. What's the problem? So I went back.
So it wasn't almost all those intellectual questions getting answered. that it was someone just inviting you? The truth is, I think it's very, very important to keep reading around it and keep asking the questions. I think there are, I don't know about... other churches but in the catholic church there are adults
who I would say had what I would call a gentle Jesus theology, which is still based on the stuff they did leading up to their first communion. And I don't think that's good enough. I am with St. Paul. that when I became a man, I put away childish things. You have to not see through a glass darkly. You have to see as clear as you can, but you also have to accept.
that if I'm gonna get down to the ground from this upper floor that we're on eventually i can take all the um i can buy all the harnesses and do all the research eventually i'm gonna have to jump after that moment where i have to jump And that's what I think about faith. It doesn't... intellectualizing about religion doesn't take us all the way. And if it did, you'd be removing a lot of people. When Jesus celebrates the fact that...
God has given this wisdom to these little ones, to people who aren't educated. And sometimes I see debates on the table. You used to get like Christopher Hitchens, who was an intellectual, but who really deserved a slap.
And he would be shooting people down because they couldn't intellectualize their faith the way he could intellectualize his atheism. But that's not what it's about. It's about everybody it has to be available to everybody so if you can't get to it through a sort of a visceral got feeling you know I went to Guadalupe to the to the shrine in Mexico and there was old ladies on top of a hill crawling on their stomach up the hill and at first I was shocked by it but I thought
This is just another way of doing it. She's not gonna maybe read the book. and have all the big thoughts. She's just gonna say, I really believe in this and this is how I'm shouting. I'm gonna get down in the dirt and crawl up this hill to this thing. And you have to have those different levels or you're shutting some people out. You can hear the full conversation with Frank Skinner on Season 2 of the Re-Enchanting Podcast.
in previous episodes of this series, there are plenty more celebrities, converts and influencers now wearing their Catholic faith on their sleeve. Tammy Peterson, Mark Wahlberg and Shia LaBeouf to name just a few. And there are regular stories of Evangelicals crossing the Tiber to Rome too.
In 2022, well-known online apologist Cameron Battuzzi of the Capturing Christianity YouTube channel announced his conversion to Catholicism. And just this past Easter, Former guest of this show, journalist Heather Tomlinson, was received into the Roman Catholic Church. It's worth saying today's show is not going to get into the weeds of the arguments
for and against Protestant and Catholic theology. That's a debate for another day. But many of those embracing Catholicism today have been influenced by the ministry of one significant public evangelist and priest. Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We're excited to host Bishop Robert Barron for this talk at Google. And he's one of the world's most followed Catholics on social media, along with Pope Francis. And his regular YouTube videos have been viewed over 25 million times
And he recently received the YouTube Silver Creator Award. So without further ado, let's welcome Bishop Barr. This was Bishop Robert Barron being introduced a lecture at the Google headquarters some seven years ago. Since then his online ministry has grown exponentially with some 250 million video views and almost 2 million subscribers to his YouTube channel.
Word on Fire is now a global multimedia ministry featuring a team of speakers and a variety of events, courses and podcasts, as well as a publishing art. When I chaired an onstage conversation with Bishop Barron during a UK speaking tour, I began by asking him about the secret to the success of Word on Fire. Firstly, the fact that you're so influential in your ministry, Word on Fire, on YouTube, in online spaces. Where's that come from? What kind of fruit are you seeing through that?
Yeah, it's a question people ask me a lot and I've reflected on it. I'm not sure I have a really good answer. When I started doing my work in this more kind of public evangelization, and i do youtube videos and various things all kinds of people said to me oh no no don't don't do it like that you can't be sitting in front of a bookshelf and with your roman collar on and talking in a serious way no one's going to listen and this is a true story
We had a PR fellow early on, and he said, Father, I'd recommend you should lose the collar and the bookcase and maybe come in on a skateboard. I'm not joking. And I mean, thank God I didn't do that. And they proved nevertheless to be popular. And I think it would be some combination of truth and beauty. I've been a passionate critic. of the dumbed down Catholicism that I got as a kid. So my generation, I'm not sure it's true here, but it was in the States for sure, after the council.
not because of the council, but after the council, we dumbed down the operation and it was a pastoral disaster. A lot of people have disaffiliated because religion seems stupid or that it doesn't answer the challenge of science or the new atheists or whatever. So I tried to do it in a way that was smart. And then in my longer form, more like the Catholicism series, we really emphasized beauty. And my inspiration was your countryman. It was Kenneth Clark.
I watched Civilization when I was a kid, and that changed my life. And I wanted to do something similar for Catholicism. So I would say some combination of truth and beauty is why I was popular. I recently sat down again with Bishop Barron after his main stage address at the ARC conference in London and asked him about the new attitude towards sharing faith that his ministry embodies.
It feels like there's a sort of confidence that's come back, hopefully not a kind of hubris or anything like that, but something which says actually no. We've got a message and people are kind of ready to hear it again. And, you know, I'll get a little too academic here, but the... Source of a lot of the mischief is Friedrich Schleiermacher. Okay. The founder of modern liberal Protestantism who writes a famous book, 1799, called On Religion, Speeches to its Cultured Despiser.
And it's a great book in the history of theology, indeed. But it set the tone for much of liberalism, both Protestant and Catholic. What's our job? Well, we've got culture despisers out there, people that don't like us, and they don't like our message, so I've got to find a way to get them to like me. That's the wrong instinct, it seems to me. I don't think St. Paul was giving speeches to the culture of despisers.
paul was announcing jesus christ in a culturally engaged way to be sure so it's not an either or but the schleiermacher move was more of the i come hat in hand to the secular culture and begging them to pay attention to me Paul came into town with a message, an astasis, resurrection, Jesus rose from the dead. And so there was a kind of pandering quality to too much of Catholic life. And I think we're overcoming that. I think John Paul II, as I was coming of age, then represented an alternative.
I think he showed how you can evangelize in a very bold, very confident, and non-violent, non-threatening way. And someone talked about plugged into the culture of John Paul II. So he knew how to engage the culture, but not in the Schleiermacher mode of giving speeches, hoping they'll take it seriously.
but a confident proclamation. And that Schleiermacher mode arguably was about trying to make Christianity and its supernatural games a bit more palatable for a sort of rational Western culture. I feel almost like... the reverse is is now becoming true that people need a weirdness the strangeness
of Christianity that's actually part of its attraction absolutely and go right back again take Schleiermacher at the beginning of the 19th century then about the middle of the 19th century of Kierkegaard who says my job as a theologian is to make Christianity hard to believe and see it was a typical kierkegaard sort of move but
is to say, well, look, if it's easy to believe, it's not worth believing. Then I'm just echoing the secular culture. I'm saying what any psychologist or political activist or Oprah could say, right? But I want to make this thing strange, hard to believe. A carpenter rose from the dead. But that's my message. And that has always been worth proclaiming because it's strange. Now, it doesn't mean the resurrection is an irrational message. It's not.
Read N.T. Wright's 800-page book on the resurrection, you know, to see a rational account of everyone. But it does mean you lead with what's distinctive and boldly so about Christianity. So I wrote a book and you very kindly did a few episodes of your podcast looking at some of the chapters in it called A Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. And one of the things you touched on
was the rise and fall of new atheism. And my contention, my thesis has been that as much as it came in a blaze of glory, it's sort of very much waned now, that very rationalistic, scientistic way of approaching things. People are looking for enchantment again and the New Atheists sort of failed to deliver that.
To always say should we be marshalling those kind of rationalistic apologetic arguments versus kind of i don't know giving people a story that that that kind of enchants them well so i'm always all of the above kind of guy because i think it depends on on whom you're talking to and what's on their mind when i was teaching in the seminary i'd say you gotta go out with like a physician with his bag and all kinds of different medicines and treatments in there.
because it depends some people like when i was a young guy i'm 13 years old or 14 years old and ran across the acquaintance arguments for god's existence changed my whole life changed my whole life i was a catholic going to mass on sunday but i never thought about religion deeply at all and then aquinas came in and so it appealed through my mind in a big way well i not everyone's like me i get that but That would work for me. So apologetics, yes, can play an important role.
I was talking to William Lane Craig this many years ago, and we both said the same thing. So when he was a young man, it was arguments for God's existence that really, and of course he famously articulates the Kalam argument to this day. But we both said, everyone's always told us, oh no, that's not the way to do it. Don't use.
Well, in our case, it worked. Now, having said that, there are a lot of other approaches. See, I'm a Newman man. You're a countryman, John Henry Newman. I'm with him. I mean, it's the illitive sense. I mean, you're... How do you come to say, yeah, that's true. Well, argument has something to do with it. But it's often, it's hunch, intuition, it's relationships, it's what other people believe and people that you admire. There's all kinds of reasons why you say,
Yes, I believe this. So I think the canny evangelist has got to be like a tennis player who's ready to move in any direction. Where's the ball going to go? I don't know. It could be a drop shot. It could be I got to be able to move with my interlocutor moving from these intellectual hypes to the sort of what's happening on the ground in local parishes and whether all of these anecdotal data points about
a lot of people suddenly seeming to take an interest in turning up in church, whether that's reflected in your experience. Yeah, it is for sure. Now, the ultimate goal for a Catholic of evangelization is to bring people to Mass. That's the goal. I think maybe we're not there yet. Where we are is a lot of very interested engagement in the digital world. And the church, I think, War of Fire is an example of it, has found a way to invade that space.
and to become a presence within it. And I think there, indeed, and I'll bring in Peterson and everybody else, a lot of young people, especially young men, have gotten reinterested in religion. I think there is very much alive. Now, my goal... is to bring them from there now into the space of the church, into the liturgy and the Eucharist.
But okay, you know, patiently in God's time. Just roaming around the Expo Center here, just for, I don't know, 45 minutes, I think 15 different people all over the world said to me, I became a Catholic and we're on fire a lot to do with it.
It's like, okay, that's why we do it. But see, we first had to engage them in the internet space, and that then brought them. When I was at the youth synod, so now we've had the Synod on Synodality, right? But prior to that, I was elected delegate to the Synod on Young People.
And for weeks we talked, the president of the Pope, all these bishops, about young people, how do we get them more engaged. And almost everybody talked about parish programs and diocesan programs and how do we get them. And I started at one point and said, you know,
Brothers this is not working. They're not going to come to our churches We have to go out and get them in their space you know duke and altum and i'll make you fishes of men and all that go out in their space and then we can reel them in you know but uh that's been happening no question about it
And it is reflected in the stats. The stats are improving. We seem to have stopped the slide. You know, we're talking a lot about disaffiliation to sliding. That seems to have stopped anyway, in some cases reversing.
But that's the work of the present moment. And what's interesting to me is that What arguably... failed to work in some versions of of catholicism that you were raised in which perhaps tried to appeal by kind of becoming more like the everyday person it's actually the quite yes traditional forms of Catholicism that seem to be attracting young people.
against all our, you know, expectations. What's going on there? What's the appeal there? Well, I'll go back to my own time. You're right. I mean, when I was coming of age, it was, you know, guitars and tambourines. I was singing, you know, three-chord folk songs.
because we want to be relevant. We want the kids to like us. But the trouble with that was it was just a very, very faint echo of the entertainment culture of the time. And so people said, well, heck, I get much better entertainment on television or somewhere else. where the church being itself speaking a message that can't be heard anywhere else. So that's the pulpit question. Is the pulpit just a place where I'm hearing an echo of the secular culture, political or otherwise?
And then there's the whole liturgical doctrinal. Are we saying something and exhibiting something that you cannot find in the ordinary cultural space? That will be interesting to people. And that's what's happening, I think, is the more we emphasize, as you say, the weirdness of Christianity and its doctrinal claims and its manner of presenting itself to the world.
It'll be more compelling, not less. But believe me, everybody, we all ran off that cliff, the Schleiermacher cliff of let's give speeches to our culture despisers. Let's make ourselves appealing on their own terms to young people. I go back to my nephew, a brilliant guy. He went to MIT. Now he's working at SpaceX sending rockets to Mars. But when he was a little kid, he went through religious education. And most of his teachers were very much in the Schleiermacht remote.
He had one teacher in one of his grades who was tough taught them the Bible in its peculiarity and distinctiveness, insisted they learn. Well, of course, that's the only teacher he remembers. Of course, that's the only one that had an impact on him.
So I think we have to resist the Schleiermacher intuition, but man, that was deep in the Catholic psyche. And when you see these, especially these young men, against all expectations in a race what i mean what are they coming for what is it that they haven't found in the culture, which suddenly they discover to their surprise,
Is there in the liturgy, the tradition, the worship and the community of the supernatural? The supernatural, I would say. They're finding the supernatural. They're finding something other. you know god's described as totalitarian totally other uh they're finding the sacred They're finding the Mysterium Tremendum and Fascinans. They're finding the heart of religion.
But it's the naturalizing of all that that led to the disaffiliation, I think, that boredom. That leads to a bored religion, tired religion. They want the supernatural. Because they were built for the supernatural. That's the weird paradox at the heart of Christian anthropology. By nature, we're ordered to the supernature. By nature, we're ordered something that we can't acquire on our own. so it's the breakthrough
of the unconditioned, the breakthrough of the sacred, God speaking. Those are all just metaphors for the same thing, right? But that's what they want and what they're seeking because they can't find that in the secular culture. And see, we have ways of, in our genius, of signaling that. And that's where vestments and incense and song and
And that's where all that comes in. It's meant to awaken that supernatural sensibility. But see, again, when I was coming at age, all that was de-emphasized on purpose. Don't have weird chanting hymns. Have three-chord folk songs. Don't have fancy vests. Make them as burlap as possible. Don't have a distinctive liturgy. Make it more like a jamboree.
bad instincts seems to me and so what that what young people are finding is when we do the opposite it's attractive to them This perhaps is the key to the success of Barron's message and word on fire ministry, drawing on the intellectual case for faith through great thinkers in the church's history such as Augustine and Aquinas, but meeting it with the real life life experience of sacraments, worship and the miraculous. Bringing together the head and the heart is a recipe for success.
And by the way, later in this season, look out for a new live conversation between myself, Bishop Barron, and the New Testament scholar and former Anglican Bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright. The growing attraction to the weirdness of High Church Catholicism, with its emphasis on miracles, saints, the real presence of Jesus in the Mass, and all that goes with it is reflected in the fact that when young people do tend to go to church,
they're often opting for something mysterious, otherworldly and supernatural. Indeed, the UK's quiet revival research shows that as well as returning to the Catholic Church, The other stream that young people are most likely to choose is Pentecostalism and charismatic expressions of church. This trend was perhaps anticipated by historian Tom Holland when in our live London conversation last year, he advised the gathered church leaders present to stop being timid and embrace the supernatural.
they don't 100% have the courage of their convictions. Whereas it's the people who are saying, the spirit speaks to me, I talk in tongues, hallelujah, healings, whatever. that's unusual that's unexpected people might sit up and say well that really is unexpected or Churches where you have a palpable sense of the sublime, visions of the Virgin, all that kind of stuff. Again, that's weird and odd and unexpected and not the kind of thing that you would get on Radio 4. So, I think that
Churches have to major on what they have to offer that everyone else doesn't. I think the problem for Christianity is that it's been too successful. Basically everyone has accepted its essential principles. You know, you get them all. Everyone should be kind to the poor and all this kind of thing. Everyone buys into that.
The things that the church traditionally did, education, hospital, poor relief, this has all been nationalized. So what is there left for the churches to do? What there is left for the churches to do is to talk about the stuff that no one else is talking, which is all the supernatural. At a recent unheard event, another former show guest Paul Kingsnorth also expressed why it is churches in the mushy middle that are most likely to get left behind.
So we're in a time where lots of middle-of-the-road things are just disappearing whereas as I say in the past when I was young everything could kind of muddle along because things mostly worked and now things don't work and they're going to work a lot less over the next 10 or 20 years and so if you are looking for a religious truth you're going to go somewhere where it really seems to be happening.
not just something that sort of is a bit meh. There's no point in it. If you want something that's a bit meh, you might as well just stay at home and watch the TV. I don't know. There's no point. If religion doesn't radically change and connect you to the truth, then it's a waste of your time.
That's the point of it. Otherwise it's just why get out of bed on a Sunday morning and go all the way to church and stand up for two hours. You'd be better off just having a nice breakfast. You only do this if you think it's really going to change you because you need to be changed. So I think that's true, and as things get more desperate, as the void gets more like a howling nihilistic mess.
that's going to be the question. Where do I go to find the truth? Sarah from Rose said he had something about that. He said Christ is the only exit from this world. He said all of the other exits that people try sexual rapture
political activism they just they lead to the kind of the graveyard of it's like you have to go for the truth and you have to look for it and that's what people are doing now Tony Wilson, who has been charting the growth of Catholicism among students in France, is himself a convert to church from a evangelical background, but when he entered the Roman Catholic Church after being persuaded by theological arguments, he found that the charismatic work of the spirit was also alive and well.
Indeed, charismatic Catholic renewal is hearts of the church. Wilson says that the students he meets are attracted by church and its openness to the reality of the supernatural, including spiritual evil. The Catholic Church has a rich heritage of confronting Satan and the demonic and has a pretty robust system of dealing with that. Every Catholic parish has an exorcist The bishop is the person who gives the authority to work as an exorcist. Their testimonies are incredibly vivid testimonies.
There's no getting away from that. But I would say that actually, you don't get more charismatic than the mass. If you really, really believe, and this is the place I got to, and once I got to the place where I believed this, there was no way I wanted to be anywhere else.
But if you get to the point where you believe that Jesus Christ in body, blood, soul and divinity is turning up on the altar and is gifting himself to you in what is effectively a marriage rehearsal, the bride and the lamb that we see in Revelation, there's that sense in which we're being called to the front and our bridegroom waits for us.
That ultimate marriage which we have to wait for in heaven, we get a little precursor of that. We get a little marriage rehearsal every Sunday and he's turning up to be with us. Now, you don't get much more miraculous than that if you hold a very, very high view of what's happening at the Eucharist. And so that I think is an element as well, the sense that the Catholic Church does believe in miracles.
I asked Bishop Barron about entering a new, more confident era of evangelism. What's your advice now to the church? If there is I would argue this meaning crisis in the culture, people looking for a better story, people opening up to the possibility of the supernatural. How does the church reap the harvest that is evidently there. Keep preaching the Bible on its own terms. There I am with Karl Barth, the great Protestant theologian. He didn't want to translate the Bible into some other language.
Let the Bible be the Bible. It's a thicket of, it's like a jungle, the Bible. It's weird and wonderful and mysterious and dangerous.
Fine, in we go. Go into that, guide people through it. Don't try to translate all that into something more accessible. So in our preaching, be bold and be deeply biblical. Fulton Sheen said that, the great American... his first rule of preaching it seems too obvious even to state but he said be biblical but see in my time priests we were kind of discouraged from being
Think a couple ideas from the Bible and then talk about your vacation or talk about something that will be relevant to people. No, no. Get them into the thick jungle of the Bible and it's... know so i'd say that and then like liturgically i let it be and colorful and evocative of a higher world. Speak our moral teaching. because it shouldn't just be utterly congruent with the latest psychological What would make me happy? Well, the psychologist said, Yeah, but God has said
Stay with that. Now, there'll be overlap, to be sure. There will be. But don't psychologize our moralities. Barron's advice strikes me as relevant to people of all church denominations. But with a new leader at the helm of his own church, what are his hopes for the future? I think the church that we've been talking about, you know, so let's say we got the Schleiermacher approach and then the anti-Schleiermacher.
To my mind and my experience, the anti-Schleiermacherians are the more lively part of the church. If you want to see where the church is really cooking, it's in that Newman rather than Schleiermacher, let's say. Chesterton rather than Schleiermacher. I think that's where you find the life. And that's what I would do. I would say, look, where's the life? Let's follow that. Go with that path. So I went to a Church of England school
and had the usual sort of PSE, Christian hymns in assembly, that sort of thing. I knew the Lord's Prayer off by heart. But from quite a young age, I made the decision that God was not real. I was an atheist from about the age of 12, I believe. Yeah, so it started quite early.
This is Mark Baldwin, a deep thinker who grew up in a non-religious household where the only connections to church were negative. As we conclude today's episode, I want to bring you in on our conversation about his journey to faith. finding his way into the Catholic Church. But as he told me, he had very little to go on from his childhood religious education at school.
You know, we didn't explore any theology, we didn't explore the evidence for God, the evidence for the resurrection or for Jesus' life. We didn't explore the Gospels really, we just sang songs and watched videos. So it was only really when I was an atheist and I started grappling with the Bible as a way of arguing against it that I actually got face to face with actual Christian belief and
Partly through your podcast, too, actually. I listened to Unbelievable. I think it was Alice McGrath you had on, who I listened to in response to get a balanced perspective on Richard Dawkins, because I thought, you know, I should get both sides. Yeah, so that was the background to that. So did you start to at any point question your kind of atheist assumptions in that way? I was pretty sure of my atheism right until my conversion, but I wasn't sure of my materialism.
That was a big change. So I was very into Greek philosophy and Buddhism. And through a mixture of both Neoplatinists, the Stoics and Zen Buddhism, I came to basically believe that mind came before matter, that mind was the basic substrate of reality. Where did that come from then? Where did this interest in... Greek philosophy and Buddhism specifically come from? Well, I was very interested in personal development, as a lot of people who are and want to have some kind of wisdom tradition.
I went to Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus. I was also interested in well-being and meditation and I practiced Zen Buddhism, Zen Buddhist meditations. I had come to believe in a kind of atheistic trinity, so three aspects of reality. One I called The Source, which I philosophically agree must exist as a first cause, but I didn't think it was a conscious entity you could pray to.
the second was the logos sophia or the word wisdom which i got from greek philosophy so kind of combination of the greek logos tradition and the wisdom tradition this aspect of reality through which reality is held together and made intelligible. And then thirdly, the presence, which I experienced in meditation, which was this
sense of there was a sense of communing with something and I would call it the universe in a sort of pantheistic sense or something like that or the Tao from Taoism. Yeah, so I had this atheistic trinity. I asked Mark what led him to move from this rather cerebral atheist trinity of existential concepts to encountering a living faith in the Logos made flesh, Jesus Christ.
It is a big difference, and I think the essential difference is relationship. That's the difference between the two. And for me, that started with reading the Gospel of John. I read Gospel of John to just prove that the Logos became flesh, that the Word became flesh. And I just got lost in it. And I found the Jesus of John so compelling, so humble, so powerful.
so different that Jesus had been presented by Christians. So they try and water it down as a kind of like, as a kind of Western Buddha or like a wise man or like just a nice guy that you should follow. Not as the word incarnate, not as the very entity through which reality is held together and made intelligible and is in essence good, which is very good news, literally.
And so I got lost in the Gospel of John. I found the language beautiful, and I've been primed for it, in a way, by reading Greek philosophy, because that's the milieu that John was writing into, and that's probably why I used the word Logos. in Hellenistic Judaism and Greek philosophy. And so I was living in a National Trust property in Wiltshire and I have this huge garden to walk around, so I thought I'd go on a nice long walk and try to make sense of things.
As I mentioned before, I was a Zen Buddhist. On the walk, I experienced a moment of a sudden enlightenment, which is called Satori in Zen Buddhism, so it's like a sudden awakening experience. And out of nowhere, I just looked up and said, thank you, Lord. And that was it. I was saying thank you to somebody. That was the beginning of the relationship. I mean, there was already a one-sided relationship before that, but...
That was the first time I ever said thank you to God and It was like something burst in me. I was filled the sensation like running water just this like overwhelming joy i just kept saying you're real i can see you and i found a bench cried my eyes out because there was a lot of conviction because i realized i've been living in active rebellion against god not just not believing but actively warring against him and I just gave myself to Jesus and
I had no idea what to do. I hadn't been baptized obviously. I had no community. I didn't belong to a church. I didn't have a... really any true understanding of the Bible except what I got from reading the start of the Gospel of John
and cherry-picked bits and pieces from over the years and I was kind of and my partner was an atheist my friends are atheists we actually broke up after 10 years couldn't stand the thought of me converting to Christianity and so I basically lost a girlfriend and gained a god Yeah, it was a big time of change and I went back to be with my family in Cambridge and to explore Christianity and lots of churches in Cambridge. I've tried out pretty much every denomination going.
And I love them all in different ways actually. Yeah, so the essential difference between my atheistic philosophical of logos thing and christianity was a relationship that was the the big change this two-way relationship As Mark says, he found his way into several different churches. He's worked for a charismatic Anglican church since his conversion, and he has friends across traditions.
But as he continued to work out his faith, it led him to the Catholic Church, where he has seen other young people make their home. I often attend the Latin Mass. in Cambridge, our Lady of English Martyrs, and You see a lot of young people there, and all the women that are veiling, there is a hunger for traditional liturgy. And there's also, I mean I've got, there are two traditions I think in drawing people in. One is the more traditional liturgy.
And then on the other side you've got people like the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal who are charismatic Catholics. The mysticism with it, but they're both emphasizing the direct experience of the presence of God. I think there's also a hunger for authenticity. in a world of superficiality and surface detail. And, you know, the Orthodox Church is doing quite well as well and growing quite rapidly. I think for the same reasons. I found it very useful. I find
My faith has really deepened since stepping into Catholicism. I still love charismatic worship. I still love my Protestant brothers and sisters. You know, I think there's almost a kind of dialect of the trials we're kind of all perfecting and growing in response to each other.
Mark says he is now considering a vocation within the Catholic Church, but in the end, as Mark told me, whether they find their home in the Catholic Church as he has, or somewhere else, those who are moving towards Christ are doing so because, like him, looking for meaning, purpose and a true identity. I went from being and just the results of random mutations. and chance to being a loved and created being.
with purpose, which is what I was hungering for. Some kind of deeper like poetic and philosophical context, a story to be a part of. I also shared identity. I suddenly had billions of brothers and sisters all over the world. and there was a lot of kind of like humbling myself before God and realizing you know I'm not the center of the universe. I'm not. The creative meaning. I'm not. the main character in the story, the story of creation. You know, Jesus is.
and in a way that was very liberating because it took the pressure off and I realised You know, if I mess things up, it's not the end of the world. If I, you know, I suffer very terrible depression every winter, and I haven't done it for the last five years. So I've been to Christmas for six years, I haven't had depression for five years.
which is a miracle. I can work full time, and it's amazing. I'm sure a part of that was the existential dread, but also the fact that I felt there was a higher purpose, and On my own power and my own will I thought I was going to fail but whereas with with the power of God and the will of God and the power of prayer and community that forms around you when you only do a second step into It feels like you can overcome a lot more, I think.
and there's no like despondency in Neil as well obviously still struggles but Yeah, I just... that I wasn't doing life on my own. There is a surprising rebirth of belief in God underway. As we explored in the early episodes of this season, there are some complex, sometimes contradictory, political and cultural motivations in play as shifts and social trends change the landscape of
But I'm reminded by Mark's story that, in the end, the rebirth is also simple, because it happens one life at a time. However people are arriving at the doors of our churches, the same invitation repentance, sacrifice and life in all its fullness needs to be extended. I'm also encouraged by Mark's ability to enter the Catholic Church while retaining close ties with brothers and sisters in other Christian traditions.
It's a reflection of how different the relationship between Protestants and Catholics is today compared to the past. While tensions still exist in certain communities and sincere theological differences remain, Even in my lifetime, I've seen a growing willingness for Catholics and Protestants to work together and focus on what unites rather than divides them. And this new era of the Catholic Church finding its confidence again
is a reminder to us all that rebirth is happening. But are we ready to respond? You've been listening to the surprising rebirth of belief in God with me, Justin Briley, continuing to tell the story of why many secular 21st century people are considering Christianity again. As ever, please do rate and review the podcast and share it with others. This podcast is also a book. You can read chapter one for free when you subscribe to my newsletter and in
I'll also send you the first chapter of my new book, Why I'm Still a Christian. And before we wrap up, a reminder, the fact is I can't do any of this without your help if you'd like to help me reach many more people with thinking faith please consider becoming a monthly supporter of my work silver supporters get early
to new episodes as well as bonus content gold supporters also get signed copies of both my books and a monthly catch-up call with me the links are with the show notes coming up next time In my experience, the people that are showing up at church or that I have conversations with,
Many of them, that's not the question that's on their mind is, you know, does God exist? But for many people, the way that I would describe it is they're not so much concerned about whether God exists or not. They want to know what they can do about the demons that they actually are experiencing. Catholics aren't the only historic church stream experiencing renewal. We'll be exploring the Orthodox Church boom and reports of parishes surprised to find themselves bursting at the seams.
Why are so many attracted to the deep, symbolic and often mysterious liturgy of this ancient church? But don't forget, you can listen to that episode right now when you become a silver or gold supporter. Again, the links are with the show notes, where you can also find links to all today's guests and archive material. The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God is a production of Think Faith in partnership with Genexis and the Jerusalem Trust.
Editing assistance by Isaac Simmons. Thanks for listening and see you next time. Don't be left in the dark. Find out about our latest shows, upcoming events and recent articles by subscribing to my Think Faith newsletter. It'll arrive once a fortnight and I'll even send you the first chapters of both my books. why I'm still a Christian, and the surprising rebirth of belief in God for free when you sign up.
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