Justin Brierley On The Rebirth Of Belief In God
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2024
⏱️ 45 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Justin is a writer and broadcaster who creates dialogue between Christians and non-Christians. He co-hosts the “Re-Enchanting” podcast for Seen & Unseen, and is a guest presenter for the “Maybe God” podcast. He also contributes to Premier Christianity magazine, where he used to be editor. His new book is The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, and he has a documentary podcast series of the same name.
You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on what killed the New Atheist movement, and the infinitesimal odds that life ever emerged — pop over to our YouTube page.
Other topics: his parents the “hippies who found Jesus” at Oxford; his early childhood in a Christian commune; the left and right brains of faith; conversion moments; Pascal; Augustine; the evolutionary need for religion; Hitchens and me debating the meaning of life; our disdain for proselytizing; Dawkins and the “mind virus”; atheism and why people “need more than a negative to live on”; my falling away from the Church after the sex-abuse crisis; the quasi-religious movement of BLM and wokeness; its need for purity without grace; the Trump cult; evangelicals drifting from the church-state divide; Christianism; my atheist ex-boyfriend; Ayaan’s conversion; Tom Holland; Game of Thrones as medieval Europe without Christianity; how Jesus changed human consciousness forever; Bart Ehrman; debating the details of the Resurrection; the #MeToo movement and the dignity of women; monogamy as a way to protect women from polygamist men; Louise Perry’s Case Against Sexual Revolution; how ISIS brought back crucifixion; the chasm between Christianity and its leaders; the many messiahs of the ancient world; psychedelics; sensing my friend Patrick after his death; scientific materialism; Alex Rosenberg’s The Atheist’s Guide to Reality; the problem of consciousness; panpsychism; Harari on human rights; Paul Davies and the “directionality of life”; logos as logic speaking into chaos; and why “Christianity has to stay weird.”
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Isikoff and Klaidman on Trump’s trials; Christian Wiman on resisting despair as a Christian, Nate Silver on the 2024 race, Jeffrey Rosen on the pursuit of happiness, George Will on Trump and conservatism, and Abigail Shrier on why the cult of therapy harms children. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other pod comments to [email protected].
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Hiya, welcome back. Here we are, another dishcast, another really great guest, I think, this week. |
| 0:34.3 | I just want to thank you all for your continued support of this |
| 0:39.0 | little outfit. We're now at almost 21,000 paid subscribers and just shy of 160,000 all subscribers, |
| 0:47.8 | which is a record in both numbers. We are super-siked to have so many people attracted to and helping and supporting |
| 0:57.2 | the site. And I want to just thank you all who are doing it. Can't thank you enough. You're the |
| 1:01.8 | reason we're doing this. And if you are enjoying these podcasts and reading the weekly dish and |
| 1:06.1 | haven't actually pown it up, this is also an opportunity. To do it, please, coming up of the many podcasts |
| 1:13.4 | you have in store for you, the amazing poet Christian Theologian in some ways, Christian |
| 1:20.1 | Weiman, on despair, Christianity, and a very tough medical diagnosis. You have Nate Silver, my old buddy, on the |
| 1:31.0 | 2024 race. And we have Jeffrey Rosen, another old friend of mine who's written this really |
| 1:35.5 | fantastic book about the founders and the Stoics, basically on the pursuit of happiness. |
| 1:40.9 | Then we have Abigail Shrier coming back and talk about how the cult of therapy |
| 1:45.7 | harms children. And then we've also managed finally to get George Will, the great Tory, American, |
| 1:52.6 | on Trump, conservatism, and the rest. But this week, we're going to go a slightly existential religious journey. And those |
| 2:03.8 | of you who always write to me complaining that we talk about religion too much, by all means, |
| 2:07.7 | stop listening. But we are going to talk about these things because I do think they are |
| 2:12.2 | actually deeply connected with our politics and our culture in ways that we don't always fully see, |
| 2:18.6 | but which this current guest has written a book that helps kind of think about that a little |
| 2:24.0 | bit more. |
| 2:25.0 | His name is Justin Briley. |
| 2:27.5 | He's a writer and broadcaster. |
| 2:29.9 | He was long created dialogues between Christians and non-Christians, between theologians and |
... |
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