Have you ever met someone who talked themselves out of unbelief? Not with a tent revival or a crisis moment, but with footnotes? That’s the strange story Nathan Guy tells in his Christianity Today piece “Some of Christianity’s Biggest Skeptics Are Becoming Vocal Converts.”
A couple weeks ago I wrote a response to an article in The Atlantic that argues against evidence being a primary motivator for faith in God that focused on the experiential nature of conversion, the way that transcendence leaks through the seams of ordinary life. This essay is about the other end of the spectrum, a minority position of those whose faith began in reason. As C.S. Lewis once said, “The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us.” This is the story of those who chose the cognitive road.
Fifty years ago, CT ran a piece on the Jesus People, counter-culture converts of the ’70s whose faith ran hot on feeling and thin on argument. Critics worried about a “super-subjective trust” without a “substantial apologetic.” Guy says something has flipped. We’re now watching some converts arrive by the opposite road, knowledge first, feeling trailing somewhere behind, if it shows up at all.
The names are the draw of the piece. A. N. Wilson, an Oxford-trained atheist, later confessed he couldn’t suppress “all the human qualities that have to be denied if you embrace the bleak, muddled creed of a materialist atheist.” Historian Tom Holland traced modern instincts about human dignity back to the empty tomb and told one interviewer flatly, “I am Christian.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, once celebrated by the New Atheists as one of their sharpest minds, wrote in 2023 that “Christianity has it all.” Even Richard Dawkins now calls himself a “cultural Christian,” though I don’t think anyone should put too much weight on that.
Guy’s real argument isn’t just “smart people are converting.” It’s why. He traces a philosophical undertow running for half a century — Plantinga, Swinburne, a quiet rebuilding of Christian philosophy in the academy while everyone assumed God had already been buried there. By the time Wilson, Holland, and Ali went looking for a foundation sturdy enough to hold human dignity and equality, secular humanism had nothing load-bearing left to offer. Quoting philosopher Louis Pojman, Guy notes the modern world has been “living off the borrowed interest of a religious metaphysic.” Eventually, some of the smartest people alive noticed the debt was due.
I love this essay, though it leaves me a little uneasy too. Guy doesn’t dodge the obvious question: is this conversion, or just aesthetics? Holland calls himself “essentially” Christian without giving much clarity. There’s a real difference between admiring the fruit of a tree and being grafted into it, and Guy names that tension instead of taking a victory lap. But he’s also right to end with generosity, quoting O. Alan Noble: people “first attracted by the benefits, not the gospel, may yet stumble into the faith.” Like him, I’d rather not hyper-scrutinize anyone’s claim to follow Christ.
Here’s what I keep coming back to, as someone who’s spent more time in youth ministry events than academic circles: this article isn’t really about elite intellectuals. It’s about what happens when you tell someone, over and over, that Christianity is embarrassing — only to have reality quietly disagree with you. That has something to say to parents and ministry leaders too.
For parents, the first application is almost too simple to say out loud: don’t let your kids think faith and thinking are enemies. Wilson, Holland, and Ali got to belief by asking hard questions relentlessly, not by avoiding them. If your teenager wonders aloud whether the resurrection actually happened, or why a good God allows suffering, that’s not the moment to change the subject. Sit in it with your kid instead of steering around it.
Second, let your kids see that Christianity has an intellectual home, not just an emotional one. Camp highs and worship nights matter, but they were never built to carry a lifetime of faith alone. Put good books in your kids’ hands, and let them hear that people who’ve devoted their whole minds to the hardest questions have found the faith standing up to the weight.
Third, model curiosity about hostile ideas instead of fear of them. Ayaan Hirsi Ali got to Christianity by taking atheism’s best arguments seriously and finding them wanting, not by avoiding them. Kids raised in fear of the world’s ideas tend to collapse the first time they meet a compelling skeptic in a dorm room. Kids raised to examine those ideas beside a parent who isn’t scared of the conversation tend to come out steadier.
For ministry leaders, take one line from Guy’s piece into your next planning meeting: an “overemphasis on cognitive knowledge devoid of feeling” is as real a danger as the raw emotionalism of fifty years ago. The fix isn’t more apologetics lectures or fewer worship nights. It’s refusing the false choice. Teach the arguments. Also let people feel the weight of grace. Knowledge and experience are best served together.
Second, take seriously that some people walking into your church are doing what Holland and Wilson are doing: showing up for the fruit before committing to the root. That’s not a lost cause. It might be a path towards home. Don’t gatekeep them out for the wrong motive. Keep gently pointing past the fruit to the One who grew it.
Third, disciple minds, not just hearts. Build a culture where hard questions get real answers instead of anxious silence. The people in Guy’s article found faith because they thought hard, past the point where it was fashionable to stop. Make room not just for a worship set and an altar call, but for the person who needs an hour, a book, and someone willing to sit with their doubt.
Fifty years from now, someone might write the sequel to Guy’s article about a movement that started in our own youth groups — ordinary kids who were never told they had to check their brains at the sanctuary door, believers committed to both truth and love. That would be a headline worth reading.
