Why Is Cultural Christianity On The Rise? - Alex O'Connor - #807

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Alex O'Connor. He's a YouTuber, writer and a podcaster. Christianity is nothing new, but it's seeing a resurgence in popularity among some unexpected groups, public intellectuals and Gen Z. What is going on that only shortly after it was called to be an atheist, it's now called to go to church on a Sunday again. Expect to learn whether we are actually seeing a Christian revival if the new wave of Christianity is just right-wing conservatism in disguise, whether you can choose to believe in God if new atheism was a failure, why there is not a current Muslim revival, what happened to the gospels that were missing from the original Bible, whether there's two gods in the Old Testament and much more. I have to say, religion, I'm aware, more than half of the planet is religious. So if you're someone who isn't and you kind of forget that that's maybe the most important thing in tons of people's lives around the world, that's kind of me. And I'm actually getting really interested in having these conversations. I think that it kind of helps to fill in some of the gaps that we've been talking about with this meaning crisis and people struggling and depression and community and all the rest of it. And there are lots of existing solutions that have maybe been forgotten about or criticized kind of out of existence for a lot of people that see themselves as rational. And now there's this movement coming back around where you're sort of taking it as Christianity as a productivity strategy or as like a lifestyle. Very interesting. And Alex is the man to talk to about this and the stories about the Old Testament and stuff are, to me, fascinating. History of the Bible is so interesting. It's just it's storytime, but it's real. It's real history storytime. It's so great. I really, really hope that you enjoy this one. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Alex O'Connor.
Three, two, one.

**Alex O'Connor** (2:20)
It's really funny the way he's like...

**Chris Williamson** (2:23)
Turn the game face on.

**Alex O'Connor** (2:24)
It's not like someone else doing, it's not someone else going, three, two, one, right, right. It's like you, you're sort of like, right, you stare like deep into the soul. Three, two, one.

**Chris Williamson** (2:33)
wait, you don't have a soul. Alex O'Connor. So it's easy for me to do it.

**Alex O'Connor** (2:37)
Yeah, so I'm told anyway.

**Chris Williamson** (2:38)
Alex O'Connor, welcome to the show.

**Alex O'Connor** (2:40)
Chris Will X, how are you?

**Chris Williamson** (2:42)
Good, man, I'm good. Are we seeing a Christian revival at the moment? What's going on?

**Alex O'Connor** (2:47)
I love this. This is something I've adopted too. The sort of just straight in with the question, you know, none of this, none of this gallivanting around, how are you? How's your day been? Tell us about yourself.

**Chris Williamson** (2:57)
You've been in Austin for a week. I don't need to know how you are.

**Alex O'Connor** (2:59)
Yeah, I mean, these, these fair people don't know how I am, but they also don't care. So you've struck a sort of perfect balance there.
I'm writing an article about this at the moment, which should be out by the time this episode's out. Who knows? Not, not I, not this reviewer, but I'm opening with this quote from the Gospel of Thomas, the Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, one of those ancient Gospels that didn't make it into the New Testament and yet is filled with these wonderful and bizarre stories about Jesus. And at one point in this Apocryphal Gospel, he condemns some of his followers. He says, you've become like the Jews who either love the tree and hate the fruit or love the fruit and hate the tree. Some similar imagery in the canonical Gospels of like, buy their fruits, you shall know them. A good fruit doesn't produce bad, a good tree doesn't produce bad fruits. But interestingly here, people get this criticism all the time. You claim to be a Christian, but you don't really act in accordance with it. You're nominally a Christian, but you're not displaying the radical compassion of Jesus or something like that. It's a very common criticism that you're not acting in accordance with your beliefs. But we've been seeing this strange reverse phenomenon emerging, where you've got people who like the fruits, but don't even believe in the existence of the tree. So usually the criticism is like, look, you love the tree, but you're not producing the right fruits. But in this case, you've got an emerging class of thinkers who are unwilling to say that they believe in the actual truth of Christianity, and yet are at least Christian adjacent or sympathetic to Christianity, or kind of a bit depressed about the fact that everyone isn't Christian anymore. This is your Douglas Murrays, Constantin Kissens, Jordan Peterson to some degree.