Introduction

The Oxford Dictionary states that Atheism is the “lack of belief in the existence of God or gods”. Statista Census details for the United Kingdom state that the proportion of the population who declare themselves to be Atheist stands at 45%, having grown pretty much year-on-year. Never has the proportion of atheists in comparison to the total population stood so high. So why have so many people become atheists? Is it because religion is dead, and that science has ‘won the day’? Or could it be because of failings in the Church hierarchy throughout the years has, in accordance with some academics left the people feeling that the churches are “immoral and out of touch”? In this and future articles I hope to cover atheism to a satisfactory degree in answering the questions regarding why people have become atheist in the first place, as well as why the stance of atheism is in itself pure vanity, and what can be done to bring those who have fallen away from the Church or those whom have never been in Church back to the Faith.

Why be Atheist?

We can begin looking at why people become atheists by in fact investigating common reasons people who were atheists return to the Faith. When talking with new or born-again Christians it is often declared that they have a “relationship” with God and that their faith is a “living faith”, and when pushed a little further on the matter they will state they are “Christian” and “not religious”. And so, it is from these statements we can begin to look at why people fall away.

Though a person may have been baptised and raised in a church, what is new to them upon their return from atheism can be “relationship”, and it is this relationship with God which may have been in-part or totally absent that they hold above all else. And so, it is we ask what has changed? Why was there seemingly no relationship before?  A frequent response is that though they were baptised and brought to church whilst growing up, the only reason they seemingly did it was because it was expected of them from the culture, or their own family, and so it was not for God that they went, not for the feeding of their own souls, but rather it was to fulfil the expectation of their parents or wider society whilst being none-the-wiser in regards to the Faith itself. This leads me smoothly onto my second point. If one does not have a relationship with God, then it can be expected that they will fall away from the Church as they grow older and gain greater independence.

Now that they have a relationship with God, they also feel as though they have a “living faith” to go with it. But what is a living faith? Perhaps the best manner in which to define it is that it is a faith that practices, or in other words they are very much practicing Christians who do not attend Church out of the expectation of others, nor is their ‘faith’ confined to Sunday, but instead they go to Church out of a love for God and to be amongst His people, and their faith is present throughout every aspect of their lives, that they recognise that they are sinner, that Christ died that they may live and that each day of their life is a pilgrimage unto He who is perfect. If one does not have a relationship with God, then how can one be expected to have a living faith also, for it is out of that relationship with God that we live out of love for Him.

The third point that born-again Christians raise is that they are Christian and not “religious”, and that can appear to be a logical contradiction to some. To begin with it is obvious that they cannot be meaning “religious” as in “Christian” for then they would not be Christian, and so in an attempt to explain what is meant by not being “religious” I shall start by saying when the Church is atomised to each and every individual it is indeed about relationship, however each one of these individuals make-up the greater picture that is the religion, and to go further still, the religion is the body of individuals whom hold the core doctrines of the Faith. As these individuals can clearly determine the difference between say, a Christian and a Jew, within this recognition is also the recognition of religion, and so it cannot be so that they are not religious, but rather something else. I will now say what that something else is. When a person states they are Christian but not religious, they potentially have a set of things in mind, perhaps a building, or a liturgy, perhaps a priest or congregation, oftentimes a multitude of these things. When a person says they are not religious perhaps it takes them back to a time when they were younger when it was expected of them to go to church and they remember seeing others who were in the same boat, perhaps the priest did not appear interested in his sermon, and the liturgy itself boring. Nevertheless, they struggle to bridge the gap between the old and the new experiences and struggle to see how the old was indeed good. It comes to mind the frequency and publicity garnered from those who though claiming to be Christian do not follow what the Bible states, which in turn brings into mind the “established churches” such as the Church of England or Methodist and the infighting or the downright departing from orthodoxy that comes to mind over various theological matters, which can itself lead to those of weak faith to depart. It could be said a man who follows the Bible and another man who does not are like two men building a house, where the man who follows the Bible swings his axe, fells trees and plants the wood upon the foundation; whereas the man who does not follow the Bible indeed does swing his axe, but at the house and not the trees, and yet though this man smashes the house, by his own machinations does he believe that he is contributing to the building of it. Perhaps a summary could be then seen in these churches bureaucracy and not practicality where their faith is concerned which of course cannot be true.

Summary

In the above article we have looked at the reasons why many people have returned to the Faith, and after analysis of them we have gained insight into reasons why people may have left the Church to begin with.  We have seen how those who return come with a “relationship with God” as well as a “living faith” and how they say they are “Christian” but “not religious”. We have looked at each one of these points, what they mean for the believer and the none-believer alike with how they contribute to either view.