What did the New Atheists achieve?
The New Atheists made it culturally acceptable to be a non-believer.
Growing up in England in the 70s and later as an adult in the 80s, there was very little tension between Christians [1] and atheists [2]. As far as I knew, very few of my friends and acquaintances were Christian but, even so, practically everyone went to church when the occasion called for it and everyone spoke The Lord’s Prayer in school assembly every morning. In hindsight, I would guess that most people were culturally Christian but very few people gave any thought to whether or not Christian claims were true.
I moved to America in the 1990s and attitudes toward religion were very different there. In parts of America — in the South especially — it was just assumed that everyone was Christian and dissenters faced opprobriation, scorn and social exclusion or, at least, proselytising. Even in California, it was not unusual to be asked if Jesus was my Lord and Saviour while I stood in line for the San Jose Earthquakes. Other parts of America were more tolerant but there was still a bright line separating Christians from non-believers — and outright atheists were rare.
The USA has a strict rule against religious practice in public schools so people who grew up without religion were rarely exposed to it and people who grew up within the church rarely discussed their beliefs with dissenters except to evangelise. People who questioned their own beliefs learned to keep their mouths shut.
“You either got faith or you got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground.”
(Dylan, 1979)
When the New Atheists came on the scene in the early 2000s, their biggest impact was to raise awareness that there was an alternative to out-and-out belief. I doubt that they changed too many minds but I suspect that millions already questioned the strict teaching of the church but had no venue to learn about or discuss the alternatives. The New Atheists made it culturally acceptable to be a non-believer. If this was their goal, they were extremely successful. In 1991, 87% of Americans under 35 were Christian. It’s less than half these days.
Professor Ryan Burge has a great Twitter account that examines changing attitudes toward religion — @ryanburge — I really recommend it. His Substack is very good too.
It’s true that the decline in Christianity started before the New Atheists came along in the early 2000s — and perhaps they were riding the wave rather than starting the wave — but they did seem to give the movement a big push. Now that non-belief has become culturally acceptable in the USA, the number of ‘Nones’ has grown dramatically and Christianity in America is in serious decline.
I believe America is getting to the place where England was in the 1970s where it doesn’t matter so much what other people think and it is easier to drift back and forth across the lines. Meanwhile, England has moved even further away from religion to the point where religion just doesn’t seem relevant to the young people that I know. My kids think I am crazy to go to church on a Sunday and teams of wild horsemen couldn’t drag them along with me.
New Atheism is less relevant now because the culture is more relaxed. Fewer people feel the need to declare their atheism in America because it's acceptable to simply go through life without believing in God but without making a big deal about it. But this doesn’t mean that Christianity is making a comeback or that New Atheism failed. It’s quite the opposite.
I think it’s hard for English people to see the impact that the New Atheists had in America. England went through a similar transition many decades ago so New Atheism was less relevant here in the first place but, in America, the New Atheists were a great success.
[1] I say ‘Christian’ here because I rarely encountered people of other faiths.
[2] I hesitate to even use the word ‘atheist’ here because non-belief rarely rose to the level where it needed a special name.
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I am not Christian, but don't you think this has contributed to the significant fall in birthrates?
When I was at school in the 1980s there was an accepted Christian framework, insofar as we participated in communal worship, sang hymns in assembly and so on, and the non-Christian pupils happily did so as well. But I don’t think more than a handful of fellow pupils actually believed in anything. It’s quite extraordinary to think that in my lifetime I may well see the virtual disappearance of active Christianity in many western countries.