In June 2018, the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, Canada played host to a series of debates between the neuroscientist Sam Harris and the clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson. Fundamental to these debates was the value of religion. Having been a central figure in the New Atheist movement of the early 2000s, Sam Harris’s antagonism was to be expected. He argued that religious narratives, when they give rise to fundamentalism, are a hindrance to human flourishing, and can even yield dangerous or deadly outcomes to those who disagree. He believed that rationality, not religious dogmatism, was all that was needed to ascertain the ‘good’, and that to do away with religious narratives was to remove the risk of fundamentalism.

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Jordan Peterson, on the other hand, saw things differently. Having spent his early career studying and analysing systems of belief through a psychological lens, he argued that human beings can’t help but view the world through a story, and that religious narratives, therefore, help to synthesise the moral values needed to make sense of the world by providing that story. Narrative, not rationality alone, provided the means to ascertain what is ‘good’, and to do away with religious narratives was to remove the possibility of meaning.

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Jordan Peterson, for his part, has become the personification of the ‘vibe shift’ of religious belief that has been occurring in the West in recent years. People who were once hostile to religion in general – and Christianity in particular – have started to change their tune. High profile converts like Ayaan Hirsi Ali have further given credence to the notion that the culture is indeed shifting. A Somalian asylum seeker fleeing the radical Islam of her family, Ali turned secular humanist upon her arrival into the Netherlands, citing her traumatic experience of religion in her home country as reason enough to dispense with God. However, in 2023, she became a Christian, citing the work of renowned historian Tom Holland, who helped her to realise that the very roots of her values, conscience, and notions of freedom all stem from the Judeo-Christian story, and without it, they have no intellectual or ethical basis. In other words, rationality alone could not give her those values.

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This ‘vibe shift’ explains why Jordan Peterson can travel all around the world and sell out stadium-sized auditoriums of predominantly young people talking about the biblical stories. Having been starved of narratives in general, and religious ones in particular, people have begun to return to the faith that gave rise to the civilisation – and the values and freedoms therein – that they have taken for granted. It also explains why Peterson himself, although reticent to publicly declare his faith, nevertheless speaks in increasingly Christian terms.

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What does all this mean for the church, and for those of us who profess to be Christians? The answer, in reality, is very simple. Now, perhaps more than ever before, people are looking for a story to help them answer the most basic of questions: ‘Who am I?’ ‘Why am I here?’ and ‘Where am I going?’. The narratives that have developed since the turn of the century have proved insufficient at providing answers.

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This should act as a reminder that we are in possession of a story that has come down to us through the millennia, stood the test of time, given us our values, and answered our fundamental questions. It is a story of creation, temptation, tribulation and salvation; of human error and divine love; of bad mistakes and good news; of adventurous faith and heavenly hope. It is, in fact, the greatest story ever told, freely available in every language to read on paper and to see on screen. And for us in the church, few now as there may be, there is left simply to do what Jesus asked: To tell the story again and again to anyone who has ears to hear.