homeabout uspastor ray bentleyray's articlesgod is back  -- and endorsed by atheists



When a respected atheist writes in his popular column that Africa needs missionaries and their faith…when the upwardly mobile, successful and educated segment of Communist China’s population declares, “Countries with lots of Christians become more powerful…if you want China to be truly prosperous, you must spread the Word…”1 and when the majority of Christians in the world now exists in Asia, Africa and Latin America, it’s time to pay attention to what God is doing in our world.

Journalist Matthew Parris, popular columnist for The Times (twice British Press Columnist of the Year, 2004 Orwell Prize) and outspoken atheist, wrote of the continent where he spent much of his boyhood, “As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God.”  (You can see his column HERE  and reposted by well known atheist Richard Dawkins HERE .)

He honestly admits that this conclusion is “one I’ve been trying to banish all my life…it confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.  Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution Christian evangelism makes in Africa.”

He describes his own realization that government projects, international relief, education and training alone are not enough. “In Africa, Christianity changes people’s hearts.  It brings a spiritual transformation.  The rebirth is real.  The change is good.”

He tried to “avoid this truth by applauding—as you can—the practical work of mission churches in Africa.  It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians, black and white… do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write.”  He could accept that “faith was needed to motivate the missionaries,” but not to help Africa. 

Until he realized, “Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to the flock.”  The missionaries of his childhood “were always different.  Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them.  There was a liveliness, a curiosity, and engagement with the world…they stood tall.” 

They stood tall in the midst of a continental epidemic:  “Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things strikes deep…a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.”

His solution?  “Christianity… with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God… smashes straight through the philosophical/spiritual framework I've just described.”

His conclusion carries the same message as the Chinese church I described above: “Those who want Africa to walk tall … must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the know how that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted… Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.”


I sincerely want thank Mr. Parris for his insight and encouragement.  On July 25 thru August 5 I’ll be in Africa once again with a team from Maranatha Chapel for Africa to support the work of missionaries and local pastors and workers. During this trip, we will be ministering in Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya, encouraging the local chaplains and the women, as well as sharing the love of God with children. The local ministry, Love Covers, includes a week of Vacation Bible School for about 600 children; on the final day each child will receive a new backpack filled with new uniforms, clothing, school supplies and other items, such as blankets, that most of them would otherwise never own.

We have seen God work in the very ways Parris describes, cutting straight through the oppression and fear and political turmoil that had enslaved and wounded so many.

God is Back
I am also heartened to read the conclusions of two other outstanding journalists, editor-in-chief of The Economist, John Micklethwait, and co-author Adrian Woolridge (Economist Washington bureau chief and columnist). Their new book, God is Back, chronicles the revival of faith around the globe and reinforces what Parris concluded—faith is the key to a society in which people can prosper – and not just materially.

While many of us may say that God never went away, ever since the so-called age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century the struggle for modernity and religion has fomented.  The assumption has been, that the more sophisticated, educated and modern society becomes, the more secular and less prone to “religion” it will be.

Not true. 

Micklethwaite and Woolridge write, “By the end of the twentieth century the intelligentsia had little doubt that the modern world had outgrown God…Today an unsettling worry nags at Western liberals:  what if secular Europe (or for that matter secular Harvard and secular Manhattan) is the odd one out?  They are right to be worried…religion and modernity are going hand in hand, not just in China but throughout much of Asia, Africa, Arabia and Latin America.”2

Micklethwaite says that contrary to what many believe, America may be more religious today than in its youth.  “Before the revolution, American wasn’t all that religious. In Salem, where The Crucible was set, some 80 per cent of households had no religious identification.” 3

Micklethwaite also finds it interesting that there have been so many atheist bestsellers in recent years.  "You do not suddenyl wake up in a panic about God being bad or terrible if you think you've already won the argument," he said in an interview with World Magazine. "If you went back 10 or 15 years, the idea that Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens could write a bestseller on the subject would have seemed odd...most educated elites would have assumed that God was disappearing anyway, so what's the worry?"

We are a world in need.  Where truth needs to triumph, and above all, love needs to flourish in the purest, godly sense of the word.  As flawed human beings, we do not seem capable of doing good on our own without Divine assistance.  And even then we manage to botch our efforts too many times.

In the conclusion of God is Back, Micklethwaite and Woolridge write, “There are plenty of reasons why intellectuals of all stripes might want to turn up their noses at the choices other mortals make.  Secularists can scoff at the laboratory scientist in Wang’s house church who thought that stem cells were proof of intelligent design; atheists can worry about people who strap bombs to their bodies and blow themselves up in the name of eternal life.

“So the choices can be tragic or indeed wonderful. But neither side of the religious divide can sneer at the fact that more people nowadays are making those choices…Secularists need to recognize that the enemy that ‘poisons everything’ is not religion, but the union of religion and power…”

Misused religion misrepresents God. The kind of faith that Parris described, coming from  “a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God,” causes changed hearts, changed lives, and changed nations.

“For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.” — Isaiah 61:11


Recommended Reading:  God is Back, How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World, John Micklethwaite and Adrian Woolridge, The Penguin Press, New York, 2009.

1.    Micklethwaite, John and Woolridge, Adrian, God is Back, How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World (The Peguin Press, New York, 2009), p.3.
2.    Ibid, p. 12
3.    World Magazine, June 20, 2009