Giles Coren has given up atheism for Lent. Are we witnessing an intellectual return to Christianity?

Alan Coren was a great journalist whose columns were snortingly funny, and whose editorship of the satirical Punch magazine was its high point. His son Giles is also a great writer. Given the shrivelled, snivelling uber-irony that passes for humour in recent decades, Giles’ ability to make us belly-laugh with self-deprecating humour is refreshing. He clearly got that from his father.

What he didn’t get from his father was a return to the Jewish faith. Whereas Alan was slightly embarrassed about his Jewish heritage and dampened it down until later years, that ship had sailed for Giles. In fact, he says as much in his recent column in The Times, in which, Coren announces that he’s decided to turn towards Christianity.

How many public figures, especially of the literary, comedic and intellectual ilk are doing that these days? Take a ticket and line up. Aayan Hirsi Ali, her husband Niall Ferguson, Russell Brand, Tom Holland (well almost, he’s still got an issue with that pesky resurrection).

But if anything is signalling a turning of the spiritual tide, it’s coming from those of whom the average scornful atheist cannot say: “They just haven’t read enough.”

Following the thread

I’m intrigued by Coren’s’ announcement and the reasons behind it. Following the ubiquitous Church of England schooling he endured, he says Christianity simply “didn’t come up” in later life. Stating that “atheism is the assumed default position of every modern urban adult”, he adds that in his “godless” childhood, “there was room for improvement.”

A godless childhood. Kinda rejects the notion that he is actually returning to anything. But perhaps he was. As Glen Scrivener observes, the Christian gospel and its framework is the air we breathe in the West. And Coren was no exception. It turns out that the faith he didn’t believe in, and that he didn’t practice, was the Christian faith, despite his Jewish roots.

The whole atheist structure is being turned upside down

“That’s my language in that prayer book, my tradition, my education, my country, my poetry,” says Coren. “That is why, when Esther and I walked into St Bride’s in Fleet Street 15 years ago next month, the canon married us without a quibble.”

Then, years later, when his son, “brought up like me into no tradition at all” said he wanted to go to church, they “walked up the road to our local one the following Sunday and went in. And we’ve been going ever since.”

How interesting is that! His son wanted to go to church. The confident atheist of the past few generations may have assumed that their framework is so compelling that the next generation will simply take the baton and, before too long, all those churches will be empty.

Turning tides

But it turns out that peoples’ hearts and souls were far emptier than the churches. And so, the trickle back began. Coren’s son – who, no doubt has led a fairly comfortable life with no need for a god or some god-like hope to cling to in the afterlife for succour - wants to go to church. And Coren just can’t stop going himself.

The whole atheist structure is being turned upside down. The younger generations – and particularly younger generations of men with zero Christian background – are finding themselves at church, possibly after six months of watching it on YouTube.

And more often than not, they are turning up at churches that aren’t all hip and urban and cool, but to ancient forms of the faith.

Now I am not naive. I read Coren’s account, and I wonder whether the ash on his forehead at Lent is anything more than a personal quest, and whether the church he attends is faithful to the gospel once and for all delivered to the saints. But gee, who could have seen this coming just a few years ago.

I still remember the bitter, twisted words of Australian journalist Peter Fitzsimmons in The Sydney Morning Herald, who lauded the Covid-19 pandemic for its ability to shut down churches since, in his words, only old people were religious these days. Once the coffee shops and sports stadia reopened, the churches would be just about hanging up the “For Sale” signs. Phew! Finally!

Turns out that the pandemic was a mini-apocalypse. It revealed stuff what we are truly like and where we are putting our hopes and a lot of people – especially intellectual people and younger people – did not like what it revealed about them and about the culture they inhabited.

On a journey

Being honest, I do not think that Coren is quite there yet, but he’s certainly like the blind man that Jesus healed slowly rather than in an instant. He saw men like trees walking – and perhaps Coren sees Christianity that way. He’s finding his way around this thing. Groping as his sight returns. As a long term Christian, I am always intrigued by how a newbie feels and sees the water I have been swimming in for 50 years.

That’s my language in that prayer book, my tradition, my education, my country, my poetry

And note too that his wife is not Christian yet. That’s going to become increasingly common for folk in their mid-years who are converting. It’s not like they grew up in youth group together. I have recently met such a man who has just fallen in love with Jesus and his gospel in toto, while his wife remains an unbeliever. It was encouraging to see his love for his wife and his desire for her salvation. But churches are going to have to come to terms with unequal yoking post-the-event.

Mind you, there’s a word here for us in that too, as that’s exactly how the early Church was formed: “Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behaviour of their wives (1 Peter 3:1). Behaviour is going to be the key for a spouse, not words – which cuts against so much of the rest of the gospel force in the New Testament. How will Coren’s wife know if he is truly converted? By an increasingly love service and sacrifice for her that mirrors the actions of Jesus.

So go Giles, go you good thing! And this Easter Sunday, may you be another person of Jewish heritage who rushes home from a resurrection encounter with the risen Lord.

A longer version of this piece was originally published on Stephen McAlpine’s substack. Read the full version here