The British religious sociologist Gordon Lynch touches on the subject of the new atheism at an early stage during his lecture. “I do not know whether it has really hit Sweden yet?” he asks his audience, the Nordic Research Network on the Mediatisation of Religion and Culture, which has gathered for another conference on religion, the media and culture. Some nod, while he continues to talk about the “aggression” in what looks like a sudden, organised atheist offensive across the Western world.

It is December, and the place is the peaceful Sigtuna Foundation. The Professor of Sociology of Religion at Birkbeck College London is here to talk about one of his specialist fields—the interplay between religion, the media and popular culture in contemporary society. He is one of the foremost theoreticians in the field and has written about his research and his views in, among other works, Understanding Theology and Popular Culture (2005).

“The media have a much more important role than many of us understand,” says Lynch. “They have had a significant role in the growth both of a “new” atheism and in religious extremism—and in an increasingly bitter war of words about religion as such,” he says. “In a way the West is becoming simply more and more secularised, which is an inevitable cause of some of the new interest in atheism,” he says, when we have settled down in one of the lounges on the first floor. “But,” he adds, “at the same time a polarisation is going on precisely as a result of how religious issues are reflected in, for example, news coverage, where religion is portrayed as a source of conflict rather than of harmony and peace.”

He emphasises that his arguments on secularisation and atheism primarily apply to those parts of the Western world which have a Protestant heritage—such as Scandinavia and Britain. In Catholic countries the picture is different, and the links more complex, he says. In the USA there are both similarities and differences; and there religion still has a prominent role.

“But to talk about widespread secularisation may also be slightly misleading,” says Lynch, “if we mean that religion no longer has any significance in people’s lives. The point is that faith is not practised within religious institutions in the same way as it used to be. And many people have a more complicated and fragmented relationship with religion. Religious questions, symbols, traditions and communities also have great significance in our secularised West.”

Which is also noticeable in popular culture—religious themes have, for example, great powers of attraction in films and on TV. There are many examples of how popular culture continues to approach the great religious questions, albeit in a lightly disguised form. Lynch himself has, for example, studied the ethics and morality of the TV series The Simpsons. And the theme of “emancipation from violence” in the work of rap artist Eminem.

Congregations in British churches have, just like those in Sweden, dwindled increasingly since the middle of the 20th century. “There are indeed great similarities between the two countries,” says Gordon Lynch—“even if the old Swedish model provided a greater proportion of church members than in the UK. Something which, however, does not mean that they are all devoted and active believers. There are also other reasons why people stand by the church, as a tradition and culture.

But Sweden is in many ways an extremely secularised society,” Lynch says, after a short pause for thought. He speaks quickly, uses a lot of words, adds details, searches for the exact phrases. “Religion cannot be written off in the future. The secular dream that religion would simply die out, because it is totally irrational, has definitely been shown not to have been realised. The practice of religion and religious symbols are closely associated with our culture and with who we are, and these adapt to, and develop with, that culture. It is important to point to this and to pay attention to religion. If religious issues are neglected, or if we turn our backs on the religious tradition, then the danger exists that religion will become a destructive force in society.

Gordon Lynch thinks that we see signs of this today. He returns time after time to the risk of simplifications. “One might say that this is where the media come into the picture—secularised individuals, those who have very little to do with religious institutions, have contact with and acquire an image of religion through the mass media. This is how, for example, the Western world’s image of Islam is shaped through newspaper stories. And the image of ‘those Muslims.’ I believe that, to some extent, the new atheism also has to do with this.”

He wrote a polemical article about the new atheism in the British daily paper The Guardian last summer—on the fact that his fellow countryman and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ The God Illusion and other anti-religious bestsellers, for example, ignore existing academic studies on religion. “Without knowledge of this kind there is a real risk that secularised liberal academics will paint a horrifying picture of religion which can distort the public’s view of religion for a generation,” he wrote.

He says that he has never previously had the same kind of reaction as he had to that article. He had never previously encountered such rage, such a personally directed critique and such scorn. Not even on those occasions when he had criticised conservative evangelical Christianity.

How does he interpret it?

“Well, one can only speculate,” he says first. “Some individuals’ frustration and anger may of course be based on earlier, bad experiences of religion. But it is dangerous to think that this applies to everyone. In some cases it must be to do with that part of society which does not think that it is being listened to. But that is to a great extent the result of precisely how religion is presented in the media. Two years ago I would never have been able to predict that we today would have a number of books about atheism on the British and American bestseller lists. And it is striking of course that they often have a very aggressive and pugnacious tone. It goes beyond saying that ‘I do not believe in God,’ or ‘I do not find that the claims of religion are credible.’ Instead they say that religion is nonsense, and anyone who believes in anything of the kind has some kind of mental disturbance. The authors of these books frequently maintain that religion is a dangerous force in the world, that it leads to or favours ignorance, social conflict and violence. Richard Dawkins regards religion as an anti-Enlightenment movement, in which one wishes to turn the clock back against human knowledge and research. He considers that an upbringing in a religious tradition is comparable to some kind of child abuse. It is a very strong use of language of a kind that we have not previously seen.”

Lynch is concerned about the spiritual climate change. “To talk about religion in the way the new atheists do is so lacking in nuance, in a number of ways. Firstly it draws a very simplified picture of religion. Another danger is that the aggressive tone creates a very rancorous debate. The exaggerated emotional state risks rapidly boosting polarisation and confrontation instead of contributing to dialogue. Those stories we tell about ourselves and about the role of religion in today’s world have great significance for how we actually should be able to live together and function as a society, with the cultural diversity that we have today. Stories presenting an un-nuanced stereotypical view create hatred and misunderstanding of the ‘other.’ I actually believe that the new atheism risks creating and reinforcing precisely the kind of religion that it rejects in the first place—a traditionalist, or if one so wishes, neo-conservative religion.”

He considers that the heated debate among other things risks causing more people to turn to precisely traditionalist religious sects. As an example he mentions those demanding that a certain sort of religious attitude to sexuality should be banned from the public arena.

“It exiles those people who have religious views on sexuality to conservative, sectarian contexts, when it is instead vital to carry on a constructive dialogue on our common religious heritage. Conversation and soul-searching—that is what is we need.”

He is worried about how neo-traditionalism is reinforcing its positions, not least in the Muslim world, but also in “evangelical circles” in the West, and what this means in the longer term for individual freedom, women’s rights and pluralism.

According to Lynch, the new atheism is in large part a reaction to these tendencies, and derives a great deal of its energy from a reaction to Islam. Or, more precisely, to the media image of Islam. “I am convinced of this, as certain forms of Islam are presented and regarded as socially aggressive, as a source of violence and conflict in the world, and as a threat to liberal values. This is un-nuanced and therefore dangerous.”

And malicious images can bring about different effects than those that are desired. “Dawkins’ critique of religion as an anti-Enlightenment project disregards the fact that several Enlightenment thinkers were also deeply religious. If we talk about our cultural history in this way and draw a sharp line between uncritical thinking about religion on the one hand, and a rational, atheist, enlightened science on the other, then a completely fallacious view is created of our religious heritage.”

And this is not at all dying out, not even in the secularised West. Lynch considers that it is merely taking other and partly new forms of expression. He can in this way view this development with equanimity. He does not think that atheism will become a mass movement. Among other reasons, because “most people are more tolerant.”

“But something that worries me in this simplified debate is that we risk being faced with only two alternatives: a secularised atheism or moralistic conservative doctrinaire religion.”

The kind of “progressive spirituality” which Lynch writes about in The New Spirituality (2007), is not to be found, for example, in the recent anti-religious accounts, he points out. In the book he describes the religious movements which start “save-the-world” projects, become environmental activists or get involved in peace and justice.

“But they are ignored in the atheists’ critique, simply do not exist in their worldview, because, according to that, no religion can ever function constructively. For the same reason they refrain from describing those processes where religion has had a vital influence in solving conflict, for example in South Africa, with the Truth Commission.”

Gordon Lynch comes back to the significance of the media for the emergence of malicious portraits of religion. “Dawkins’ book originated partly from a TV programme he made for Channel 4. This kind of TV programme tends to depict religion as basically a social problem. Because programmes about genial, liberal and tolerant religion do not result in particularly interesting TV. But if you make a programme presenting a dramatic religious threat, and use the symbolism of 9/11, then it gains a very much stronger emotional charge. Dawkins is the perfect figure for that kind of media product—his lines are very clear, very polemical and get people going.”

This makes for high viewing figures, and causes other media to tie in and discuss his ideas… And then the ball is rolling, and the publishing industry rubs its hands at the sales figures.

In Sweden, by the way, Dawkins’ book is marketed like this: “Imagine a world where supposed witches and heretical scientists have never been burned at the stake. A world without suicide bombers where neither the Crusades, the Irish Civil War or 9/11 have happened. A world in which women do not have to undergo forced marriage or circumcision. Imagine a world without religion!”

Paradoxically enough, Gordon Lynch regards it as comforting in the context that “many people do not care enough about religion.” This makes them “resistant to being drawn into either atheism or traditionalist religion.”

But what about those people who wonder how a religious individual today acquires their worldview? How it is possible to be both enlightened and a believer? Is it not necessary to reject, or at least, repress one of the versions of the story about how everything began?

“No, not at all,” says Lynch. Again he reminds us that several of the first Enlightenment thinkers were at the same time deeply religious. And even if we at the present day “know” so much more than the thinkers of the late 18th century, most of what is to be found in the complex cosmos is still unfathomable—and we can only comprehend it “through metaphors.”

He is talking about religion as the way an individual orientates himself in existence, in the universe. About the fact that it corresponds to people’s need for structure and meaning, that it provides a feeling of dignity and responsibility—and therefore also corresponds to something of “deep humanity.”

He himself has a past in the Church of England and a congregation in the small town of Tonbridge, approximately an hour’s drive from London. “I grew up in an evangelical tradition, and in my teens the church was an important network for me. It provided me with a feeling of being valued and gave me a base to stand on.”

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At university he began to doubt. He talks about the “personal emotional process” and about a growing interest in how other young people viewed their lives—which would gradually lead to his book After Religion: ‘Generation X’ and the Search for Meaning. Nowadays Lynch regards his writing as a form of religious practice—even if he himself thinks that that may sound a little pretentious. It is not possible just to give a simple description of a spiritual habitat today,” he declares. But he says that he is attracted by what is usually called “the universe story,” and the idea of being part of an infinite cosmos. “What I am interested in is how we are to understand religion in the world, in the light of understanding people. And of understanding at what point in life a feeling of meaning becomes really important for people and what they then do.”

If we now for a moment return to this business of “deep humanity”—what does he mean by being completely human?

“Gosh!…” He takes a deep breath and looks out of the window. “I believe it is a question of being in touch with all aspects of what we are and what we can experience physically, emotionally, aesthetically, spiritually. It is a question of different paths to a deep experience of the remarkable fact that we live, we exist, that we are part of this miraculous cosmos. It is at the same time a question of consideration for this, of taking responsibility for it, for the deepest aspects of ourselves, for our relationships with other people in the world around us.”

“Being fully human is the same as living the good life,” Lynch says with reference to classical Greek philosophy. Being happy and acting morally are related. This good and consummate life can “naturally” also be lived without religion, he points out—it is possible to discover it through art, gardening, close relationships and in many other ways.

In his book Understanding Theology and Popular Culture he writes about the need for a “theological aesthetic” for popular culture, including the media. Here is a simple short version of what is meant by that:

“It is the fact that we should ask the type of normative questions that theologians ask, and about what is good, what is constructive, what is true, what is healing—in the scrutiny of everyday culture—to study what we are looking at, buying, choosing by way of entertainment, and thinking critically about the effects these choices have on our lives, our relationships with other people, our ability to picture the universe which we inhabit. It is thinking about the ethical requirements placed on a cultural life.”

In actual fact the debate is being carried on fairly diligently, not least in blogs and on web pages, and then often in some kind of “lightweight theological form” as Gordon Lynch puts it. As when there is a discussion of whether it is right and constructive to have increasingly extreme and spectacular violence on film, to have the consumption mentality, or the fixation on luxury brands. But the discussion is often conducted in ignorance of the fact that it is theological, or is on theological ground, says Lynch. Perhaps because we, while we have been travelling round discovering the world, have instead found new uncharted areas on our internal maps.

Ylva Herholz

Translated by Phil Holmes