There seems to be a significant movement to Christianity among some of the most influential intellectuals today. This story is taken from an article in The Australian on Dec. 20th, 2024 by Greg Sheridan: “How historian Niall Ferguson became a religious believer“

Pictured below: Douglas Murray, J.D.Vance, Jordan Peterson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Niall Ferguson

Jordan Peterson famously says he’s no longer an atheist. Last year he told Greg Sheridan he now believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God, not just symbolically but truly. His wife, Tammy Roberts, herself an influential podcaster, this year became a Catholic after a long illness.

US vice-president-elect JD Vance went through a long atheist phase, but he too has since renewed his Christian belief and become a Catholic.

Tom Holland, the brilliant historian who wrote the influential book Dominion, about the Christian origins of the Western mind, has described his journey of belief. Paul Kingsnorth, once a radical atheistic environmentalist and a bestselling author, embraced Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Niall Ferguson is perhaps the most influential historian, and one of the most influential intellectuals, today. But here’s the most striking thing you’ll learn about Ferguson. Quietly, but with great commitment, Ferguson has become a religious believer. With his wife, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and their sons, he has become a churchgoing Anglican Christian. He is, in his own words, a “lapsed atheist”. Much more important, he’s a believing Christian. Though Ferguson sees profoundly the crisis of our times, and the contribution to that crisis brought about by the abandonment of Christianity, this is not primarily a political conversion. It’s a deeply personal and deliberate turn to faith by a man who was formerly a lifelong atheist.

Prolific author Douglas Murray represents another kind of intellectual who has grown to appreciate more and more the cultural contribution, a necessity even, of Christianity but, while immensely sympathetic to it and therefore opposed to the militantly secular spirit of the age, has stopped just short of actual personal belief. However, he’s moved, he says, from “Christian atheist” to “Christian agnostic”.

I wonder how long it will take for those who have turned to institutional/denominational churches such as Catholic and Anglican to realise that these churches have turned away (apostasy) from Biblical faith and compromised with the world on LGBTQ issues.