Ross Douthat and the New Theism

Twenty years after the new atheism coursed triumphantly across the West, its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar is upon us. No less than Deity-denier Richard Dawkins marked the transmutation last year, via a viral video in which he called himself a hymn-and-small-c-church-loving "cultural Christian." That secular confession tracks with broader reality. God may not exactly be back—the decline in both churchgoing, and church-knowing, trudges on. But tempo, that great imponderable, seems uncannily aligned on the side of the faithful these days, at least in the United States.