God's border crossing

As The God Delusion continues to ride high in best-selling booklists globally, many Christians find this rising tide of hostility towards the gospel deeply discouraging.

But one Scottish minister has grabbed the opportunity created by this anti-God literary phenomenon to take the good news of Jesus back to the nation.

David Robertson, minister of St. Peter’s Free Church in Dundee, the church of the great Robert Murray McCheyne, has taken the fight back to Richard Dawkins by writing a book countering his arguments and speaking at a series of public debates in Borders bookshops and universities across the UK.

Open letter

As well as overseeing St. Peter’s, he is also chaplain of Dundee University, European church-planting adviser to the Mission to the World organisation, and editor of the Free Church Monthly Record.

This latest exciting chapter in his ministry started when he published an open letter to Richard Dawkins after having read The God Delusion, an experience that left him feeling ‘astonished, infuriated, depressed, and inspired’.

The letter was posted on Dawkins’s website and provoked a huge response, much of it vitriolic towards David and the gospel.

He continued writing letters arguing against the views of the Oxford academic, which, in March this year, were published by Christian Focus under the title The Dawkins Letters.

Since then he has been inundated with invitations to speak at numerous debates and events at universities, churches and bookshops, and at Borders stores in Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Leeds, and Birmingham, and Waterstones in Chelmsford.

Outside outreach

David Robertson explains how it all started: ‘I was looking to launch the book, and my own church and another evangelical church in Dundee, Logie and St. John’s, wanted to do some outreach, but not in churches’, he explained.

‘We launched a series of events called Quench, talks followed by discussion in the Starbucks cafŽ within the Borders bookshop in Dundee, and they really took off.

‘More than 100 people came to the book launch, and the staff at Borders were really surprised and told other branches of the success of the events.

‘This led to the events at other Borders bookshops. In Inverness they had to turn people away (there were about 120 people there), then in Glasgow there were 80 people, about half non-Christians, and it was an extremely interesting and almost aggressive affair, which was great.

‘All the events were attended by a lot of non-Christians who asked questions.

‘A lot of churches asked me to come and talk after the book picked up steam, but I only agreed if it was an evangelistic event and preferably in a secular venue such as a bookshop.’

The evenings take the form of a 20-minute introduction by David and then a question time, which is the key part of the event as it allows him to respond to people’s objections to Christianity and present the gospel.

The 45-year-old’s experience of fierce debate in the student political scene during his time at Edinburgh University has stood him in great stead in the cut and thrust of what he calls ‘apologetic evangelism’.

Analysing the recent growing popularity of anti-Christian literature, David feels that none of the arguments put forward are new, but what is different now is that there is no pretence by the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens to be academic; instead they are entirely polemical.

He said: ‘They are “evangelical” works in the sense of seeking to promote the whole atheist perspective.

‘They’re polemical and political. Dawkins allows for a very strong political agenda which is to get the removal of religion from all areas of public life, especially education.

‘What is new as well is the incredible popularity. Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris are all popular but not nearly to the same degree as Dawkins, who has certainly made it to airport lounges and W.H. Smith.

‘I think it’s popular because it’s well written, well-marketed, but the major reason is that Dawkins provides a polemic and reason for functional atheism — which is what most people are — and most people accept the myths Dawkins bases his philosophy on, and for them it’s just great to have someone like him stating what they believe.’

David believes that the popularity of this literature shows that people are still asking questions about God, religion and the Bible, and refutes suggestions from within the church that society is apathetic about these matters, but is rather ‘interested and hostile’ to Christianity.

Church’s weakness

Interestingly, it is reactions to the whole Dawkins’s phenomenon from within the church that led David to level accusations of apathy towards Christians themselves.

‘What Dawkins has done has shown considerable weakness within the church, including the evangelical church‘, he said. ‘Much more than we think we reflect the culture we live in, which is fundamentally market-orientated, driven by networks and who you know.

‘Christians (perhaps in a well-meaning attempt to reach out) have reflected that culture with Christian sub-markets and I think we’ve become very inward-looking and insular, and we’re all about maintaining and advancing our “own ministries”, possibly competing with one another.

‘Vision for the lost and even belief that people are lost is considerably weaker than before, which is ironic as I think our society is more open than it’s been for 25 years, but I think the church is less willing and less able to take the gospel to people.

‘We don’t often see this as an opportunity to spread the gospel. For me, it’s a great opportunity to spread the gospel, because Dawkins is asking the questions we want people to ask, he’s giving the wrong answers, but at least he’s asking the questions.’

Rigorous debater

Gary Aston, assistant pastor at Wheelock Heath Baptist Church, near Crewe, helped organise a debate at the Borders bookshop in Leeds where he previously worked.

He said the debate was attended by around 120 people and well received by them and the shop staff.

‘David’s immensely capable intellectually, he is a rigorous debater and he answers people’s questions and engages with them, not just in an over-simplistic or reductionist way’, he explained.

‘But overall he has a real prayerful humility and dependence on God.’

It’s hard not to be inspired by David who is following in a long tradition of authoritative Bible teaching from St. Peter’s Free Church in Dundee, and it’s not surprising he is greatly influenced by his predecessor Robert Murray McCheyne.

‘The most exciting thing for me is everywhere I’ve spoken there have been non-Christians, and everywhere there’s a reaction’, he said. ‘What I’m trying to do is remove some of people’s barriers to belief in Jesus, and introduce them to Jesus and point them to a local church.

‘For me the major thing is people using this opportunity to present Jesus to people, I think we’ve got a great opportunity.’

So look out for David Robertson debating the claims of Christ at a bookshop near you sometime soon.

Or even better, why don’t you organise a Dawkins debate in your own church or at a local cafŽ or bookshop?

As David says, ‘It’s too good an opportunity to miss’.

Ed Beavan

© Evangelicals Now - December 2007
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