Article
Belief
Creed
Weirdness
6 min read

Revival – really?

Are we moving beyond the secular scepticism of religion?

Abigail is a journalist and editor specialising in religious affairs and the arts. 

A cross held aloft is illumminated by a shaft of light that also reveals hands raised in priase.
Jacob Bentzinger on Unsplash.

Whisper it if you will, but an increasing number of observers are wondering if we are creeping towards some kind of Christian revival. High-profile public figures such as former atheist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, novelist Paul Kingsnorth, comedian Russell Brand and storyteller Martin Shaw have converted. Articles and podcasts from secular writers and thinkers extolling Christianity’s influence on Western culture, the societal benefits of faith, or a renewed appreciation of the sacred, are becoming a more common sight than those tub-thumping for atheism. 

Among these thinkers is historian Tom Holland, who has argued that Western values, including secularism, socialism, feminism and human rights have their roots in a “Christian seedbed”. Some secular female writers are finding in the sexual revolution much to regret: Mary Harrington, author of Feminism against Progress, and writer Louise Perry, who penned The Case Against The Sexual Revolution, are opposed to casual sex and in favour of marriage. 

Then there’s the Canadian academic and YouTube hit Jordan Peterson, currently on a speaking tour titled, “We who wrestle with God” and offering Bible-based life lessons to his hungry, mainly male, hearers. Even the arch-atheist Richard Dawkins said in a radio interview this Easter that he considers himself a cultural Christian and “I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos.”  

A term has been coined for someone close to Christianity but just outside it, such as Holland: “Christian-adjacent”. The broadcaster Justin Brierley has devoted a book to this apparent renewed interest, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. In it he argues the New Atheism that fed off the horror of the religious extremism behind 9/11 is “a largely spent force” that has splintered into factions. (Sunday Assembly, the gathering for non-religious people, has seen its income plummet from £267,161 in 2016 to just £28,120 in 2022. Its leaders were approached for comment.)  

What does all this amount to? Are we moving beyond the secular scepticism of religion? Does anyone want to return to the judgemental, Anglo-centric Christianity of a previous age? 

I wish to be somebody who goes, ‘But look, come with me, see this, see that. Does that speak to you?’ The whole of my writing is to help people get away from preconceptions.” 

Iain McGilchrist

The author and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist says of a possible religious revival: “I feel that there is [one], and I feel that there will be. And I think it's important.” Already, he says, “It's much easier to talk about religion and one's religious beliefs … than it would have been 20 years ago [and] a lot of people say that.” Some young people who are not from a religious background have surprised him by finding their way to religion. 

People he knows who have turned to Christianity in mid-life have moved “to the Catholic Church, but most of them to the Orthodox Church, because they see … genuine valid, uninterrupted tradition of the divine and the sacred, of worship of it, of the sense of wonder, the sense of relative humility, not triumphant exaltation, and the sense of a shared oneness that is encaptured in these ancient rituals.” 

McGilchrist believes the route of fulfilment “is oneness with nature, with the Divine and with one another,” and that rediscovering a connection to the Sacred (he refers to the Sacred or Divine rather than religion) would address other pressing issues such as the “poisoning of the oceans”, due to “a proper understanding of our position in the cosmos, not as the exploiter, but as the caretaker.” 

Of his own views, he says: “I genuinely am not sure how to understand what it means to be a Christian really, but I suspect that I am one.” He stresses that he doesn’t want anyone to be put off by their preconceptions of what that might mean. “I wish to be somebody who goes, ‘But look, come with me, see this, see that. Does that speak to you?’ The whole of my writing is to help people get away from preconceptions.” 

“There is an intellectual revival, if you like, because the complacent secularism, which culminated in people like Richard Dawkins, is obviously broke.” 

Andrew Brown

Mark Vernon, a psychotherapist, author and former Church of England priest, also perceives a shift in the conversation around religion, and a new sense of enquiry that did not exist 20 years ago. He believes “a mystical Christianity” would be needed to reach the many people who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious”.  

Author of Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps, Vernon enjoys the silence of a Buddhist meeting or being out in nature on pilgrimage to holy places, “feeling different energies, different pulses, different rhythms … Being in a place where you just feel there's a different thing going on here, that can be healing. I think a lot of mental health is due to just people being trapped in very narrow worldviews.”  

Dr Vernon, whose faith journey has included atheism, follows what he calls a “commodious” Christianity – “my perspective on the universal story, which I think is ultimately beyond any one expression of it – and focuses on the “Christ [that] lives within me”, in contrast to “more socially driven” or “conversion-driven” Western Christianity.  

For Abby Day, Professor of Race, Faith and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London, any talk of religious revival is “wishful thinking” but like Vernon she believes that if anything were to speak to the “spiritual but not religious” it would be “within them, or maybe within nature” and “non-institutional”. 

Professor Day is wary of the interest in Christianity from the populist right, as seen in the European elections and US Evangelicals’ support of Trump. They “claim Christianity, but what they're claiming is a national identity, and so we're seeing Christianity be weaponised” to deliver a conservative agenda, she says.  

Day, author of Why Baby Boomers Turned from Religion, takes issue with some of Holland’s arguments, saying: “The Churches have not shown themselves to be exemplary models of equality or human rights.” 

Veteran religious affairs journalist Andrew Brown, co-author of That Was The Church That Was: How the Church of England lost the English people, is less hostile. He says: “There is an intellectual revival, if you like, because the complacent secularism, which culminated in people like Richard Dawkins, is obviously broke.” But he adds: “Most of the stuff that's interesting and new is coming from people who are either Christians or Christian-adjacent.” But, he adds, “It takes a long time for the ideas of the intelligentsia to filter down … “If there is to be anything like [a revival], it has to start locally, and far below the radar of news.” So, for example, what impact has 14 years of austerity had that have led to millions of people attending food banks and warm spaces in churches? (According to 2023 data from Savanta and the National Churches Trust 5 per cent of UK adults visited a church last year to access a food bank (equivalent to around 3.4 million people) and 4 per cent (2.7 million) for a warm space.) “That has to be doing something, but I don’t know what,” he laughs, adding: “There really isn’t enough decent religion reporting because journalism is in crisis.”  

That puts established religion in good company. But the Churches the Boomers rejected may have become humbler during their exile, and alternatives are available that offer different emphases. Vernon notes that the Orthodoxy that has attracted Kingsnorth and Shaw – Vernon’s “favourite convert of this revival” – is comfortable with other faiths and is more about participation through liturgy than converting to safeguard your immortal soul. And one attraction of the silence Vernon enjoys is that it doesn’t give glib answers, including to the profound questions around meaning, purpose and identity that beset nation, Church and individuals alike.  

Putin’s violent ambitions could yet drive people to prayer. For now, at least, the more thinkers publicly take Christianity seriously and rediscover its wonder and mystery, the fairer hearing its stories, values, social benefits and cultural legacy will receive in the rowdy market-place of ideas, offering – at the very least – the cradle agnostic a more informed choice.  

Review
Creed
Education
Theatre
Weirdness
8 min read

Why I was wowed by this five-hour outdoor drama

Wintershall’s re-telling of an ancient story enthrals a sceptic

Rachel is a reader and writer, a coach, and an educator. 

An outdoor theatrical setting shows Jesus with a basket.
Wintershall.org.uk

Were I to write a recipe for disaster, it would look something like this: 

  • Gather a large cast of mostly amateur volunteers and a few professionals 
  • Include everyone from a baby to a 90-year-old man, 1 donkey, 2 horses and a flock of sheep 
  • Create an outdoor venue with no seating and no shelter from the elements 
  • Welcome a mixed audience of around 1200 school children and the public every day for five days 
  • Present a five-hour dramatisation of the entire life of Jesus from 10am to 3.30pm 

I am delighted to record that contrary to our assumptions, the above proved to be a remarkable recipe for triumph. Accompanied by my 18-year-old son who, as an actor and teenager, was sceptical, I’ll admit that expectations were not high as we embarked on a 2-hour drive to review The Life of Jesus 2025 at Wintershall Estate. The same drive home was rich in deeply moved and unexpected conversation about the incredible phenomenon just experienced.  

Hearing superlatives from me is as unlikely an event as watching a rare desert flower bloom in a decade of drought. And yet, I have nothing else to offer in this case. I have viewed much professional and amateur theatre - Wintershall is like nothing I have witnessed before.  

Perhaps what makes it so different is the intent of those who continue to create it. In 1989, Ann and Peter Hutley decided to open their beautiful estate to visitors interested in hearing about the life of Jesus. They began with a nativity in their new barn before Peter wrote a longer script for the millennium celebrations about Jesus’ ministry. It is tangible in the air that this is a monumental work of love and passion not profit-making. 

On arriving, we met Ann and her daughter, Charlotte, who has taken over the enormous responsibilities as Wintershall’s producer. With consistent warmth, welcome and energy, Charlotte took us to join the cast as they received exacting professional notes from the director, Ashley Herman. She invited us to join hands with the cast in prayer. ‘No questions asked, it doesn’t matter what you believe, join hands and pray with us. Everyone is welcome here!’ she said. This is the truth about Wintershall in a sentence.  

As a teacher of 23 years, I am sorry to admit that I had never heard of Wintershall. I would likely have baulked had someone suggested that I take my class on a daytrip of this format. My assumption would have been that they would hate it, they would be hot, bothered and bored, and I would be very stressed as a result. How foolish am I!  

We visited on a day when the audience consisted of roughly 700 captivated school pupils, ranging from 7 – 18 years, and 300 members of the public. The previous few days had been exclusively for schools and had welcomed in the region of 1,200 pupils on each day. Looking for honest opinions, I asked an adult sat near me why she had brought her class. ‘Oh, I’m not a teacher,’ she said, ‘I volunteer to come on this trip every year because it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. It just gets better and better!’ Clearly my prejudice was misplaced, and this is the very important issue.  

My years in education mean that I have watched far too many five-year-olds in wonky tea towels, shouting at an inn keeper while the audience laughs. The life of Jesus has taken on a twee familiarity akin to Jack and The Beanstalk or Cinderella. It has become the stuff of folklore and fairytale when it is anything but. We have distorted it from the contemporaneous, historical recount that it is and Wintershall magnificently sets this straight.  

Regardless of faith or belief, there is great damage done in forgetting to view history as reality. Those who work in schools and churches must remember that today’s children perceive the millennium celebrations as ancient history. They cannot fathom time outside of their own existence. All stories from the Egyptians to Princess Diana seem to them to be works of fiction because they must be imagined. Test this, as I have done, by asking them about a recently retired Roger Federer and observe their blank faces! 

Even for me and my son, there came a meaningful realisation that this is not merely an all-too-familiar children’s story retold every year at Easter and Christmas. This is the biography of a man whose contemporaries were prepared to die in order to record the naturally inexplicable things that they saw him do. This first lands around 15 minutes into Act One when Wintershall presents Herod’s slaughtering of the children as the horrific and barbaric act that it was, with none of the usual soft-soap. Not gory or gratuitous in any way, it hits hard, just as it should, since, as Charlotte passionately reminded me, this is still happening in the world today! The same hit came from the disturbing noises made by the man suffering from demons, the size of the rocks about to be hurled at the woman accused of adultery and the often-omitted audible gasping of three men dying by crucifixion. These should not be benign imaginings, they are barbaric and torturous reality, and we do humanity no favours in desensitising ourselves.  

Wintershall is clear that their production is for those aged seven and above because this is no fairytale. I would argue that this is precisely why they are able to keep children captivated through five hours of intense viewing. They have achieved the perfect balance of hard-hitting realism and enjoyment.  

After stretching your legs, Act Two is simply glorious. We forget that Jesus’ ministry took the form of a pilgrimage delivered while walking with people in nature. He spoke on paths, hillsides and lakes which Wintershall authentically recreates. There is nothing to match the experience of sitting on a hillside next to a lake as the character of Jesus delivers the Sermon on The Mount whilst looking you straight in the eye. For the first time, I inwardly understood how a small number of loaves could literally feed a very large crowd because I experienced it first-hand. Quite simply, without needing to be told, you share. You break bread to ensure that those beside you have some and, in so doing, realise that there was always enough for everyone. This precious memory will endure as reality, not magic. 

Act Four depicts the crucifixion. Seeing is believing. Again, this stuff of children’s stories is anything but. The logistics of this scene are extraordinarily well executed, and, for the first time, I was struck by the gasping of these men as they spoke. This was no polite conversation about meeting in paradise, these were their final words during their slow and painful death. The act is completed by the inexplicable and somewhat mystical reappearance of the risen Jesus in a different location beside us. I still have no idea how they did it, but it impacted powerfully.  

So, what then were the negatives? Any trustworthy review must be balanced.

"There is nothing I have ever seen that I have more wanted to be a part of. Compared with this, I have never seen anything more meaningful."

Remember here my aversion to praise and my teenage son’s initial scepticism. Remember this seeming recipe for disaster and my remit to look critically.  

After digging deep, we came up with two very minor concerns that are, in truth, little more than a matter of opinion or preference.  

The first relates to the Angel Gabriel. In a production that so brilliantly undoes the fictionalisation of this biography, one could argue for a more nuanced representation of this angel. Perhaps not a female wearing the sparkly halo and white wings that fits with the wonky tea towels in school halls. Perhaps the name of Gabriel is sufficiently recognisable to permit something a little more daring? 

The second relates to Act Three. Undoubtedly, the vibrant warmth, variety and personally immersive nature of Act Two makes it a very hard act to follow. Act Three is disadvantaged from the outset by occupying what we teachers know to be toughest gig of the day - that slot immediately following lunch. There is usually some social altercation to sort, attention needing to be refocused, and blood sugar levels fluctuating left, right and centre. At this time of natural siesta, you either accept a lull or bring your largest dose of entertainment. In this case, Jesus enters Jerusalem, overturns the tables in the temple, heals a leper, is betrayed by Judas, prays in Gethsemane, is arrested and tried before Pilate. Essential but not exceptionally entertaining, as the story goes. At around the 60-minute mark in, Jesus is stripped and whipped causing the children around me to literally sit up again and re-engage before Act Four. Perhaps, on reflection as I write, this is just as it should be.  

And that is it, the sum of my critique. Believe me, my expectations are unforgivingly high; I struggle booking a holiday because the likelihood is that I will be disappointed. If there were critique to deliver, then deliver it I would.  

To the contrary, it is unusually delightful to leave somewhere with the desire to do everything in my power to support a truly exemplary endeavour. It is to my detriment that I have been so ignorant of Wintershall for the last 25 years; I regret the thousands of children that I did not ever take to see this exceptional phenomenon.  

I urge you to do better than me, to make up for my short fall.  

Go!  

Take everyone you can!  

Make the journey!  

Enjoy the day in glorious natural surroundings!  

Show your pupils that even a flock of sheep can be perfectly well-behaved.  

Rewrite the soppy fairytale as the gritty, historical biography that it is.  

Replace the over-familiarity and wonky tea towels with a real-life experience in how to share what we have so that all might be fed.  

Reimagine the mad magician as a man who loved the low, lost, and lonely, and will look you in the eye to remind you that you are blessed.  

Reset the polite chat about paradise as the last conversation of a man gasping to share his love as he was killed for upsetting the authorities.  

Remember that the infants are still being slaughtered and the women are still being stoned.  

Reawaken to the fact that this is no fairytale. This is the message that the world needs.  

As my son put it, ‘There is nothing I have ever seen that I have more wanted to be a part of. Compared with this, I have never seen anything more meaningful.’ 

Wintershall, one and all, you do not need to take a bow.  

Stand tall and keep going.  

What you are doing is superlatively necessary and remarkable! 

Bravo! 

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