Wait… are Christians cool now?

Anyone who was a Christian teenager in the 1990s and 2000s will recognise the dread of the awkward moment when you have to out yourself as a believer. Like summoning up courage on a Saturday night out to say you’re going to church in the morning. Later, bracing yourself before revealing to a colleague that “what I did over the weekend” was…go to church. 

Becoming a ‘professional Christian’ like me means there are few places to hide when someone asks what your job is. One of my bravest moments was attending the Secularist of the Year awards with a friend. Sat at dinner with devout atheists, one asked me what I did for a living. “I work for an evangelical Christian organisation,” I said. I’m pretty sure I heard the clink of knives and forks being dropped as people stared at me open-mouthed. I didn’t want to be like Peter and deny Christ, and yet the temptation to say I never knew him was present every time I had to mark myself out as distinct, as weird. 

My generation had a very particular experience – the children of parents who became or remained Christians while the rest of the country deluded itself into believing it was secular. Our Christianity was not set against a backdrop of cultural Christianity. We were the first for whom being Christian was backwards, irrational, just plain silly. When I was growing up, there were few Christians in public life – Cliff Richard excluded, of course.

Maybe this openness to faith is a response to the realisation that secular ideas have failed us

Today, I’m older and less prone to embarrassment, but it also feels like the tide is turning. Many will have noted the increasing mentions of Christianity – particularly within more politically conservative circles – having shaped the central ideas that make Western civilisation distinctive. We’re hearing from political figures and public intellectuals that Christianity is good for society. But we’re also hearing from celebrities about the difference Christian faith makes in their lives. 

A recent report by Jersey Road PR into faith in the media found that there were 1,635 stories about people’s personal Christian faith mentioned in the media in 2024. A significant proportion of those being people in the public eye talking about Jesus. The Times interview with Christian Olympic gold medallist Adam Peaty, for example.

Last month, I took part in a panel at the Bradford Literature Festival about belief in an age of crisis. Alongside Dr Belle Tindall and I were authors Francis Spufford and Lamorna Ash. Their books symbolise the changing profile of Christianity in Britain. When Spufford’s Unapologetic (Faber & Faber) came out in 2013, it felt like what my younger self had been waiting for: an intelligent, mainstream thinker talking about his Christian faith. Lamorna Ash’s Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever (Bloomsbury Circus) symbolises the new era we’re in – where public intellectuals can wrestle with the Christian faith in public. 

Are we cool now? Maybe not yet. Maybe this openness to faith is a response to the realisation that secular ideas and frameworks have failed us, that humans cannot and should not be the ultimate source of power, and that each of us is fragile and vulnerable. Maybe we’re still weird, but Christian weirdness is more accepted because there are all sorts of other weird practices and beliefs that are permitted in our ‘you do you’ culture. 

Maybe, more positively, it’s simply a move of God. Whatever it is, we can’t be complacent. We need to keep talking about the difference the Christian faith makes to us – as a society, but also as individuals too. Unapologetically.