The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

The Reason for God was published in 2008 amid the background of a shifting cultural context. New trends had been gathering steam in the United States from the mid-20th century onward, espousing a more relativistic, agnostic, or even atheistic view of the world. Western Europe had seen declining rates of religious involvement throughout the 20th century, to the point where the nonreligious portion of society had gained a majority influence in the culture, and by the early 21st century, American society appeared to be following a similar trendline. Especially on the younger end of the demographic range, Americans associated themselves less and less with religious traditions, espousing agnostic and religiously unaffiliated positions instead.

These shifts were particularly evident in the publishing world in the years immediately preceding The Reason for God’s release, which saw several books that took an expressly atheistic and anti-Christian stance rocketing to bestseller status. These included The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006), Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett (2006), Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris (2006), and God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens (2007). These authors were sometimes referred to as “the Four Horsemen of New Atheism” (a reference to the four horsemen of the apocalypse from the biblical book of Revelation).