In April of 1966, Time magazine set a stunning precedent. From its inception Time had every week in its cover story featured an individual. That week, rather than seeing a familiar picture or drawing of an individual in the news, the cover was black and in large red letters was the question “Is God Dead?" This was of course during the mid-60s, and the early salvos of the "God Is Dead" theologians had just hit the market. I was a freshman in high school at the time and did not understand what the controversy was all about. After all how could God as an eternal being die? The whole issue did not make any sense to me. What I have since learned, of course, is that these theologians were being purposely provocative. Their statements were much more existential statements about the way we live our lives on a day-to-day basis, than whether an eternal being whom we refer to as God had literally ceased to exist. They had in view specifically, the idea that God as we had historically understood him was irrelevant to the modern world. This proposal was in fact a radicalization of an observation that the German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer had made during World War II. In his writings, he spoke of, “a world come of age;” in other words, a world which in its own perceptions did not need God.

Western society has come a long way since the mid-1960s. The recently ratified constitution of the EU specifically avoids any mention of Europe's Christian heritage and the fact that European Society, with all its liberal values, arose out of a Christian worldview. As a civilization, or as a political confederation contemporary European society has been called the first society in history founded upon the principle of atheism. (This comment is not to deny the state-sponsored atheism of communism which was imposed by a radical political minority.) One of my former students, who is employed, at one of the leading high-tech firms in the Bay Area is looking at the possibility of doing Ph.D. work at Oxford. He recently spent a couple of weeks in England talking with college representatives there. Upon his return he commented to me about the total secularization he experienced in contemporary English culture. In England for a politician to invoke the name of God is unthinkable, whereas here in America, we still demand of our politicians some kind of statement of belief in a deity. As secular as our society has become and as anti-Christian as many of us feel it is, we are a bright and shining light when compared to the level of secularism in Europe.

There is a new frontal attack on the very idea of God by the current crop of “scientific atheists.” These include Richard Dawkins and his book The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchins, God is not Great, (Dawkins and Hitchins are both Brits) and Sam Harris, Letter to Christian America. We as theists and Christians are increasingly feeling like we are under siege by the forces of secularism. Indeed, a decade ago Mike Regele and Mark Schultz published The Death of the Church (Zondervan) noting trends in society and predicting that if there is no change within the next several decades the church in America will look like the church in Europe.

With all this in the background it is perhaps jarring to pick up books like Dinesh D’Sousa’s, What’s So Great about Christianity?, and Alister McGrath’s The Twilight of Atheism to find out that rather than shriveling up and dying theism generally and Christianity in particular is exploding worldwide. It is atheism that is in retreat on the larger canvas. The intellectual capital of Atheism has been squandered and it is increasingly being viewed as passé.

McGrath traces the intellectual history of atheism, its inception, rise and unexpected fall in the wake of the slow death of the modern age. D’Sousa addresses issue by issue the arguments of the contemporary militant atheists giving intellectual ammunition to theists for the legitimacy of their position.

These works together provide the reader with a context and analysis for the situation in which we find ourselves as well as resources to allow believers to defend their faith against a foe bent on the destruction of not only Christianity but and vestige of theism.