THERE has been a flurry of interest in Richard Dawkins’s Eastertide admission that he sees himself as a “cultural Christian” (Quotes, 5 April). This is not, I think, evidence of a dramatic conversion. Dr Dawkins has written elsewhere of how his youth was blighted by Evangelical Christianity, and how he came to despise fundamentalism. But he has also written of his attachment to cathedrals and parish churches, and of his affection for choral evensong.

I met Dr Dawkins years ago on a radio discussion programme, where he went for me, piercing blue eyes blazing across the studio table, insisting that, as an ordained Christian, I must be either a mad fundamentalist or a wishy-washy liberal who didn’t really believe in anything.

I remember at the time wondering whether his anger might be a reflection of a genuine dilemma, which I had spotted in his writings. The Selfish Gene, for example, insists that nature has constructed us for ruthlessness, and yet the author does not accept that it is the fate of the weak to be crushed by the strong. However selfish our genes may be, a healthy society depends on unselfishness, an ethic that it is hard to detach from religion, even if our genes are driving us in a different direction.

In his writings, Dr Dawkins does not attempt to resolve this, insisting that we should be good, because, well, we just should. But, more recently, he seems to have come to a gradual realisation that the Christian ethic does not necessarily survive the loss of Christian faith. It is the legacy of Christianity rather than bare rationalism which encourages us to love our neighbours. Atheistic societies are not often kind. In claiming to be a cultural Christian, Dr Dawkins appears to be acknowledging the argument of Tom Holland’s Dominion, to the effect that our beliefs in human rights, equality, and free speech ultimately depend on Christian teaching (Books, 13 September 2019).

While I doubt whether Dr Dawkins will end up believing in God, there are a number of former critics of Christianity who seem to be on the brink of realising that the ethic they most value depends on religious belief (Comment, 29 September 2023): first, on a transcendent God who has no human favourites; second, on the self-sacrifice exemplified by the cross; and, third, on the conviction that we have a capacity, through grace and faith, for virtuous living.

Thinking of the “green shoots” that may herald new life for the Church of England, we should not ignore our cultured atheists, national treasures as many of them are, who may indeed be on the brink of a return to the sources of their moral and cultural outlook, but this time, perhaps, with a new readiness “to know the place for the first time” — that is, to acknowledge that cultural Christianity may open the way for a rediscovery of the real thing.