Many new atheist writers have claimed that a new age of enlightened secular rationalism has rescued Western civilisation from the stranglehold of backwards and archaic Christian influence.

David Bentley Hart says those who make such claims are suffering from an “atheist delusion”. His book “Atheist delusions: The Christian revolution and its fashionable enemies” recently won the Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing.

Terry Sanderson of the UK’s national Secular Society claims we are better off than we have ever been in an increasingly secular society and that the freedoms and values we hold do not require a Christian foundation.

Bentley Hart believes that Terry is deluded by a new atheist myth of secular “progress” when the history of Christianity and secularism actually tell a different story.