Religion

ST. LOUIS — When she was 20, Jessi Thull's father died of cancer, an event that took seven months from diagnosis to death, and that she describes now as "overwhelming." Thull was brought up as a church-going Christian, but her father's death and the resulting pain made her question God's existence.

"I had no sense as to how there could be a good God who would just watch as a family falls apart," she said.

Thull, now 26 and reconciled with God, was examining her skepticism last week as part of a program at The Journey, a popular evangelical church in south St. Louis that is taking dead aim at the resurging popularity of doubt and skepticism in American society.

There is a difference between doubt and skepticism, and atheism. Doubt and skepticism suggest differing degrees of a willingness to believe in a higher power. Atheism is a clear belief that God does not exist. Yet a movement that's being called the "new atheism" has clearly struck a nerve in people with doubt and skepticism, and is allowing them to express those thoughts and beliefs without fear of embarassment or reprisal.

Darren Sherkat, a sociology professor at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, published an article in the journal Sociological Spectrum last month finding that 16 percent of Americans don't believe in God.

That's a much larger number than reported in a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which found that about 16 percent of Americans are "unafiliated" with a religious tradition, but only 5 percent said they do not believe in God. In Missouri, 16 percent said they were "unafiliated" and 3 percent said they don't believe in God.

"The United States is often misportrayed as a place where absolutely everyone believes in God," Sherkat said. He said the popularity of new books chronicling the so-called new atheism "was unsurprising given the politicization of religion" in recent years.

Atheism has been cloaked in a new intellectualism — even hipness — since 2004 when Sam Harris's book, The End of Faith, was published. Other bestsellers followed: Harris's follow up, Letter to a Christian Nation; Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett; The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins; and Christopher Hitchens's God is Not Great.

These authors are sometimes referred to as the Four Horsemen — a reference to the four riders in the New Testament book of Revelation whom God has sent into the world to unleash divine punishment on man. Their five books have sold nearly 1.5 million copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, which accounts for about 75 percent of all book sales, and at times have topped Publisher's Weekly's religion bestseller list.

Hitchens drew a large crowd at Powell Symphony Hall last month when he debated author and Christian Dinesh D'Souza. And the film Religulous, an indictment of religious belief by comedian Bill Maher and "Borat" director Larry Charles, has sold $7.5 million in tickets, according to Box Office Mojo.

Rather than return fire at atheists or get defensive and caustic, The Journey's senior pastor, the Rev. Darrin Patrick, decided to explore the nature of doubt with his congregation. He's asking the church's 2,300 members to be honest about their own skepticism and doubts about Christianity, and is encouraging them to meet atheists half way.

"Why are skeptics hostile to Christians and Christians hostile to skeptics?" Patrick asked in an interview. "We have to learn to live together rather than setting up straw-man arguments and portraying each other as caricatures."

Patrick began delivering an eight-week program of Sunday sermons about doubt this month. And on Tuesday nights church members and their skeptical friends can gather for "The Doubting Sessions" at the church's Tower Grove campus to talk about the issues brought up in that week's sermon.

"'The Doubting Sessions' are for everyone to doubt their doubts, to examine the unprovable assumptions we all have about life, the faith assertions we all live by," Patrick said.

On a recent Sunday, Patrick encouraged his congregation to go see "Religulous" and assured them he would too. Church officials play a short video of atheists and skeptics they've interviewed making thoughtful points about unbelief, or questioning the nature of a certain Christian theology or doctrine.

Patrick then tackles that topic in a 45-minute sermon that dives deeper into the questions brought up by skeptics. Some of Patrick's sermons are titled: "There can't possibly be only one 'true' religion, can there?"; "Doesn't belief in religion only breed prejudice, violence, and injustice?"; and "Why would I pattern my life after a book of old stories that have been proven by science to be mere myth?"

Erich Vieth, a St. Louis attorney and founder of the "Dangerous Intersection" blog, was one of the skeptics filmed by the church. He said he was both surprised and pleased that the church is exploring doubt.

"I'm sure it'll be ok with them if some skeptics see what they're doing and say, 'I wouldn't mind going to a church that doesn't act like they're so sure of everything,"' Vieth said.

During the two months "The Doubting Sessions" last, church members are urged to read "The Reason For God: Belief in An Age of Skepticism," a book by the Rev. Timothy Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.

The last couple of Patrick's scheduled sermons — "Why is the Christian Gospel compelling?" and "The Greatest Hope of All" — might suggest to some that the entire program is a way to bring skeptics into the fold. The church's Web site says the hope for the program "is that you might doubt your doubts and possibly see that they are not insurmountable as you thought."

Patrick said evangelism was not the goal of the doubt series.

"The bottom line for our church is to reach people, and we can't divorce ourselves from that mission," he said. "But our track record is one of valued intellectual discussion and free thought."

On Tuesday evening, about 15 round tables were rolled into The Journey's sanctuary. Jay Sklar, a professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary in Creve Coeur, gave a 40-minute presentation on theodicy — the justification of God's goodness in the face of evil and suffering, and the topic of Patrick's sermon two days earlier.

More than 100 people listened to Sklar, then broke into small groups to discuss everything from the premature death of a parent to the Holocaust. Afterward, Sklar took questions from the audience, and answered text messages that had come into the church's account since Sunday. Was it accurate to say that God allows suffering because if there was no evil, there wouldn't be real free will? How can God allow suffering and evil, but not be responsible for it? How do we reconcile God's deliberate use of natural evil to accomplish his will?

"I'm glad we're getting all the easy questions out of the way," Sklar said.