Holly Ordway was a committed atheist who delighted in her unbelief. At thirty-one, she was an atheist college professor who "got a kick out of being an unbeliever." Growing up, she had never said a prayer or been to a church service. In college, she absorbed the idea that Christianity was "a historical curiosity or blemish on civilization." Her science classes presented Christians as "illiterate anti-intellectuals."
Literature Plants Seeds of Faith
But God's grace worked through her imagination "like a draft flowing under a closed and locked door." Classic Christian literature planted seeds—she found that her favorite authors were men and women of deep Christian faith. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were most influential, along with poets Gerard Manley Hopkins, George Herbert, and John Donne.
Examining the Gospels as History
As a trained professor of literature who "knows a myth when she sees it," Ordway examined the Gospels and found they "had the ineffable texture of history." Like C.S. Lewis at Oxford and Cambridge, Ordway concluded that the New Testament was a generally reliable historical account.
Atheist Professor Conversion Through Reason
She came to realize that her "naturalistic worldview was inadequate to explain the nature of reality in a coherent way: it could not explain the origin of the universe, nor could it explain morality." In contrast, "the theistic worldview was both consistent and powerfully explanatory."
Ordway wasn't interested in hearing arguments about God, but the imaginative power of Christian literature broke through her defenses. She chronicles this journey in her book "Not God's Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms."
Life as Christian Apologist
Today, Dr. Holly Ordway is the Cardinal Francis George Professor of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute and author of "Apologetics and the Christian Imagination." Her conversion demonstrates how imagination and intellect together can lead to faith—that Christianity satisfies both the mind's demand for truth and the heart's longing for beauty.
