(LifeSiteNews) — In a fascinating response to a question on X, author J.K. Rowling revealed that she is now opposed to assisted suicide — and that she feels a “God-sized vacuum” in her life.
During a debate over her views on transgender ideology, one X user demanded to know if she’d ever actually changed her mind on anything. Rather than responding with a pithy one-liner, Rowling gave a long, detailed, and surprisingly vulnerable response.
“I used to believe nurture was everything and that nature wasn’t important,” she replied. “My belief changed because of my own life experience and from reading studies about genetic inheritance. In my early twenties I believed the difference between the sexes was entirely due to socialisation. I no longer believe that (for the same reasons as above.)”
“I used to believe in unilateral nuclear disarmament. I no longer do,” she continued. “I used to believe cannabis was essentially harmless. I no longer do because I’ve witnessed it wreaking havoc on someone I care about’s mental health. I used to believe in assisted dying. I no longer do, largely because I’m married to a doctor who opened my eyes to the possibilities of coercion of sick or vulnerable people.”
This public opposition to assisted suicide — just as the House of Lords debates MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill — is significant, especially if Rowling decides to weigh in on this issue further. As evidenced by her massive impact on the transgender debate, her personal profile and the reach of her platform can be used as a potent tool for political change. I very much hope she expands on those views.
But Rowling goes even further, cutting to the heart of the matter. “I’ve struggled with religious faith since my mid-teens,” the famously liberal author wrote. “I appear to have a God-shaped vacuum inside me but I never seem quite able to make up my mind what to do about it.” She continued:
I could probably list at least twenty more things I’ve changed my mind about. I don’t currently have a single belief that couldn’t be altered by clear, concrete evidence and in all but one case, I know what that evidence would have to be. The exception is the God conundrum, because I don’t know what I’d have to see to make me come down firmly on either side. I suppose that’s the meaning of faith, believing without seeing proof, and that’s why I’ll probably go to my grave with that particular personal matter unresolved.
Rowling’s frank admission of a “God-shaped vacuum inside me” echoes almost precisely how New Atheist-turned-Christian Ayaan Hirsi Ali described her journey to Christianity in a conversation with nonbeliever Alex O’Connor earlier this year. Her husband, historian and former atheist Niall Ferguson also recently became a Christian, and the couple were baptized with their children. Other atheists and agnostics, meanwhile, have described precisely the same “God conundrum” as J.K. Rowling, including British writer Douglas Murray, American social scientist Charles Murray (author of The Bell Curve), and perhaps most famously, Dr. Jordan Peterson, who spent an entire book twisting himself into torturous shapes in his struggle with God.
What is perhaps most remarkable about this moment, however, is that the triumphalism of the New Atheist moment is now utterly gone. Few are still interested in Richard Dawkins-style sneering at Christianity. My own view is that this is because for the first time since the Sexual Revolution triggered civilization-wide secularization, people are beginning to realize what sort of society develops in the “God-sized vacuum in our culture,” as historian Mary Eberstadt so eloquently details:
The reality is that when society abolished God, we did not, as GK Chesterton warned, begin to believe in nothing — we began to fall for everything. The most prominent example of this is the transgender insanity that has gripped the West, an insanity that Rowling has been fighting tooth and nail now for several years. Many progressives correctly identified Christianity as a force holding people back. What they did not realize is that it was a bulwark against moral chaos. Many who crowed with glee at the alleged death of Christianity now, suddenly, feel the urge to mourn at its funeral.
