I think he had a sister who had an early and brutal death from cancer.
Atheism is often close to anarchism, due to their shared antipathy toward authority. And as man is religious by nature, in atheistic societies man ends up being worshiped.
It is not real belief in God that atheists rebel against, but the moral authority He represents, and the eye through which they see Him in the Bible (and thus misrepresent Him) is is a result of that rage, which is present in the sinful nature of all of us.
(Rom 8:7) “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”
In contrast to the atheists creation (depiction) of god, the thousands of hymns written about God and Christ (in addition to other things) by stable and rational souls, testify to the reality of Him and God’s work in their heart and life, and i think are unique in their scope and depth.
Even worse was the death of his mother. It was when he was a young man at University - she eloped off to Greece with another man - then Christopher was suddenly summoned to identify her body. Her lover had either killed her or got her into a suicide pact. This homicidal lunatic was (I think) a deranged ex-priest, or something of that sort.