At the time of his death, Christopher Hitchens was the most
notorious atheist in the world. And yet, all was not as it seemed.
"Nobody is not a divided self, of course," he once told an
interviewer, "but I think it's rather strong in my case." Hitchens
was a man of many contradictions: a Marxist in youth who longed for
acceptance among the social elites; a peacenik who revered the
military; a champion of the Left who was nonetheless pro-life,
pro-war-on-terror, and after 9/11 something of a neocon; and while
he railed against God on stage, he maintained meaningful-though
largely hidden from public view-friendships with evangelical
Christians like Francis Collins, Douglas Wilson, and the author
Larry Alex Taunton. In The Faith of Christopher Hitchens, Taunton
offers a very personal perspective of one of our most interesting
and most misunderstood public figures. Writing with genuine
compassion and without compromise, Taunton traces Hitchens's
spiritual and intellectual development from his decision as a
teenager to reject belief in God to his rise to prominence as one
of the so-called "Four Horsemen" of the New Atheism. While Hitchens
was, in the minds of many Christians, Public Enemy Number One, away
from the lights and the cameras a warm friendship flourished
between Hitchens and the author; a friendship that culminated in
not one, but two lengthy road trips where, after Hitchens's
diagnosis of esophageal cancer, they studied the Bible together.
The Faith of Christopher Hitchens gives us a candid glimpse into
the inner life of this intriguing, sometimes maddening, and
unexpectedly vulnerable man. "If everyone in the United States had
the same qualities of loyalty and care and concern for others that
Larry Taunton had, we'd be living in a much better society than we
do." ~ Christopher Hitchens
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Review This Product
Misleading
Mon, 25 Nov 2019 | Review
by: Richie
An article I found online by the Guardian reviews this perfectly:
'There is so much wrong with this book that one hardly knows where to start. But its fundamental error concerns the nature of intellectual inquiry itself. For Taunton, there is only one such pursuit, and it is unidirectional: if you are interested in morality, you are, axiomatically, interested in religion – which, for a southern evangelical, means the gospels. When Hitchens observes that a child and a piglet are morally different, Taunton says that “this was unambiguous theism, as he well knew”.
Of course, Hitchens knew no such thing. For him, as for any atheist, morality did not need the framework of religion. Philosophy did not depend upon the supernatural, and ethics did not require a godhead to be worth discussing – a discussion that can be traced back at least as far as Socrates in Plato’s Euthyphro.
At the heart of the book is a series of conversations between Hitchens and the author, partly conducted on long car journeys across America. Hitchens, stricken with cancer, makes use of the time with Taunton to study the Gospel of John. Unfortunately, this entirely characteristic curiosity is misinterpreted by the author as the first stage of a glorious conversion.
. . . It is tempting to write off this book as no more than an outburst of epic self-deception. But its craven purpose – to claim Hitchens posthumously for evangelical Christianity – is to defame a man who was a champion of the Enlightenment and an enemy of all systems of thought that elevate one caste (priestly, or otherwise) above the rest. It is a shoddy tactic in the culture wars that began in America but are spreading in battles over theocracy, identity and social uniformity.
Far from being the double agent of the author’s addled imagination, Hitchens incarnated the pluralism in which he believed so passionately, revelling in the contradictions that are the hallmark of the authentically modern self.
He had no religion, other than friendship. Laughable in itself, Taunton’s Judas kiss serves notice yet again that the literalists of all faiths respect absolutely no limits in pursuit of their higher cause.'
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