These three books occupy distinct positions in the debate surrounding “the new atheism,” a movement that has gained notoriety for its recent spate of books aiming to debunk religion in general and belief in God in particular. Christopher Hitchens is one of its major spokesmen. By contrast, John F. Haught and Tina Beattie are both Christian theologians who believe that the new atheists operate with a faulty notion of religion and little or no actual knowledge of academic theology.
Hitchens has nothing but scorn for religion. He believes that religion rests upon a pre-scientific view of reality and is basically nothing other than superstition. He recites a litany of the evils perpetrated in the name of God, and he is most worried about the dramatic rise in recent decades of Christian and Islamic fundamentalisms with their political agenda to abolish the modern secular state.
Even a reader not inclined to agree with his sweeping thesis that a choice has to be made between religion and reason cannot but feel horror at some of the examples Hitchens gives. Unfortunately, there is too much truth in his portrayal of the dark, irrational side of religion for his book to be easily dismissed. Nevertheless, his naïve optimism in calling for a culture purged of religion is bound to strike the student of modern history as an illusion equally as absurd as any put forth by traditional religion. There is ample evidence that modernity has generated numerous ideologies functioning as pseudo-religions and demanding the unconditional allegiance of their adherents, oftentimes with morally reprehensible results. While the intolerance and bigotry of the religions to which Hitchens draws attention are real, his argument is unconvincing inasmuch as it rests on a superficial understanding of the existential dynamics of the human condition that give rise to religion in the first place. Hitchens’ legitimate concerns could be taken up within an explicitly theological perspective in which the dangers of idolatrous religion are exposed on behalf of an authentic religiosity, but he does not even consider this to be a possibility.
Haught’s book, which I judge to be the strongest of the three books reviewed here, is a model of lucidity and well-reasoned argument. His point is simply that the new atheists are uneducated about the topic they have chosen to write about. Aside from presenting an unbalanced view of the actual cultural and societal effects of religion, these writers evince no knowledge of the academic study of religion or theology. They take the fundamentalists as representative of the religious traditions instead of seeing them as occupying a position on the extremities. Moreover, they do not engage the most penetrating theological voices within the traditions, such as Tillich, Barth, Buber, Rahner, and others. In sheer intellectual terms, Haught has an easy job exposing the superficialities and ignorance of the new atheism, unlike the older, bolder atheisms of Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Camus from whose critiques Christian theologians have learned so much!
I found myself in agreement with virtually everything Haught had to say in response to the new atheists. At the same time, however, I felt a sense that something was missing from his book, namely, any real grappling with the fact that the first-rate theological minds to which he refers appear to have so little actual impact upon the churches. Why is it that the books students read in seminary make little difference to the way the churches shape their preaching, teaching, and mission? If one surveys the public face of Christianity in this country during the last thirty years, is there any evidence that these brilliant theologians mean anything to anybody outside the ivory tower of academia? Most of the undergraduates I have taught in the past two years pretty much agree with Hitchens and his comrades that Christianity is a movement of bigoted, ignorant, and loveless people. Haught is surely right at the level of intellectual argument, but Hitchens has too much empirical evidence on his side to be dismissed solely on account of his lack of familiarity with the best academic theology.
Beattie wants to distance herself from the confrontation between defenders of religion and the new atheists by carving out a distinctively feminist place from which to interpret this conflict. In her portrayal, the modern clash between men (males) of religion and of science is a testosterone-driven contest involving gender, imperialism, classism, and racism. While this shift of perspective puts the entirely discussion in a new light, I judge that she made matters a bit too easy for herself by minimizing the real intellectual issues involved in trying to reconcile religion with science. Moreover, as a Roman Catholic justifiably concerned to defend her church against unfair criticisms, she operates with a very real anti-Protestant bias that distorts her portrayal of the Reformation and its impact upon the development of modernity.
The strength of this book lies in its concluding chapter where she makes a very creative proposal for thinking differently about the nature of religion in ways that avoid preoccupation with issues of belief and non-belief. This author is walking a fine line between wanting to defend Catholicism against its critics and having to acknowledge the sexism and homophobia of the Vatican. Like Haught, her book is strong on theology while failing to explore why innovative proposals such as her own remain marginalized and ineffective in the actual life of the institutional church.
The three books here reviewed make for interesting reading and could easily be used in adult education classes of local congregations. At the very least, we can be grateful to the new atheists for forcing Christians to take a hard look at ourselves and to test anew the intellectual foundations of our faith.
Paul E. Capetz is a professor of historical theology at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, New Brighton, Minn.
