Peter Hitchens. The Rage Against God. Zondervan, 2010.
Peter Hitchens is the Christian brother of outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens. Peter here does delve into his background somewhat. He notes that at a younger age he and his brother believed similarly, but Peter eventually converted to Christianity.
Hitchens was born in 1951, so he describes growing up in the counterculture years, the radical politics, sexual revolution, and so on. He also notes that his native England had a kind of civic religion, not exactly “God is an Englishman,” but a civic pride that substituted for religion. There was still an element of patriotism, something that is pretty much lacking in England today, and, at best, is controversial in the United States.
But the main part of the book is different. The Rage Against God focuses on why atheism is bad for people.
Hitchens is a career journalist and has spent quite a bit of time in Eastern Europe, especially the former Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. His accounts are firsthand. His generation is getting older. Many younger people, certainly in America, find socialism, communism, and other utopian schemes attractive. Read this book to see how it worked out for the Russians. (I think we can see how it is working for Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba right now.)
Hitchens tells us explicitly that he wants to explain why atheistic arguments fail. He cites three arguments:
Namely, that conflicts fought in the name of religion are always about religion; that it is ultimately possible to know with confidence what is right and wrong without acknowledging the existence of God; and that atheist states are not actually atheist. (2)
Hitchens also notes that an atheist “is his own chief opponent.” (3) If people can convince themselves of anything, they cannot be persuaded otherwise.
Hitchens not only examines historical Communism, but also his own Western culture. After all, hadn’t science and modern government made miracles and even charity irrelevant? He also notes that what in the nineteenth century Schleiermacher called the “cultured despisers” of Christianity are nothing new. A quotation from Virginia Woolf is telling:
I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with poor dear Tom Eliot [poet T. S. Eliot], who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic, believes in God and immortality, and goes to church. I was really shocked. A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is. I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God. (12)
Whew! Shameful, distressing, dead to us, shocking, even obscene! On the same page Hitchens tells us “Unlike Christians, atheists have a high opinion of their own virtue.”
I love some of Woolf’s writings, but her end makes one wonder if her lack of faith was an asset or a liability.
This is one of those books that, instead of using a highlighter, should just be dipped in yellow ink. There are so many great quotations. And Hitchens has seen things from both sides. He understood Woolf well. With one exception he did not know any religious people when he began working as a reporter.
He also notes that the education system is not what it once was. He states that while he is “extremely well educated by the standards of 2010,” his grandfather would have considered him “hopelessly ill-equipped” (27).
His description of the Soviet Union, where he lived in the eighties and nineties, borders on nightmare. He says of the Russians, “It was not that they were coarse and mannerless themselves. It was that they lived in coarse and mannerless world, against which it was futile for the lone individual to fight.” (66) He began to realize that “my own civilization was infinitely precious and utterly vulnerable…” (71).
In effect, atheism makes us vulnerable—not just to eternal punishment but to a miserable and elitist existence in this present age.
He also does express some concern that the Church of England—he is English and does identify with this church—has watered down some of its practices and core beliefs. In doing so, he notes, the church may have tried to make itself more compatible with certain modern notions but its effect is to bring about indifference. People can believe those things without a religion, too.
His observations of the decline of the church in general in the West are worth considering as well.
He also notes that in the West, the animus is not so much against religious belief in general but specifically against Christianity, and by extension, Judaism. Without going into detail here, he notes the great curiosity that the Western Left like the Communists sympathize with and even support Islamism partly because it is “the enemy of their Christian monoculture” (95).
Hitchens is far from the first to note that “God is the leftists’ chief rival” (98). We see similar themes in the fiction and nonfiction of C. S. Lewis and the historical analyses of Eric Voegelin. By the end of the book we see how the title makes sense. A generation ago most atheists I knew (except for a couple of dedicated Communists) were indifferent to religion. Now they are more likely to “rage.”
Hitchens is an excellent writer and a careful observer. No reader would say Hitchens is making things up or does not know what he is talking about. He has been there. Does that mean all readers will agree? Well, his brother has not, but it sounds like they still respected each other up to the time his brother died. That is worth a lot these days.