The Rage Against God
by Peter Hitchens
GoodBookStall Review:
At the age of 15, Peter Hitchens set fire to his Bible on the playing fields of his Cambridge boarding school, and began a period during which his beliefs and actions were precisely those he has spent most of his career railing against. He was a youthful Trot, a nuclear disarmer who regarded "marriage as something to be avoided, abortion as a sensible necessity... homosexuality as very nearly admirable". Above all, he was an atheist.
Now he is a staunch defender of everything he used to be against, including religion; his brother Christopher, two years his senior, is the famous atheist. And the genesis of this short, elegant book, whose passion is both its strength (one may disagree with Hitchens but still admire his conviction) and its weakness (it also leads him to some bizarre conclusions), was a public debate between the two. Hitchens minor thinks that they failed to engage properly, possibly out of some late flourishing of fraternal amity; so he has chosen a less gladiatorial route to put the case against the "militant godless" who made Hitchens major's God is not Great a bestseller.
The most moving section is an elegy to the England that a 15-year-old rejected; Hitchens' theory is that the English Christianity he grew up with had been severely compromised by its confusion with patriotism in the two world wars, and that gradually, "a commitment to social welfare at home and liberal anti-colonialism abroad became an acceptable substitute for Christian faith".
Hitchens covers writing, faith and religion, journalism and family, amongst other things in a brilliant volume. In this unique and doubtless widespread seller-to-be I found myself engaged in the a renewed world that is exponentially bigger than anyone’s self or self-interest. Truly “if you drive God out of the world, you create a howling wilderness” Top class stuff!
Reviewer: Johnny Douglas (29/06/10)
At the age of 15, Peter Hitchens set fire to his Bible on the playing fields of his Cambridge boarding school, and began a period during which his beliefs and actions were precisely those he has spent most of his career railing against. He was a youthful Trot, a nuclear disarmer who regarded "marriage as something to be avoided, abortion as a sensible necessity... homosexuality as very nearly admirable". Above all, he was an atheist.
Now he is a staunch defender of everything he used to be against, including religion; his brother Christopher, two years his senior, is the famous atheist. And the genesis of this short, elegant book, whose passion is both its strength (one may disagree with Hitchens but still admire his conviction) and its weakness (it also leads him to some bizarre conclusions), was a public debate between the two. Hitchens minor thinks that they failed to engage properly, possibly out of some late flourishing of fraternal amity; so he has chosen a less gladiatorial route to put the case against the "militant godless" who made Hitchens major's God is not Great a bestseller.
The most moving section is an elegy to the England that a 15-year-old rejected; Hitchens' theory is that the English Christianity he grew up with had been severely compromised by its confusion with patriotism in the two world wars, and that gradually, "a commitment to social welfare at home and liberal anti-colonialism abroad became an acceptable substitute for Christian faith".
Hitchens covers writing, faith and religion, journalism and family, amongst other things in a brilliant volume. In this unique and doubtless widespread seller-to-be I found myself engaged in the a renewed world that is exponentially bigger than anyone’s self or self-interest. Truly “if you drive God out of the world, you create a howling wilderness” Top class stuff!
Reviewer: Johnny Douglas (29/06/10)
