The Faith of Christopher Hitchens Larry Alex Taunton

The World’s Most Notorious Atheist

    Such an epithet is applied to Christopher Hitchens by his friend (and Protestant preacher) Larry Alex Taunton in the subtitle to his book The Faith of Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens passed away a few years ago (Dec. 15, 2011) from esophageal cancer. He is now, of course, no longer an atheist (Phil. 2:10-11).

    If you have heard of Christopher Hitchens, it is likely from hearing of his book god Is Not Great. I have only read parts of the book but he is most well known for being disrespectful, vulgar, offensive, and irreverent, often intended to shock and horrify. Basically, that is how he made his living, a lucrative living at that: criticizing and offending Christians and getting paid to do it. 

    Taunton was a conservative, and close friend of Hitchens, especially after 9/11. Taunton wrote this book (at the request of Thomas Nelson Publishers), basically to describe his friendship and experiences with Hitchens. According to Taunton, Hitchens was much more respectful and circumspect in their private discussions than he was in public and through his writings.

    At the funeral, the Steve Winwood’s song Higher Love was played. Taunton’s son, Michael, commented that Hitchens had told him that he longed for a “higher love.” Hitchens was born into an English family in 1949. His dad was a Calvinist Baptist. Calvinism is that system of teaching that legitimates the flogging and beating of children, to drive the devil out of them, because children are born in sin, from the tip of their head to the bottom of their feet. The boarding schools that Hitchens attended as he matured were also of that same bent of mind. Hitchens’s mom hid her true faith for many years - she was a Jew. When Hitchens was young, his parents had him baptized into the Church of England.

    Those three spiritual facts - in hindsight, it seems to me - contributed mightily to the rabid atheist that Hitchens would become. A father and religious environment that was too harsh and exacting, based on false theology. A mother who was a religious charlatan, hiding her true faith. And forced into a relationship with an old, dated, stodgy church consumed more with ritualism than Christ.

    So it was, at the age of 15, that Hitchens declared himself an atheist. Taunton spent a lot of time with Hitchens, to the dismay of Hitchens’s atheistic and left-wing friends. Taunton writes that, for Hitchens, “God was inevitably interpreted as that looming, fuming, grim-faced schoolmaster with a cane, accusing him of transgressions of which he was either not aware or felt no guilt” (11).

    Taunton quotes Hitchens’s brother, Peter (who also became an atheist but then returned to theism), to the effect that “Christopher decided to hate God when he was about fifteen years old” (15). That is a telling statement. You obviously cannot hate something that does not exist. What this illustrates is that Hitchens rejected a faith in God for emotional reasons, not for intellectual reasons. His experiences with “God” from his childhood would not lead him to see God as love and Christ as the epitome of that love.

    To make a short book (181 pages) even shorter, Taunton writes that two events really softened Hitchens’s atheism. The first event was 9/11. To the consternation of his leftist friends, Hitchens supported Bush’s “War on Terrorism.” He saw 9/11 as “simply evil,” from an article he wrote in Slate magazine. Of course, it is not possible to speak of evil if there is no God. Thus, at the heart of Hitchens’s atheism is a common contradiction among atheists - to be against evil and against the existence of the ultimate source of good - God. 

    As Hitchens carried on his discussions with Taunton about Christianity, he came to realize that neither the Bible nor the New Testament sanctions the type of evil that allows one to indiscriminately kill your enemies. That is not, however, the position of Islam.

    The second event that thawed Hitchens’s atheism was the adoption by Taunton and his wife of a little girl from Ukraine, Sasha, at ten years old. The little girl was HIV positive. Hitchens had, years before, become pro-life because he believed babies ought to be given the freedom to live. But it did surprise him that Christianity would motivate Taunton to adopt a girl who would require so much attention, emotionally and financially.

    Toward the end of his 62-year-old life, Hitchens was beginning to make a distinction between pseudo-Christianity and those who were truly convicted. He debated Al Sharpton but saw him as a charlatan. He also thought Jerry Falwell was a fraud. But he deeply respected Taunton and Francis Collins (another Protestant) because they believed in what they defended and they practiced what they preached.

    At the end of his chapter on “Sasha,” Taunton writes: “For the whole of his life, Christopher had longed for, but had cynically dismissed the possibility of, a higher love. Here was a glimpse that such love might be real” (111).

    If you have a “Christopher Hitchens” in your life - at work or in your family - you might benefit from reading Taunton’s book. The scars he suffered as a result of fake Christianity, in the name of Christianity, motivated him to tear apart real Christianity and damage the faith of many people. Deep convictions, defended with true courage but patiently and lovingly and lived out in daily life is a strong component of our evangelism.