Is popularity of atheist writers a backlash against faith?

By Rachel Zoll for the Houston Chronicle

June 29, 2007

The time for polite debate is over. Militant atheist writers are making an all-out assault on religious faith and reaching the top of the best-seller list, a sign of widespread resentment among non-believers over the influence of religion in the world. Christopher Hitchens' book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything has sold briskly since it was published last month, and his debates with clergy are drawing crowds at every stop.

Sam Harris was a little-known graduate student until he wrote the highly successful The End of Faith and its follow-up, Letter to a Christian Nation. Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon struck similar themes — and sold. "There is something like a change in the zeitgeist," Hitchens said, noting that sales of his latest book far outnumber those for his earlier work that had challenged faith. "There are a lot of people, in this country in particular, who are fed up with endless lectures by bogus clerics and endless bullying."

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, a prominent evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif., said the books' success reflects a new vehemence in the atheist critique. "I don't believe in conspiracy theories," Mouw said, "but it's almost like they all had a meeting and said, 'Let's counterattack.' " The war metaphor is apt. The writers see themselves in a battle for reason in a world crippled by superstition. In their view, Muslim extremists, Jewish settlers and Christian-right activists are from the same mold, using fairy tales posing as divine scripture to justify their lust for power. Bad behavior in the name of religion is behind some of the most dangerous global conflicts and the terrorist attacks in the U.S., London and Madrid, the atheists say. As Hitchens puts it: "Religion kills."

The Rev. Douglas Wilson, senior fellow in theology at New St. Andrews College, a Christian school in Moscow, Idaho, sees the books as a sign of secular panic. Nonbelievers are finally realizing that, contrary to what they were taught in college, faith is not dead, he says. Signs of believers' political and cultural might abound. Religious challenges to teaching evolution are still having an impact, 82 years after the infamous Scopes "monkey" trial. The dramatic growth in home schooling and private Christian schools raises questions about the future of public education. Religious leaders have succeeded in putting some limits on stem-cell research. "It sort of dawned on the secular establishment that they might lose here," said Wilson, who is debating Hitchens on ChristianityToday.com and has written the book Letter From a Christian Citizen in response to Harris. "All of this is happening precisely because there's a significant force that they have to deal with."

Indeed, believers far outnumber nonbelievers in America. In a 2005 AP-Ipsos poll on religion, only 2 percent of U.S. respondents said they did not believe in God. Other surveys concluded that 14 percent of Americans consider themselves secular, a term that can include believers who say they have no religion. Some say liberal outrage over the policies of President Bush is partly fueling sales, even though Hitchens famously supported the invasion of Iraq. "There is this general sense that evangelicals have really gained a lot of power in the United States, and the Bush administration seems to represent that in some significant ways," said Christian Smith, professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. "A certain group of people sees it that way, and that's really disturbing."

Mouw said conservative Christians are partly to blame for the backlash. The rhetoric of some evangelical leaders has been so strident, they have invited the rebuke, the seminary president said. "We have done a terrible job of presenting our perspective as a plausible worldview that has implications for public life and for education, presenting that in a way that is sensitive to the concerns of people who may disagree," he said. "Whatever may be wrong with Christopher Hitchens' attacks on religious leaders, we have certainly already matched it in our attacks." Lynn Garrett, senior religion editor for Publishers Weekly, says religion has been one of the fastest-growing categories in publishing in the last past 15 years, and the rise of books by atheists is "the flip side of that."

[Do you think that there has been a ‘backlash against faith’ – or is the whole thing just a storm in a teacup? Maybe non-theists just got fed up being picked on? Maybe atheists finally found a voice – actually several voices – and made themselves heard? Is it the growing fear amongst some that the US is in danger of becoming a Theocratic power? All good questions. Any answers?]