An attack on God both outrageous and popular: Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great climbs the bestsellers lists

National Catholic Reporter, August 3, 2007 by Laura Lloyd

In the middle of beach-reading season, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything took a leap from No. 4 to No. 2 on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list. Only The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown was outselling British journalist Christopher Hitchens' sunflower-yellow screed attacking all religion as manmade. (Princess Diana actually figures in Hitchens' arguments that God doesn't exist. One of the reasons he believes Mother Teresa is no saint is his belief she showed hypocrisy in approving of Diana's divorce when she condemned it for all others.)

By late July, Hitchens' book was still in the top 10 for its category, at No. 7. What is it about God Is Not Great that is giving it the legs to keep selling vigorously in a crowded field of summer nonfiction?

In the opinion of Rahsaan Cruz, a bookseller at Cody's Books in Berkeley, Calif., which hosted Hitchens for an evening of rhetorical all-star wrestling with writer Christopher Hedges in May, the key is Hitchens' personality. "He's a rant," Cruz said, chuckling.

Others in both the bookselling and book-reading professions have different opinions, often focusing on Hitchens' reputation as a heavy drinker and an arrogant, provocative speaker. To some, this iconoclastic bravura is appealing; to others it is a turnoff. Fr. Richard McBrien, a professor of theology and writer at the University of Notre Dame, can hardly be expected to embrace Hitchens' anti-religion viewpoints. He paused to note, however, that it is the author's posture toward his fellow humans, as much as his attempts to make them all atheists that gives McBrien pause.

"I've seen Hitchens many times on television, and he impresses me as a grouchy, sort of person, whose personality puts me off from devoting any significant amount of time and effort on his writings," McBrien said. Nevertheless, he thinks the recent spate of anti-God books by such writers as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Hitchens are unsophisticated arguments. "They are tilting at the windmills of narrowly based theology and pre-Vatican II types of faith, still found in abundance especially in Protestant fundamentalism, evangelicalism and Pentecostalism."

Steve Shapiro, who calls himself the "book maven" at Rainy Day Books, an independent bookstore in the Kansas City, Mo., area, also regards God Is Not Great with a healthy dose of skepticism. Even though he said he "might tend to agree" with a lot of the ideas in the book, he doesn't enjoy the writer's self-centered persona.

"Hitchens has gotten to a point where he thinks he's God," Shapiro said. He doubts whether the author has any new ideas and thinks he may be trying to capitalize on a trend that The Nation magazine calls "The New Atheists"--Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. "Is he [Hitchens] just jumping on the bandwagon?" Shapiro wondered.

Despite his own hesitations about a book that he admits he has only read parts of, Shapiro said the book is selling briskly in the store, mostly to people who are either trying to confirm their own beliefs or see how the other side argues its case.

Like many other of the theologically informed, Darrell Turner, a former editor/writer for Religion News Service, takes God Is Not Great with a large grain of salt. Nevertheless, he thinks that the sheer sensationalism of Hitchens' style may partly account for the book's popularity. "It's almost as if the book is a religious counterpoint to Ann Coulter" on the political right. "Her books are best sellers and there is some fascination to reading things that let it rip," Turner said.

So that's the formula: Let an outrageous person write about a slightly dangerous topic in a style and at a level that every average spiritual seeker or hardcore anti-God fanatic can understand. Color the book eggyolk yellow and ship it to thousands of bookstores. Garner favorable reviews in major newspapers. Pretty soon Hitchens isn't just a well-known atheist, he's a rich atheist.

Christopher C. Roberts, a professor at Villanova University and author of a recent book on the history of marriage, Creation and Covenant, thinks other factors are at play as well. "Fundamentalists at home and abroad are scary. Science and modernity seem impressive at first glance," he said. Consumerism and a lack of understanding of traditional religion lead Americans to want to be amused, not enlightened.

"Along come Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris cloaking the whole thing in lower-middle-brow intellectual respectability. It's like shooting fish in a barrel," he added.

"If Nietzsche and Schopenhauer start climbing The New York Times Best Seller list, then I'll be impressed. Here are the kinds of atheists who can keep a Christian up late at night, and who merit a rousing response in the morning. But the current crop--Hitchens et al are too bush league," Roberts asserted.