Among all the great transitions that have marked Western history, only one-the triumph of Christianity-can be called in the fullest sense a revolution
In this provocative book one of the most brilliant scholars of religion today dismantles distorted religious histories offered up by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and other contemporary critics of religion and advocates of atheism. David Bentley Hart provides a bold correction of the New Atheists's misrepresentations of the Christian past, countering their polemics with a brilliant account of Christianity and its message of human charity as the most revolutionary movement in all of Western history.
Hart outlines how Christianity transformed the ancient world in ways we may have forgotten: bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the Age of Reason was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason's authority as a cultural value. Hart closes the book in the present, delineating the ominous consequences of the decline of Christendom in a culture that is built upon its moral and spiritual values.
David Bentley Hart is the author of several books, including In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments and The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. He lives in Providence, RI.
Title: Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies
Author: David Bentley Hart
ISBN: 9780300164299
Binding:
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication Date: 2010-02-23
Number of Pages: 272
Weight: 0.3176 kg
Hart has the gifts of a good advocate. He writes with clarity and force, and he drives his points home again and again. He exposes his opponents errors of fact or logic with ruthless precision. -Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement
It is a taut and tart introduction to the ideas that drove the Christian Revolution, fired by righteous anger and with an arsenal of learning that explodes off the page. -Nick Mattiske,
The Lutheran (Australian Lutheran Church)
A brilliant investigation of the current fad among intellectuals for atheism. -
Contemporary Review A provocative work, vigorous, humorous, erudite. -James R. A. Merrick,
Scottish Bulletin on Evangelical Theory . . . takes no prisoners in its response to fashionable criticisms of Christianity. -Dr Rowan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury,
Church Times Entertaining and challenging, this book brings us back to what Christmas is about. -Nick Baines,
The Church Times (Christmas Books) With impressive erudition and polemical panache, David Hart smites hip and thigh the peddlers of a 'new atheism' that recycles hoary arguments from the past. His grim assessment of our cultural moment challenges the hope that 'the Christian revolution' could happen again. -Richard John Neuhaus, former editor in chief of First Things
Provoked by and responding to the standard-bearers of 'the New Atheism,' this original and intellectually impressive work deftly demolishes their mythical account of 'the rise of modernity.' Hart argues instead that the genuinely humane values of modernity have their historic roots in Christianity. -Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke Divinity School
In this learned, provocative, and sophisticated book, Hart presents a frontal challenge to today's myopic caricature of the culture and religion that existed in previous centuries. -Robert Louis Wilken, University of Virginia
Surely Dawkins, Hitchens et al would never have dared put pen to paper had they known of the existence of David Bentley Hart. After this demolition-job all that is left for them to do is repent and rejoice at the discreditation of their erstwhile selves. -John Milbank, author of Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology
A devastating dissection of the 'new atheism,' a timely reminder of the fact that 'no Christianity' would have meant 'no West,' and a rousing good read. David Hart is one of America's sharpest minds, and this is Hart in full, all guns firing and the band playing on the deck. -George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington
An unanswerable and frequently hilarious demolition of the shoddy thinking and historical illiteracy of the so-called New Atheists. -Michael Robbins,
Commonweal -- Michael Robbins * Commonweal *