Honesty in the Face of Delusion (Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies) (Book Review)

Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies by David Bentley Hart (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009) An intellectual born in America and educated in England, and a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, theologian David Bentley Hart has an unusual method of challenging the enemies of Christianity. He knows too well that, in sociological terms, he belongs to a religious minority, while intellectually he inherits the great legacy of Christendom. Hart mocks the agitprop of the new atheist movements, and yet he does not give in to the widespread paranoia suggesting that the Gospel is the victim of a global conspiracy. Such a strategy would be not just rhetorically inappropriate but also historically inaccurate, since the Church is constantly growing in many hidden corners of the world. Every year, hundreds of Christians give their share of martyrdom and sacrifice. Westerners cannot appropriate this reality as a pretext for their own loss of faith.