Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies

David Bentley Hart

Yale University Press, 2009 - Religion - 253 pages

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.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - georgee53 - LibraryThing

A powerful defence of Christianity and its contribution to civilisation in the face of aggressive atheism which denigrates the religious life in principle.

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - dcunning11235 - LibraryThing

Though there were many points in this book where I had to grit my teeth, this is actually a worthwhile book. I was surprised, to be honest. Hart does wander off the rails a few times, and opens the ...

About the author

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.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies
• Author: David Bentley Hart
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Yale University Press, 2009
• ISBN: 0300164297, 9780300164299
• Length: 253 pages
• Subjects: Religion / Atheism; Religion / Christian Theology / Apologetics; Religion / Christianity / History; Social Science / Sociology of Religion