Questions of Faith
A conversation between Unitarian minister Marilyn Sewell and infamous atheist Christopher Hitchens
Sewell: Well, probably not, because I agree with almost everything you say. But I still consider myself a Christian and a person of faith.
Hitchens: Faith in what? Faith in the Resurrection?
Sewell: I believe one can go from a death in this life, in the sense of being dead to the world and dead to other people, to a resurrection in a new life. When I preach about Easter and the Resurrection, it’s in a metaphorical sense.
Hitchens: I hate to say it—we’ve hardly been introduced—but maybe you are simply living on the inheritance of a monstrous fraud that was preached to millions of people as the literal truth—or as you put it, “the ground of being.” Times change, and people’s beliefs change. I don’t believe that you have to be fundamentalist and literalist to be a Christian. You do—you’re something of a fundamentalist, actually.
Sewell: Well, I’m sorry—“fundamentalist” simply means those who think that the Bible is a serious book and should be taken seriously. I take it very seriously. I have my grandmother’s Bible and I still read it, but I don’t take it as literal truth. I take it as metaphorical truth. The stories, the narrative, are what’s important.
Hitchens: But then show me what there is, ethically, in any religion that can’t be duplicated by humanism. In other words, can you name me a single moral action performed or moral statement uttered by a person of faith that couldn’t be just as well pronounced or undertaken by a civilian?
Sewell: You’re absolutely right. However, religion does inspire some people. What about people like the Berrigan brothers, the Catholic priests who were jailed over and over again for their radical protesting of the Vietnam War? Or Archbishop Romero? These people claim to be motivated and sustained by their faith. Do you deny that?
Hitchens: I don’t deny it. I just don’t respect it. If someone says I’m doing this out of faith, I say, why don’t you do it out of conviction?
Sewell: You say that nonbelievers “distrust anything that contradicts science or outrageous reason” and that you “respect free inquiry.” I am a person of faith and absolutely agree with these two statements. But I do not believe that to be religious you must disconnect your brain. Do you believe that? And, if so, why?
Hitchens: The smallest privilege of faith over reason is a betrayal. When people say, “I am a person of faith,” they expect applause, as we see in every election cycle. People say faith can move mountains. Faith in what, by the way? You haven’t said.
Sewell: I don’t know whether or not God exists, let me just say that. I certainly don’t think that God is an old man in the sky; I don’t believe that God intervenes to give me goodies if I ask for them.
Hitchens: You don’t believe he’s an interventionist of any kind?
Sewell: I’m kind of an agnostic on that one. God is a mystery to me. I choose to believe because—and this is a very practical thing for me—I seem to live with more integrity when I find myself accountable to something larger than myself. That thing larger than myself I call “God,” but it’s a metaphor. That God is an emptiness out of which everything comes. Perhaps I would say God is “reality” or “what is.” You see, we’re trying to describe the infinite with the language of the finite. My faith is that I put all that I am and all that I have on the line for that which I do not know.
Hitchens: Fine. But that’s a waste of what could honestly be, in your case, very valuable time. I don’t want you to go away with the impression that I’m just a vulgar materialist. I do know that humans are also, to quote Pascal again, “so made,” even though we are an evolved species whose closest cousins are chimpanzees. I know it’s not enough for us to eat and so forth. We know how to think. We know how to laugh. We know we’re going to die, which gives us a lot to think about. We have a need for what I would call “the transcendent” or “the numinous” or even “the ecstatic,” which comes out in love and music, poetry, and landscape. I wouldn’t trust anyone who didn’t respond to things of that sort. But I think the cultural task is to separate those impulses and those needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious.
Published: January 2010
Dear Portland Monthly,
Before reading Questions of Faith in your January issue, I wanted to deeply dislike outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens. As a longtime follower of Jesus, I felt I knew who’s side of the article I would fall.
I commend Mr. Hitchens for his directness in his convictions. He quickly exposed the beliefs of Marilyn Sewell as a fraud. His statement that Sewell is really not in any meaningful sense a Christian is correct. You cannot be a follower of Christ without believing is Christ. Jesus is not a metaphor.
I would have preferred Portland Monthly choose a more committed counter argument to Hitchens beliefs. A better story could have been told.
Where Hitchens and I differ is in my belief that Jesus did rise from the dead as an atonement for our willful seperation from the Father. Quite simply, I believe in Jesus, he does not. Sewell cannot make up her mind.
I couldn’t agree more with the comment by Andrew and had nearly the same conclusions. It’s interesting, he almost knows more about what a Christian should believe more than some Christians I have known. Also, it’s almost as if he has experienced everything about what religion is and what it is “supposed” to be, however, unfortunately, he has never experienced Jesus himself; the biggest component of what a religion should be (and religion never defines your experience, nor vice-versa). Christianity as a religion by itself is just a system, prone to distortion by man. But couple it with the experience of knowing Jesus and you get what Jesus intended. That experience changes everything and what was so “foolish” before now has all the perfect sense in the world. Try explaining to a single person with no kids what it’s like to be a father or mother and you might start to begin to describe to someone what knowing Jesus is like. You won’t know the experience until you live it.
I may not agree with Hitchens, but I certainly respect him for knowing what he believes and why he believes it and would be honored to meet him.
Hitchens seems like a blunt but nice guy. However, for being an atheist he sure seems to import a lot of meaning to life that naturalism can’t provide. He speaks of “convictions” but what is a conviction in the mind of an atheist? And if there is one, it isn’t universal or right or wrong, but merely chemical, and thus nonsense. The same goes with ethics. Upon what ground can natural humanism anchor ethics without importing “oughts” into the conversation. Mr. Hitches seems to speak out of both sides of his mouth and poor Mrs. Sewell, as confused about herself as she is, she isn’t able to point it out to him.
It was an interesting read, but it would have been better if the person opposite Hitchens was a person of Christian ‘conviction.’ But it was funny that he knows what a Christian is, while she doesn’t even realize that she isn’t one.
It’s really difficult for me to take Hitchens and his ilk seriously, even though they make good arguments (as someone with a Christian background and familiarity with the Bible, I cannot understand how someone can be Christian who doesn’t believe in Jesus), because when they talk about religion or spirituality they usually ignore any faith but the Abrahamic religions. When they do talk about other belief systems they accuse the adherents of superstition and ignorance. I’d like to know how this squares up with the fact that Christians used to say the same things about indigenous people as an excuse to wipe them out. Would atheists do the same thing, given enough world power? If you truly believe religion is the basis of all human evil, then as a person of conscience you could not do anything else. And the track records of the Stalins and Pol Pots of the world really worry me.
I guess part of what I’m saying is that if someone kills me because I don’t practice their faith, at least I can write them off as a loony just before I die. But if an atheist kills me because I practice any faith, even though I never have and never will harm anyone over my beliefs… well, that’s something else again.
As for the Christian commenters here… shakes head One thing about this modern culture, both East and West (honestly, their differences are superficial at this point), is that it truly believes it is the one right way to live. I place the blame squarely at the feet of the various salvationist religions, of which Christianity is but one. There are other modes of spirituality which hold that they are the right way for the people practicing them but may not fit with any other people. Classical Greek pagan religion is an example with which readers here will be familiar. It was common practice for Greeks to salute the gods of foreigners they visited, even as they retained belief in their own. It’s not a matter of monotheism vs. polytheism either, since Hindus believe only their faith is the true one; although they have incorporated foreign deities such as Jesus, that is only because they see them as new facets of their own deities. This is unheard of outside of what Daniel Quinn calls “Taker” cultures. (If you haven’t read him, you should.)
Some of us don’t want other modes of belief forced upon us, most particularly not modes of belief which hold that only they are true and correct. Atheism is as guilty of this mode of belief as is Christianity. Anyone thinking it’s “superior” because it’s “rational” is totally missing the point—never mind that the concept of human “rationality” or “reason” is essentially meaningless, since we are but one animal on one tiny planet in a great big universe and are nowhere near understanding everything about it yet. Can we just agree to disagree and move on, please? The insults are not necessary nor productive.