Anglican Mainstream

By Mark Oppenheimer, New York Times interview with Peter Hitchens

(Clip)  “I did not have a ‘religious experience,’ ” Mr. Hitchens writes. “Nothing mystical or inexplicable took place — no trance, no swoon, no vision, no voices, no blaze of light. But I had a sudden strong sense of religion being a thing of the present day, not imprisoned under thick layers of time.”

From there, his return to Christianity is gradual, beginning with a rediscovery of the joys of Christmas, followed soon, on the occasion of his wedding, by the urge to be married in the Church of England. Mr. Hitchens’s catalog of return sounds quite ordered, indeed rational. He reattaches to the rituals of his natal church; he realizes that Christendom helped shore up what was best in old England. Much of “The Rage Against God” is in fact a rage against the forgetfulness of Britons, who no longer know their hymns, their great literature or the heroism of their forefathers who died in two world wars. Having noticed that the secularization of England seems to have coincided with its decline, he becomes alive to serious flaws in the reasoning of atheists, like his brother.

He notices that post-Christian societies, like Russia, where he lived for two years as a correspondent, are coarse and brutal. Of Islam and Hinduism, he says over coffee: “I would certainly say, especially having visited countries where they are broadly practiced, that I think they are inferior to Christianity. They are certainly a heck of a lot better than nothing.”

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