# Unitarian Minister Interviews Atheist Christopher Hitchens



## Michael (Jan 31, 2010)

Now this is really a fascinating read: Portland Monthly Magazine / Arts & Entertainment / Home / Detail

Throughout, it is obvious that Unitarian Marilyn Sewell is courting Hitchen's favor. The entertaining part is how he really doesn't want anything to do with her nonsense mixing with his. The whole exchange is quite remarkable...here is just one excerpt:



> *Sewell:* The religion you cite in your book is a generally fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make any distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?
> 
> *Hitchens:* I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.


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## Mushroom (Jan 31, 2010)

Nearly fell out of my chair. Too funny. Atheist burns Unitarian.


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## DMcFadden (Jan 31, 2010)

Michael, that is a CLASSIC!
I'd love to watch a group of libs squirm when their attempts to court Hitchens' approbation falls flat and he makes them look like fools.


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## fredtgreco (Jan 31, 2010)

Thanks for this, Michael. I blogged briefly about this here:

An Interesting Conversation


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## Wayne (Jan 31, 2010)

I loved what she said in response to Hitchens:



> Sewell: Let me go someplace else. . .


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## Archlute (Jan 31, 2010)

Nice one!


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## Narnian (Jan 31, 2010)

I would give Hitchens this much respect - at least he, unlike the Unitarian, knows what he disagrees with.

Reminds me of Dorothy Sayers iin "Creed or Chaos":



> It would not perhaps be altogether surprising if, in this nominally Christian country, where the Creeds are daily recited, there were a number of people who knew all about Christian doctrine and disliked it. It is more startling to discover how many people there are who heartily dislike and despise Christianity without having the faintest notion what it is. If you tell them, they cannot believe you. I do not mean that they cannot believe the doctrine: that would be understandable enough, since it takes some believing. I mean that they simply cannot believe that anything so interesting, so exciting and so dramatic can be the orthodox Creed of the Church.


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## Theoretical (Feb 1, 2010)

Michael Turner said:


> Now this is really a fascinating read: Portland Monthly Magazine / Arts & Entertainment / Home / Detail
> 
> Throughout, it is obvious that Unitarian Marilyn Sewell is courting Hitchen's favor. The entertaining part is how he really doesn't want anything to do with her nonsense mixing with his. The whole exchange is quite remarkable...here is just one excerpt:
> 
> ...



I am totally unsurprised. Many of the most hardened atheists and agnostics I know or have heard of have a grudging respect for real Christians that are actually intellectually and personally coherent (read observant/devout) individuals. Liberal religion is something tolerated at parties, but is frequently loathed as a foolish crutch. The respect for a serious Christian may be that one has toward a powerful enemy, but it's altogether different from liberal religion.

Of note, H.L. Mencken and Walter Lippmann spoke highly of and highly respected Machen, and Mencken was somewhat the Hitchens of the 1930s, especially in tone.


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## VilnaGaon (Feb 1, 2010)

Theoretical said:


> Michael Turner said:
> 
> 
> > Now this is really a fascinating read: Portland Monthly Magazine / Arts & Entertainment / Home / Detail
> ...


I agree. This is why liberal churches are dying out but conservative churches are holding out and some might claim even increasing. Finally something to celebrate!


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## Curt (Feb 1, 2010)

Thanks for the link on that interview. I think it's very telling that Hitchens explained to the "minister" that she is not a Christian. I put a link to the article in my blog this morning.


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## Jon Peters (Feb 1, 2010)

Great interview. Thanks for posting this.


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## Marrow Man (Feb 1, 2010)

That is hilarious! 

Scott is correct above -- I've seen elsewhere where the New Atheists seem to have an even greater disdain for liberal Christianity. "Why play at religion? You might as well be an atheist" seems to be the attitude.


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## ValiantforTruth (Feb 1, 2010)

Theoretical said:


> Of note, H.L. Mencken and Walter Lippmann spoke highly of and highly respected Machen, and Mencken was somewhat the Hitchens of the 1930s, especially in tone.


 
I thought of this same thing. I just reread Mencken's obituary of Machen a few weeks ago. It is EXCELLENT.


"Dr. Fundamentalis"

---------- Post added at 05:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:15 PM ----------

Here is an honest atheist:

"What caused him to quit the Princeton Theological Seminary and found a seminary of his own was his complete inability, as a theologian, to square the disingenuous evasions of Modernism with the fundamentals of Christian doctrine. He saw clearly that the only effects that could follow diluting and polluting Christianity in the Modernist manner would be its complete abandonment and ruin. Either it was true or it was not true. If, as he believed, it was true, then there could be no compromise with persons who sought to whittle away its essential postulates, however respectable their motives."


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## SemperEruditio (Feb 1, 2010)

When will Liberals learn? They stand for nothing and fall for anything.


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