Book Review: Letters to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

I was a militant atheist for most of my teens and 20’s. I especially loved the work of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. Sam Harris’ Letters to a Christian Nation was another memorable work but it never really clicked for me as much as the work of the other two writers. I reread it recently now much older and more spiritually inclined and found the work eye-opening though not for reasons the author intended.

Letters is a very short book focused on one core argument: Religion and belief in God are bad because they make humans do bad things. Harris lays out a rather “just so” account of human history focusing on wars and atrocities he asserts were all caused by religion. The argument doesn’t interest me so much because if you are at all a “skeptic” as the atheist intellectual crowd so like to identify as then there is no way you’ll find it convincing. A high school kid can point out that secular atheist governments were far bloodier in the 20th century, or that the assertion that humans would have “achieved more” if they had never had religion is unfalsifiable and assumes humans didn’t come as far as they did because of religion.

As far as anti-religion polemics go this one is rather pedestrian in part because of its brevity but also because of its lack of original thought or depth of reasoning. No, what interested me about reading it a second time rather was the tone. For some reason the style of writing was really off-putting. Harris’ voice reminds me of the Japanese term kabedon which refers to putting your hand on a wall behind someone’s head so as to trap them. I felt like he was doing that to me while reading this. There was this ever-present neediness — as if he personally would just be so disappointed if you didn’t agree with him. For intelligent readers this is likely to only trigger greater doubt of his position.

The issue is not that I disagree with the argument. Hawkins and Hitchens don’t have this problem — I still love their work, even their pro-Atheism writings. However re-reading Letters reminded me of the importance of humility in writing, especially when approaching big challenging topics like God. One of the reasons I loved G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy is that he writes with such humor and unpretentiousness. He is a vastly better skeptic in his love letter to Catholicism than Harris ever was. Therefore my main takeaway in rereading Letters is a helpful lesson in writing. Thanks Sam.

Grade: C