Less than a year before his death, I interviewed Christopher Hitchens for Portland Monthlymagazine. I didn't want to do the interview. As I told editor Randy Gragg, "I don't like Christopher Hitchens. He is rude. He is a bully. So why should I help get his work before more people?" But Randy prevailed upon me. After all, Hitchens would be giving a lecture -- about God, of course -- in my hometown of Portland soon, and people would be passionately interested. I agreed to do the interview, and I'm so glad I did.
I knew that my job in approaching the interview was to not get hooked by Hitchens' jabs at Christianity, or at me, for that matter. I had my list of questions all ready to go. During the interview, I had the feeling that I was encountering a "bad boy," a playful persona honed to perfection, one that he was totally conscious of and used brilliantly for PR purposes. I also sensed underneath the persona a deeply wounded, angry child. I don't know where that anger came from, but it was a given from which he moved, and then used his brilliant intellect to focus, parse and dissect. No one could encounter that extraordinary mind without marveling. That day Hitchens simply spoke in whole paragraphs of perfectly constructed concepts, consistently, for more than an hour.
After his lecture on Jan. 5, a small group of us were invited to have dinner with Hitchens. There were several of us clergy present, including Marcus Borg, the internationally known Jesus scholar; plus Andrew Proctor, the head of Portland Arts and Lectures; Emily Harris, local radio personality; and of course Randy Gragg. Hitchens was known for his ability to drink great quantities of alcohol and never lose his sharp edge, a capacity in full flower that evening. He downed one glass of red wine after the next, hardly pausing except to ramble on, and managed to insult, in particular, the clergy. An African-American minister mentioned how much gospel music meant to him, and in response Hitchens quoted Percy Bysshe Shelley, and then told the minister that the words of Shelley were much more meaningful than "that gospel stuff." Marcus Borg attempted to speak of his devotional life, but Hitchens would have none of it. Borg left the dinner early, with a kind but oblique remark to Hitchens: "Whatever you are doing, you do it quite well."
I tried to encourage Hitchens to pause from time to time and listen to what others around the table were saying, but I was largely unsuccessful, as you might imagine: He charged on ahead, totally dominating the conversation. I was one of the last ones to leave the dinner, and found myself on the sidewalk in the dark night, still talking with Christopher, who still held a glass of red wine in his hand. Unaccountably, I felt a clean, clear sense of affection for him. I know in my own life the anger that is always there, waiting to be tapped. I know that this rage has its uses, to counter ignorance and injustice, and I know it sometimes bullies and hurts.
The interview itself revealed a surprisingly religious Christopher Hitchens. He ended up using words like numinous and transcendent and soul. He said, "I can write and I can talk, and sometimes when I'm doing either of these things, I realize that I've written a sentence or uttered a thought that I didn't absolutely know I had in me until I saw it on the page or heard myself say it. There is a sense that it wasn't all done by my hand." A bit later he added, "Everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel that there's more to life than just matter." At the end of the interview, I told Hitchens, "I would love to have you in my church because you're so eloquent, and, I believe some of your impulses -- excuse me for saying so -- are religious in the way I am religious." And Hitchens responded, "I'm touched that you say, as others have that I've missed my vocation. But I would not be able to be this way if I were wearing robes or claiming authority that was other than human. That's a distinction that matters to me very much."
Hitchens did not miss his vocation. He has done more than most anyone to focus popular attention on the egregious dimensions of religion. He just wanted the world, and all its people, to be pure. Unfortunately, we are not. Hence, the impulse for religion.
Read the printed interview, or hear the entire audio interview: Questions of Faith
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Thanks for this fascinating recollection about Hitchens, and the link to your interview. In the interview you asked him, “... what is a soul for you?” and his answer was remarkable: “It’s what you might call ‘the x-factor ... the element of us that isn’t entirely materialistic: the numinous, the transcendent. I don’t think the soul is immortal, or at least not immortal in individuals, but it may be immortal as an aspect of the human personality, because when I talk about what literature nourishes, it would be silly of me or reductionist to say that it only nourishes the brain.”
After reading God Is Not Great I would never have imagined him speaking of human personality in such open-ended, mystery-affirming language. In Bridging the God Gap (p. 161) I criticized Hitchens for saying, “There is no need for us to gather every day, or every seven days, ... to proclaim our rectitude or to grovel and wallow in our unworthiness. ... Sacrifices and ceremonies are abhorrent to us [atheists].” I wish he could have fully experienced the way Unitarian Universalist services can touch “the x-factor,” nourishing what great music and literature nourish, without promoting rigid doctrine or superstition.
Roger Christan Schriner
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The idea in the past was you take on the fanatics and make friends with the good religious people.
“But Hitchens said faith itself was the problem. That it undermined the ability of society to move forward. He thought the entire religious enterprise was foul. It was a real problem to have so many people who could not justify their belief in the invisible without a reasoned argument.”
Mr. Hitchens was what atheists called jokingly “one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse,” the group mentioned in the New Testament as representing the end of the world, said Mr. Trottier.
“He was our devil’s advocate.”
But unlike his three companions, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, all philosophers and academics, Mr. Hitchens was a journalist who got his feet and hands dirty seeing for himself the impact of religious fanaticism, Mr. Trottier added.
“He lived in the real world and it brought him a lot of respect.”
Mr. Hitchens’ timing was also perfect. God Is Not Great was published after 9/11, a time in which fear of religious fanaticism was at its peak.
The historian Karen Armstrong, a former nun, has said Mr. Hitchens’ biggest mistake — as well as that of the other new atheists — was to confuse fanatical elements in religion with the totality of all religion.
“All insist that fundamentalism constitutes the essence and core of all religion,” she wrote in The Case For God.
“This has weakened their critique, because fundamentalism is in fact a defiantly unorthodox form of faith that frequently misrepresents the tradition it is trying to defend.”
American author and journalist Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest in New York, agreed Mr. Hitchens contributed to secular society’s mistrust of religion by focusing on its shortcomings.
At the same time, he did keep the religious from becoming complacent, Fr. Martin said.
“I would say that intelligent atheists keep religious people on their toes” by forcing them to really think about what they believe, he said.
Religion is a sensitive subject matter. Debates about this is unceasing. But I must say, the exchange of opinions with Mr. Hitchens is very educating.
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