Give Jesus A Shot Satirist Tell Uppity Atheists To Light Up — Book Compares ‘New Atheists’ to ‘Religious Right’
Book Compares ‘New Atheists’ to ‘Religious Right’
WACO, Texas Becky Garrison would like the faithful and the faithless to work together to fix social ills.
Or at least be civil enough to chat over cocktails at Mardi Gras.
She also wants to expose the mainline Christian churches in America to a wider range of voices within the world community.
She wants you to laugh, too.
Hey, she’s a satirist. What do you expect? A resurrection?
Well, the senior contributing writer for The Wittenberg Door, “The World’s Only Religious Satire Magazine,” has two books on the market, each with its own agenda:
One jousts the four horsemen of the New Atheist Movement (The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail: The Misguided Quest to Destroy Your Faith Thomas Nelson Publishing).
The other (Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church Seabury Books) invites followers and other unchurched folk over for some tea and Chocolate Jesus.
FYI, she holds back on the sarcasm in that last book.
Garrison told the Iconoclast that she took up the cause of skewering those self-dubbed New Atheists for the same reason she lances the Religious Right.
“They are critiquing that which they don’t really get,” she said.
Examples:
“Christopher Hitchens calls Martin Luther King, Jr. a ‘nominal Christian.’ Sam Harris says that King is more influenced by Jainism rather than by Christianity. Richard Dawkins does not engage with any of the other thinkers such as N.T. Wright.
“You know, how is that any different than picking up one of Pat Robertson’s books and reading one of his nutty Jewish conspiracy theories?”
In other words, they’re lairs, they don’t play well with others, nor do they care about issues in which they’re talking.
“These four best-selling authors need to get their balloons deflated,” she huffed.
There you go.
Following the lead of such satirists as Jonathan Swift, her aim is “to turn down the white noise” and let “the glimpses of God come shining through,” so that “we can actually have an honest debate.”
“The shouting is just driving everybody away on both sides,” she added. “These atheists are saying, ‘Christians are assholes.’ Well, who wants to hang out with people who think that?”
Hey, she has a point: Desmond Tutu isn’t an ass.
And atheists want that debate. One that Garrison notes in her book is Greg Epstein, a humanist chaplain at Harvard University.
The lack of religious literacy remains a big problem in the United States, even, if not especially, among entertainers.
Take PETA-loving, libertarian-leaning comedian Bill Maher, for example.
As Garrison puts it, Maher “completely screwed up” one January evening on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
“[Maher] claimed you can’t be a rational person six days a week, then one day drink the blood of some space god.
The secular audience went sil
