Letter to a Christian Nation

Sam Harris

Sam Harris' first book, The End of Faith, was a meticulously-researched plunge into the depths of religious lunacy. You'll get a lot more out of Letter to a Christian Nation if you look at it as Harris' reaction to the writing of that book, one where he takes all the facts and figures he internalized while researching the first book and kept them all in the back of his head in the writing of this free-form polemic. It's simple lashing out. It's a bare-faced, one-track-minded, full-on assault, simple naked hatred unleashed on the page. And as such, it's a book that invites a polarization in its audience; if you agree with its premises, you're going to get along with this book very, very well. If, on the other hand, you're one of its millions of intended recipients, you're most probably going to reject it out of hand (unless, perhaps, you've read The End of Faith and understand that Harris does, in fact, have a solid basis of research for every charge he levels in these ninety-six pages). And no matter how much I agree with every word Harris has committed to paper here, even I have to admit that he went overboard; polemic only goes so far when it comes to writing style.

Still, there's a perverse glee to be had in the reading of this, precisely because Harris is so dead-on in his assessment of the mindsets he's attacking. They won't see it that way, of course (except for those few contentious religious zealots who will be proud to find themselves in Harris' prose). The problem with said glee is that it's going to come from those who already subscribe to the mindset; Harris is, in effect, preaching to the choir. In the end, that will serve no purpose other than to further polarize an already electric debate.