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Christians everywhere have been responding in grief and sadness over the death of famed atheist Christopher Hitchens, who passed away late Thursday evening after a yearlong battle with esophageal cancer. From pastors to theologians alike, all expressed pain and sorrow over the recent news, which Vanity Fair was the first to announce. The magazine reported that Hitchens had died from pneumonia, a complication from his stage IV cancer. He was 62 years old. Pastor Rick Warren, founder of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., tweeted, “My friend Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve...

I have several recollections of Christopher Hitchens, who died yesterday at the age of 62. The first is when I served in the George W. Bush White House and, in the first term, invited Christopher to speak to the White House staff. He spoke very well, of course, but what I most recall are a couple of things that occurred before the speech. The first is standing with him outside of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. He had gone out to smoke, which wasn’t unusual — and he confided to me that he was nervous, which was. The words “Christopher...

I say, “RIP,” sadly thinking Christopher Hitchens is not.The renowned liberal author and journalist died yesterday at the age of 62 following a short battle against esophageal cancer since summer 2010.Hitchens spent his latter years evangelizing atheism. So he wanted it known he would not convert to Christianity at the end, and if he did he really didn’t. From Causa Celsum: Hitchens suspected there would be rumors of a deathbed conversion – but even more he feared that he might actually call out to God. Speaking perhaps truer than he knew, he sought to give a preemptive strike against...

When Christopher Hitchens died this week, I trust that after he did so, something miraculous happened. That’s what my faith tells me. It’s not in good taste to speak ill of someone recently deceased. But in this case, I think Hitchens would approve, or at least shrug it off with indifference, many of the screeds written for or against him. But, while reading the eulogies about Hitchens I get the feeling, more than anything else, of a life wasted on unbelief. Everyone dies, and then…that’s it… or is it? Is all that’s left behind for a writer like Hitchens a...

A noted left-wing author who teaches at a bastion of so-called progressive education recently delivered a surprising defense of Western civilization—and an attack on prevailing academic attitudes towards it. Unfortunately, Christopher Hitchens said, confidence in the superiority of the West has been eroded in recent decades. Hitchens teaches at the New School in New York City. Hitchens criticized those Americans (on both the Left and the Right) who responded to the September 11 attacks by asking what America had done to deserve them—a question belonging to a mindset he called “moral suicide.” Such relativism, Hitchens said, is the result of...

How can a conservative commentator and an orthodox Catholic like me possibly admire Christopher Hitchens? He hated the Pope, smeared Mother Teresa viciously. He even published a book four years ago defending his militant atheism called God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Then Christopher Hitchens debated around the world on that very topic. Then he co-wrote and edited a book about the debates. In between those two books, there was a third one, about the war in Iraq and his support of it - which had caused him to break with many of the friends of his youth....

The writer, journalist and contrarian Christopher Hitchens has died at the age of 62 after crossing the border into the "land of malady" on being diagnosed with an oesophageal cancer in June 2010. Vanity Fair, for which he had written since 1992 and was made contributing editor, marked his death in a memorial article posted late on Thursday night. The reactions to Hitchens's illness from his intellectual opponents – which ranged from undisguised glee to offers of prayers – testified to his stature as one of the leading voices of secularism since the publication in 2007 of his anti-religious polemic...

R.I.P. Christopher Hitchens December 15, 2011 11:51 P.M. By Daniel Foster     Vanity Fair reports that Christopher Hitchens has passed away. Often frustrating, usually provocative, always brilliant. He added to the culture, and the conversation. I’m sure I join many in hoping he is in for a glorious, glorious surprise.

The influential writer and cultural critic Christopher Hitchens died on Thursday at the age of 62 from complications of cancer of the esophagus. Hitchens confronted his disease in part by writing, bringing the same unsparing insight to his mortality that he had directed at so many other subjects. Over the years, Hitchens' caustic attention was directed at a broad range of subjects, including Henry Kissinger, Prince Charles, Bob Hope, Michael Moore, the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa.

It’s a possibility that doesn’t seem laughable anymore. Hitchens, the celebrated British journalist, angry atheist and roué, has a very powerful piece in the January issue of Vanity Fair. Hitchens has been in Houston undergoing treatment for esophageal cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 2010. In his essay, Hitchens rejects a popular aphorism attributed to Nietzsche: “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Hitchens had thought of the phrase at different points in his life where he narrowly escaped death — experiences told well in his memoir “Hitch-22.” After enduring chemotherapy and radiation treatments that made swallowing unbearable and...

Christopher Hitchens said that his 'time' is coming as he made his first public appearance in months...The controversial writer and fervent atheist, who is suffering from oesophagus cancer, attended the Atheist Alliance of America conference in Texas where he was presented an award by Richard Dawkins. The 62-year-old said that he had been determined to attend the conference because of the state's Bible Belt devotion. Receiving the Richard Dawkins Freethinker of the Year Award, Hitchens looked gaunt and his voice was soft. ... During his speech Hitchens said that he appreciated the fact that Texas governor Rick Perry had been...

Odd how many Americans can agree with Christopher Hitchens on many issues, i.e. his rage at Henry Kissinger. I sympathize totally with such disgust. The Hitchens contempt for the Tea Party, however, is the grandest dividing line, largely due to the tea Party’s fervent belief in God and its faith in Sarah Palin whom Hitchens repeatedly heaps fear and loathing on. Hitchens, however, warns the world to not patronize Sarah Palin! He points out that his favorite film on American Presidential politics is Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. With an almost bottomless irony of ironies, he further adds that at...

JOSEPH LELYVELD SUBTLY tips his hand in his title. The word Mahatma (often employed in ordinary journalistic usage without any definite article, as if it were Mohandas Gandhi’s first name) is actually the Sanskrit word for “Great Soul.” It is a religio-spiritual honorific, to be assumed or awarded only by acclaim, and it achieved most of its currency in the West by association with Madame Blavatsky’s somewhat risible “Theosophy” movement, forerunner of many American and European tendencies to be found in writers, as discrepant as Annie Besant and T. S. Eliot, who nurture themselves on the supposedly holy character of...

The Australian: July 31, 2010, and a newspaper reader is puzzled. “Julia Gillard said ‘we all pray for Kevin Rudd’s speedy recovery’. Who the hell does an atheist pray to?” It’s a fair question. For the record, I hold the position that all men - consciously or otherwise – believe in some higher power. And, if one has faith in the media-created “rational man” then one is more faithful than Saint Paul. This idea of the soulless human is science fiction, and more fiction than science. Still, it’s an attractive myth because some seek to stand apart, to see themselves...

Death of a Madman What Obama does next will help define the legacy of Osama Bin Laden. By Christopher Hitchens There are several pleasant little towns like Abbottabad in Pakistan, strung out along the roads that lead toward the mountains from Rawalpindi (the garrison town of Pakistani's military brass and, until 2003, a safe-house for Khalid Sheik Muhammed). Muzaffarabad, Abbottabad … cool in summer and winter, with majestic views and discreet amenities. The colonial British—like Maj. James Abbott, who gave his name to this one— called them "hill stations," designed for the rest and recreation of commissioned officers. The charming...

With less than two weeks before “Everybody Pray for Hitchens Day,” cancer-stricken Christopher Hitchens is encouraging believers to hold off on praying for him. “I don’t mean to be churlish about any kind intentions, but when September 20 comes, please do not trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries,” the atheist author wrote in a first-person article for Vanity Fair’s October 2010 issue. “Unless, of course, it makes you feel better,” he added, echoing a past comment. Last month, in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Hitchens said he was well aware of the prayer groups that have formed since...

The last person you might expect Christopher Hitchens, one of the world’s best known atheists, to turn to for help would be an evangelical Christian. But a highly religious doctor might be the only individual who can help the author and journalist who is suffering from cancer. Hitchens, author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything...

In April 2001, a Pakistani diplomat—the first secretary of the Pakistani Embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal, as a matter of fact—was found by the Nepalese police to be stashing a large cache of sophisticated high explosives in his home. Muhammad Arshad Cheema invoked diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution and, after a short interval, was sent home. In October 1985, after the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean, an act of open piracy that culminated in the rolling of a disabled man, Leon Klinghoffer, from the vessel's deck into the sea, the organizer of the "operation" was apprehended...

The former prime minister said it was true that "people commit horrific acts of evil in the name of religion". But Mr Blair, who converted to Catholicism after leaving government in 2007, said it was also true that religion inspires acts of extraordinary good. Sceptic Mr Hitchens, who has terminal cancer, likened God to a "celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea". He appeared to win over the audience, which voted two-to-one in his favour following the debate, which argued the motion "be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world".

Did you know that the English-speaking world is in the midst of an Atheistic revival? It is fueled by a small but widely celebrated group of authors and thinkers who call themselves “the Brights”, and who lecture, debate and write best-selling books which have a wide following among young college and University students. These are not your father’s atheists either. They are articulate, impassioned, and effective at the use of the media, and the internet. The “new Atheists” believe that the old atheists were too tolerant of religion, and not aggressive enough in their attacks upon it. To them, religion...