Letter to a Christian Nation (Vintage) (Paperback)

by Sam Harris (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
“A breath of fresh fire.”–Wall Street Journal

"This combination of ruthless argument with polemic designed to provoke (he describes the Catholic Church as the “institution that has produced and sheltered an elite army of child-molesters") will further delight Harris’ supporters and infuriate his critics.” – San Francisco Chronicle

“Harris has consolidated his disdain for religion in a withering attack on Christianity, delivered in the form of an open letter. . . . Mr. Harris wants to grab your lapels and give you a good shake. . . . [he] makes a good case for a new and intellectually honest conversation about morality and human suffering.”–NY Observer

“As infidels go, Harris is an astonishingly successful one. . . . Letter is a readable, exhortatory screed.”–Newsweek

“Bracing.”–The Nation

“[Letter to a Christian Nation] crackles with a focused, potent energy. . . . [Harris’] arguments resonate with a satisfying common sense.”–Contra Costa Times

“Sam Harris’s elegant little book is most refreshing and a wonderful source of ammunition for those who, like me, hold to no religious doctrine. Yet I have some sympathy also with those who might be worried by his uncompromising stance. Read it and from your own view, but do not ignore its message.”
–Sir Roger Penrose, emeritus professor of mathematics, Oxford University,
author of The Road to Reality

“Reading Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation was like sitting ring side, cheering the champion, yelling ‘Yes!’ at every jab. For those of us who feel depressed by this country’s ever increasing unification of church and state, and the ever decreasing support for the sciences that deliver knowledge and reduce ignorance, ... --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Review
"A breath of fresh fire." —Wall Street Journal

“I dare you to read this book...it will not leave you unchanged. Read it if it is the last thing you do.” —Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion

“It’s a shame that not everyone in this country will read Sam Harris’ marvelous little book Letter to a Christian Nation. They won’t but they should.” —Leonard Susskind, Felix Bloch Professor in theoretical physics, Stanford University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (January 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307278778
• ISBN-13: 978-0307278777
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (654 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,018 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #1 in	Books > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Agnosticism
  #9 in	Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Church & State
  #14 in	Books > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Atheism

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

124 of 136 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Letter to a Christian Nation - Special Delivery, October 24, 2006

By	Carl Flygare (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Letter to a Christian Nation (Hardcover)

"Letter to a Christian Nation" is a rallying cry to rationalists everywhere and should serve as a wakeup call to retrograde Christians eagerly toiling away to displace science with magical thinking, overturn a woman's right to choose, relegate gays and lesbians to second class citizenship, or ensure the apocalypse.

Harris presents concise arguments with lucidity, brevity and impact. If you haven't read his prior book "The End of Faith" the thesis of "Letter to a Christian Nation" will be startling and new. If you have, this worthy distillate of his prior work specifically focuses on the fundamentalist follies and foibles of America's cleverly marketed McJesus movement. With deft strokes Harris pens a number of reasons not to be a Christian - or religious at all. He exposes the unreasonableness of faith, explaining with clarity and philosophical rigor why there is no real justification for believing in God, and how the notion of "faith" does little to justify any unfounded belief, or merit respect for same.

Moral arguments come next as Harris, using examples ranging from Mother Teresa to the hatred of homosexuals, demonstrates that the Christian value system easily leads to ethically repugnant behavior - despicable in principal and practice because of the widespread and very real human suffering it creates. Christianity's maniacal obsession with people having sex is revealed as morally destitute - religious right political mandates that keep condoms out of Africa only increase the staggering AIDS death toll. Earlier this year Christian luddites unsuccessfully attempted to block the life saving Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine, which will prevent many cases of cervical cancer because - in their twisted moral calculus - it might lead to teenagers having a little more sex. In this latter case what is deeply evil - immoral doesn't begin to describe it - is that Christians have decided that dying of a preventable disease is the price teenagers should pay - their punishment for a capriciously and arbitrarily defined concept known as sin - for daring to enjoy each other's bodies.

Harris never holds back and isn't afraid to offend his intended audience. After a through debunking of the fraudulent anti-evolution ideology that has become a litmus test for the Christian Young Earth Creationist (YEC) claque, he concludes by bluntly stating that those who don't accept evolution on the facts are ignorant at best, delusional or dumb at worst.

In a world where people are killed every day because they hold different views about which internally inconsistent and ultimately incomprehensible book God supposedly wrote, and mail-order ministers or medieval mullahs impose the ravings of bronze to iron age mystics on impressionable children, scientific marvels save and improve countless lives every day - what excuse is their for belief in a God who slaughters innocent children by the tens of thousands in tsunamis, or the global genocide euphemistically glorified as the Noachian deluge? Or a God seemingly obsessed with who has sex with who and how they have it?

In "Letter to a Christian Nation" Sam Harris delegates Christianity to the same deity dustbin of history that Thor, Zeus, and Mitrha occupy. Hopefully this book will inspire others to leave behind their equally invisible and imaginary friends.

83 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, but not worth the price, March 11, 2007

By	Darun Naft (Hartford, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letter to a Christian Nation (Hardcover)

This is a great think-piece by harris, however, I find it hard to justify paying the price for this thin volume. In reality, the book is less than 90 tiny pages long and should really be sold as a digital short. Nonetheless, the content is strong, well-written, and impassioned. Harris makes strong arguments as to why Christians are so hypocritical when it comes to real-world issues such as abortions, war, cervical cancer and more. Even though I recommend this I would say you would be better off checking it out of your local library.

55 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Follow up to End of Faith, March 11, 2007

By	James I. Huston (Louisville, KY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Letter to a Christian Nation (Hardcover)

Sam Harris received a lot of criticism for his book, "End of Faith." There were also people who believed he was speaking about Islam rather than the group of Abrahamic religions. This book is directed at the Christian majority of the United States and adresses the group directly. The book is very short, so it takes a couple of hours to read at the most.