Christianity Today

I liked how you used Eric Brandt as part of your offense toward Jocoby’s book.”... that this material was generally obtained secondhand from popular summaries. Instead of reading the historical, philosophical, or scientific work itself he had raided someone else's condensed account of I” How hypocritical of you to blast her research. At least she did research, unlike the book you live by, which, might I add, is entirely secondhand information.

Anne, just a couple of things. The Reformation took about 1500 years to occur. Not exactly what I would call being on top of things. Also, the Abolitionist Movement was only necessary because the "Christians" who came over to America in the first place brought the slaves in after them because there weren't enough indentured servants to do the work they felt needed to be done. You're also conveniently overlooking the terrible record the churches in the South had after the Civil War and before, and even after, the civil rights laws of the 60's. So bad, in fact, that the Southern Baptist Convention felt obligated, in more recent years, to apologize to African Americans. At least the Abolitionist Movement only took a few hundred years to occur. Your response time is improving.

I haven't read Jacoby's book, so I'm not going to comment directly on your review. However, I think you have to remember the era in which Ingersoll lived and the probable makeup of his audience. My guess is that most of them were not in a position to give an intellectual defense of their faith. How many can do it today? Whether or not he was capable of it , why would he use an intellectual argument in that context. I doubt the evangelists, or even ministers, of the day were using a lot of those kinds of arguments. D. L. Moody and William Jennings Bryan, his religious counterparts if not contemporaries, certainly weren't intellectuals. Bryan proved that during the Scopes trial. I became familiar with Moody while a student at the school that bears his name. At any rate, the point is that why should the bar be higher for the individual who is questioning a belief system than it is for one who's promoting it? As a lawyer, Ingersoll won cases by raising doubts.... about his client's guilt.

I had to chuckle over this line in the review: "Christian historical writing has now matured to the point where it has dispensed with hagiography." Perhaps Dr. Larsen doesn't consider what David Barton does to be Christian historical writing. However, in light of the fact that many evangelicals do consider Barton to be a Christian historian, I think it might be more appropriate for CT to allow such judgments to start with the house of God.

Kathleen: No, you can't prove a negative, but atheists make a lot of claims besides just the claim that God doesn't exist. Prominent atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens and others have claimed that the world would be less violent without religion, that science can offer a comprehensive worldview without recourse to faith, and that faith and science are incompatible. Surely these claims should be substantiated with historical and scientific evidence, and yet when such evidence is offered, it is always cherry-picked to showcase the worst of what has been done in the name of God without ever considering the overwhelmingly positive contribution that religion has made to all aspects of human society. Nor do atheists consider the historical evidence that Christianity continually confronts and corrects its own abuses, as in the Protestant Reformation or the Abolitionist Movement in America.