sonoluminescense:

sds:

Sewell [former Unitarian pastor]: The religion you cite in your book is a generally fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make any distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?

Hitchens: I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

When Hitchens gets it right, he gets it right.

I feel a pragmatic urge to side with Sewell in this instance. The only issue that Hitchens seems to be arguing is the idea (and granted, your quote is a snippet) that you are unable to be a “true” Christian unless you believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the “true” Son of God… it seems to exclude any ideas of a faith which simply believes in the idea that you can believe in the faith or sanctity of an ideal without believing it’s divinity.

The resurrection of Jesus is one of the hinge pins of Christianity. Without it, everything falls apart. Paul taught that.

The irony here is that Hitchens understands (even if he doesn’t believe) what is necessary to really believe the Christian faith more than the liberal “Christian.”