“Losing Our Religion” by S. E. Cupp, Publisher Simon & Shuster, 288 pp., Hardcover, $24
Author Review by Stephen Van Eck
When Paris was liberated from the Nazis, those women who’d consorted with the enemy were shaved bald. Based on this historical precedent, S. E. Cupp should come down with an acute case of alopecia.
Cupp, who claims to be an Atheist, has written a trite, tedious and tendentious tone denouncing the “Liberal media” for its alleged negative attitude toward Christianity. This raised a lot of questions, but mostly: “Have you NO idea of all the horrible things that have been done in the name of Christ? Is present-day Christianity exempt from criticism?” Cupp would seem to give a resounding no to the first question, and a resounding yes to the second. Cupp bases her book on the utterly unquestioned notion that “America was founded on Christianity”, a fallacy no Atheist should need to have refuted. She even repeats the hoary nonsense about a “War on Christmas”, a picked fight by Fundys that no Atheist should credit. All this makes one wonder just what kind of Atheist she is. Well, she’s one who’d be happy to hawk her screed on The 700 Club (June 4). There, she agreed with Gordon Robertson that Christians are the only group that can be maligned with impunity. (Interesting Victim Complex in the majority faith.) Apparently she’s not Atheist enough to notice that this status more properly belongs to the group in which she claims membership.
So what motivates someone like her? Cupp is a prominent political archconservative (a correspondent on Hannity) with an axe to grind against a media that sometimes has the temerity to fail to ratify her policy preferences. (As if they’re obligated to.) Not a loving Cupp, she really hates Liberals and Liberalism. More and more in recent times, that seems to be the quintessence of the Conservative Movement. So, gripped with festering resentment against Liberals, she’s striking back at it, enlisting Christians with a message they’re primed to hear; but in pandering to what in all logic should be her enemy she is making a Devil’s bargain. If Christianity had the monopoly of power it once had and craves to restore, people like her would be in mortal peril. The “Liberal media” she denounces stands in the way of Theocracy sometimes (though not enough). She’s blithely ignorant of the more frequent instances where the media is deferential to or assists Christianity. Otherwise she’d have no book, which would have been better.
We would expect an Atheist to show at least a modicum of awareness of the Dark Side of Christianity (and there’s a book by Helen Ellerbe with that exact title that I’d recommend to her.) But Cupp is not much of an Atheist at all. In fact, I’d lay odds she’ll eventually get “born again” and join the enemy. All the more reason to wish she’ll go bald.
And one must also wonder why a Jewish-founded firm would agree to publish a book that advances Christian Supremacy. Their grasp of history must be as deficient as Cupp’s.