Book Review: Heresy by Michael Coren

I was interested to see what rebuttals to such accusatory statements about Christianity like

• Christianity is against science
• Christianity supports slavery
• Hitler was a Christian
• Christianity is anti-intellectual
• Christianity resists progress
• Jesus never existed
• Christians are overly concerned about abortions

There are ten chapters each addressing one of these lies. I personally did not take any issue with any of his arguments to the contrary of these lies. Nearly everyone of his arguments were made in the affirmative. For example:

Lie: Christianity supports slavery

Rebuttal: Christians led the fight for abolition, therefore Christianity does not support slavery.

or

Lie: Christians are anti-science

Rebuttal: Here are a dozen examples where Christians were the leading scientists in their fields. 

While I appreciate the rebuttals, many of which are nice 2 page bios on important Christian activists or intellectuals, Mr. Coren rarely lends any credence to the origins of the lies and therefore never really counters what would be the honest statements by Christianity's detractors. For instance, I would have appreciated an acknowledgement that there were Christians at one point who profited greatly from slavery, but why those Christians were not living out a historical Christian faith. Or acknowledging that there continues to exist an anti-intellectual segment within the Christian population and simply explaining why that is and why it should not colour the entire faith as anti-intellectual.

It was an easy read, but not entirely helpful as an apologetic text or even as a contemporary analysis of how Christians ought to be viewed.