(New York: HarperCollins, 2009)

“Fundamentalist religions are humanity’s greatest enemy.� –Michael Baigent (p. xx)

This is an intellectually filthy book, the kind of trash that book reviewers read so you don’t have to. We only take notice of it because the author calls into question the good works of Christianity in general and the Chalcedon Foundation in particular.

For those readers who might know someone who has read this book and been deceived by it, we offer this rebuttal. Christians shouldn’t be surprised when pagans slander them. Jesus Himself told us to expect it: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake� (Matt. 5:11). But for the edification of the uninformed, we ought to answer the slanders.

Think of it as a teachable moment.

Baigent commits so many journalistic crimes, it’s hard to decide where to begin. His book’s glaring faults are like a nest of baby birds all squawking at once to be fed a caterpillar. But let’s start here:

He lumps together widely disparate groups and individuals to create a straw man, “fundamentalist religion,� which he then attacks. The target is purely a product of his imagination, but he hopes the reader won’t notice that.

“Fundamentalism is a relentless progression deeper and deeper into intolerance and ignorance,� he asserts (p. xx), offering his personal opinion as an authoritative definition. As proof, he lists all sorts of actual atrocities—suicide bombings, stonings, “honor killings,� and whatnot.

The only problem is that each and every one of those atrocities was committed by Muslims, and no one else. Baigent even admits that Jews and Christians “do not go about blowing themselves up� (p. 4)—a caveat he mentions once and then ignores. So, he says, “Jewish, Christian, and Islamic fundamentalists are all at it� (p. 3)—at what?—and the Mahdi-mongering president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “[l]ike many Christian fundamentalists,� plots a global holocaust against virtually everyone (p. 64). He speaks coyly of a Southern Baptist plot to turn the U. S. military into a violent Christian crusade against the rest of the world (pp. 138–139). Is that the same Southern Baptist Convention that’s too timorous to adopt a resolution in favor of Christian education? Crusaders should be made of sterner stuff.

But it’s not enough for him to lump together Christians, Muslims, and Jews. In addition to believing in such fantasies as global warming and socialism (p. 148), Baigent also believes in the “apparent monolithic and focused nature� (p. 149) of the Christian Right—apparent to him, but not to us. He lumps together all Christians who have problems with “the scientific and secular basis of modern Western culture� (p. xxii) into one grand conspiracy against everything he considers right and true and good.

“Lounging self-importantly in the background of this theocratic aspiration like some fat medieval cardinal,� Baigent writes (p. 157), is … the Chalcedon Foundation! Yep, we’re running the show, says he. Indeed, he devotes a whole chapter (“X. Planet Rushdoony�) to attacking Chalcedon and its founder, R. J. Rushdoony, by name.

Journalistic sloth is another one of Mr. Baigent’s crimes. There is no evidence here that he even tried to interview any of the men and ministries he smears. He does mention paying a visit to the Chalcedon website and reading the “Credo,� but he chooses not to believe anything he read (p. 159). How hard would it have been for him to interview some of the personnel at Chalcedon? Has he any interest at all in getting at the truth?

To attack Chalcedon, he resorts to simple slander. He puts his own words into Chalcedon’s mouth—for instance, “The United States Constitution must be discarded!� and “All transgressors should be publicly stoned to death� (p. 153), and Christian Reconstructionists “would like to see the First Amendment removed� (pp. 171–172)—and then attacks Chalcedon for them. It’s reminiscent of the way employees of the Canadian Human Rights Commission hack into their victims’ websites, post anti-semitic rants there without the owners’ knowledge or consent, and then prosecute the poor devils for “hate speech.� But we mustn’t give Baigent any worse ideas than he already has.

Baigent’s trump card against Chalcedon is Dr. Gary North, R. J. Rushdoony’s son-in-law, a man to whom intemperate rhetorical flourishes come easily. It should be mentioned that Baigent doesn’t seem to have interviewed North, either. Although he tries to set up North as a spokesman for Chalcedon, he only mentions in passing that North broke with Chalcedon (p. 163) many years ago and now has his own ministry, for which he is the spokesman. But for Baigent the lumper, all theonomists are alike.

He simply lumps together all theonomists, Christian Reconstructionists, and religious and political conservatives, and tars them with the same brush. Some of these people don’t even speak to one another, but to Baigent they’re all just one big, happy family, busily fomenting an apocalypse.

As you may have guessed from the subtitle of this profoundly silly book, Baigent consistently resorts to sheer hysteria. “Fear is all to these people [fundamentalists],� he writes, “and every opportunity to spread it is taken� (p. xviii). But it is Baigent himself who, short on facts and reason, trades in scare tactics.

He hints darkly of “well-financed groups seeking to change the very constitutional basis of the United States� (p. 140)—although it seems to us that Congress and the president are doing a bang-up job of that without any help from us. He accuses theonomists of “hyperventilated preaching� (p. 154)—when he’s the one who’s hyperventilated—and of demanding “rabid enthusiasm and blind obedience� from zombie-like followers mesmerized by “Christian voodoo� (p. 154).

He puts words into Rushdoony’s mouth—for instance, Christians are to “conquer and convert the world, by the sword if necessary� (pg. 59)—when according to his own footnote, those words are borrowed from a Mother Jones hit piece: not exactly an unbiased source.

“Planet Rushdoony,� he hyperventilates (p. 167), “is a new Salem creeping out of intelligent but demented minds … It is no exaggeration to say that the Reconstructionists want to create hell and call it heaven.� Our activities, he rants, “can result in a North American Christian version of a Taliban state if not checked� (p. 169).

What does he mean by “checked�? Who would do the checking, and how would they do it?

“All writers from all three traditions [Christian, Muslim, Jewish],� he declares, “are treading a well-worn path, which can only lead to conflict. They all need to be stopped, right now� (p. 207).

Stopped? By whom, and how? We are beginning not to like the sound of this.

Nowhere does the hysterical Mr. Baigent explain how he would like Christians to be silenced. He leaves that to fallen man’s fertile imagination.

We, on the other hand, do not ask for some government goons to silence Mr. Baigent or anyone else who disagrees with us. Let them publish their misbegotten books. We will plod through the muck and answer them. And if we speak the truth, and God is with us, those who hear our answers will be edified.

This leads us to another one of Mr. Baigent’s annoying intellectual delinquencies. Over and over, through his book, he consistently employs a double standard. We’ve already had a taste of this, in his accusing Christians of wanting to erase the First Amendment while he blithely recommends denying us our right to speak.

The double standard first crops up in his attacks on the Bible. “Clearly the Bible cannot be taken literally … It is a collection of myths and hero stories … [I]t is worth seeing just how wrong the Bible is,� he says (p. 45). “And if Genesis can so easily be demonstrated to be mythology rather than fact�—so easily, indeed, that he doesn’t bother actually to do so—“where does this leave those fundamentalists who take every word of the Bible as immutable truth?� (p. 42)

Mr. Baigent, it almost goes without saying, believes whole-heartedly in evolution. After granting the various problems with that point of view, its apparent contradictions, impossibilities, and inanities, he goes on to say, presumably with a straight face, “But we don’t discard the theory of evolution just because of the difficulties understanding it poses�! (p. 43)

Yes, if we have any “difficulties� with the Bible, we are to chuck it out the door. But we must cling to evolution no matter how ridiculous it seems.

Baigent hyperventilates every time a Republican politician alludes to the Bible (p. 141). He thinks it’s wonderful for Democrats and leftists to lobby, create think tanks, organize political action, or even quote the Bible for their own purposes; but if Christians or conservatives do it, the sky is falling (p. 150). He actually condemns Christians for “lobbying to change the law� (p. 171), and attacks Congressman Ron Paul for supporting homeschooling and a pro-life amendment to the Constitution (p. 175).

Is it wrong for citizens to petition their government, or only wrong for Christian citizens? Is it wrong for members of Congress to propose legislation, or only wrong to propose legislation favored by Christians?

Baigent is at his hypocritical worst when applying his double standard to education. Christian homeschooling makes him frantic. Acknowledging Rushdoony as the virtual father of the Christian homeschooling movement, he warns that this “might prove to have the greatest effect of all� of Rushdoony’s efforts (p. 172)—to which we can only say, “We hope so!�

But Baigent doesn’t mean it as a compliment. “Above all,� he writes, “’godly’ homeschooling is a danger to America and perhaps to Western society in general�—it might even produce “Christian terrorists … It seems likely� (p. 178). Homeschooled children might be taught to kill “ungodly Christians … It could happen� (p. 178).

This man is starting to sound like the south end of a northbound horse. Has he forgotten to take his prozac? But here’s where the double standard comes in:

Homeschooling is bad, says Baigent, because it leads to “the manipulation of children’s belief structures�! (pp. 174–175)

What in thunderation does he think goes on in public schools? How is it even remotely possible to “educate� children without “manipulating� their beliefs? But what is wrong and terrifying for Christian parents to do with their own children becomes, in Baigent’s half-baked mind, a shining virtue when done by left-wing, secular teachers’ union members with other people’s children!

There’s more, much more, to despise in this book; but we choose not to weary the reader. Let us merely list a few more of the shabby tricks employed by this humbug.

He indulges in frequent name-calling and personal attacks; he grossly overstates the importance and influence of unimportant groups and individuals (how could he have missed Fred Phelps?); he takes the reader’s ignorance for granted; he offers notorious Christian-bashers (e.g., Americans United for Separation of Church and State, p. 136) as objective, credible authorities; he misquotes the Bible several times; he does not know the difference between “piety� and “pietism�—and so on. There is not enough honesty in this book to sell a life preserver to a drowning man. It is, in Sir Walter Raleigh’s words, “in folly ripe, in reason rotten.�

It should be noted that Baigent has long been in the business of trying to discredit Christianity. With Henry Lincoln and Richard Leigh, he co-authored Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Messianic Legacy, in which he sought to convince readers that the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ were colossal frauds. He tried, unsuccessfully, to sue Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, for allegedly plagiarizing Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Having slandered Christ Himself, it’s no big thing for Baigent to slander Christ’s people.

The real agenda of Racing Toward Armageddon comes out in the end. For Baigent, it’s not enough to silence Christians, take away their right to educate their children, and forbid them to lobby, vote, or serve in public office. For this self-avowed pagan, “We need a new vision of God� (p. 233).

“Is it not time,� he asks, “to accept that the Middle Eastern experiment with one God has failed … And that another path is needed?� (p. 237) Shouldn’t “true Christianity,� whatever that is, be “a journey that was personal, experimental, and mystical,� featuring “a type of toleration whose goal is not truth but peace�? (pp. 228, 230)

So there it is. As long as it breeds “peace,� whatever “peace� may be, we are to cultivate beliefs based on something other than the truth. It seems St. Paul got it right:

It sounds like Michael Baigent’s job description.