In a genuine, non-tone deaf review of Hitchens' book advocating atheism, Novak ends with this...
One can take the rake of his arguments to pull out dead grass in one’s own sloppy thinking about God.
...which I think functions as the highest form of praise one can bestow upon atheists. For what atheists usually seek to do — disprove the existence of God — is impossible. But what atheist screeds can do, by use of skillful writing and clear thinking, is help us better irrigate our resonance with the Idea of God. For there is plenty of sloppy thinking about the Idea of God. I can think of several American pastors I've heard speak that would qualify in that regard.
For the problem with those pastors that I've heard preach is, to boil it way down, is a severe lack of skill in effective poetry interpretation. What is needed is a re-dedication to learning the skills of the trivium, through close-reading, discussion, and then sermon — learning first the grammar sense of a poem or Scriptural passage through close-reading; then its dialectical sense through discussion with others who are close-reading; and finally, in their sermons, the rhetorical sense, evoked in effective communication. What most removes sloppiness is the first sense, grammar, for it is here where we meditate upon the profound levels of meanings and etymologies of words, figures of speech, and ideas found in poems and Scripture. Grammar pulls out the weeds of "postmodernism"/"deconstruction", which can never be killed, but can be subdued as often as we found our poetry study in grammar, first.
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