In his new book, God Is Not Great, subtitled How Religion Poisons Everything, anti-theist Christopher Hitchens states, "religion makes people do wicked things they wouldn't ordinarily do . . . the licenses for genocide, slavery, racism, are all right there in the holy text."

It is a rather empty accusation when put alongside a man like William Wilberforce, who as the film Amazing Grace shows, attacked and abolished the slave trade because of his Christian convictions.