“Religion Poisons Everything!” (19)

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), who has long been a personal hero of mine, distinguished himself both as a theologian and New Testament scholar and as an organ virtuoso who contributed enormously to a revival of interest in the then-inconceivably-rather-neglected music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

And then he went off to serve for decades, very famously, as a medical missionary in Lambaréné, in French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon), winning the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize.  He felt that he was following the teachings of Jesus in doing so.

Which, of course, on the Hitchens Principle that “religion poisons everything,” means that both his academic work and his humanitarian labors were, to some substantial degree, toxic.