God Is Not Great is considered a seminal work of New Atheism, an early-21st century movement that included Christopher Hitchens and other prominent anti-religious intellectuals like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Not all New Atheists considered themselves part of a defined movement, but the group is set apart from many earlier public atheists by their belief that religion is not only incorrect, but dangerous. New Atheism appeared primarily among intellectuals in the United Kingdom and United States, with most of the movement’s members having academic careers in subjects such as evolutionary biology, psychology, and politics. Many New Atheists expressed a belief that their atheist worldview was condemned, and even oppressed, by the larger religious minority, and that more people would admit to being atheists if it was more widely acceptable to do so.

Among the New Atheists, Christopher Hitchens was particularly concerned with religion’s effect on world politics, as well as freedom of speech and expression. This viewpoint is clear in God Is Not Great, especially when examined side-by-side with other major New Atheist publications, such as Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. While Dawkins uses a biological and psychological approach to explain how religion came to define human society despite there being no god, Hitchens only briefly touches on the sociological origins of faith and instead focuses on its destructive patterns throughout history.