A new book by Christian author, Larry Alex Taunton, an evangelical Christian who knew Christopher Hitchens for three years makes the claim that Hitchens had privately considered converting to Christianity before his death in his new book, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World’s Most Notorious Atheist.

During his conversations with Hitchens, Taunton claimed that he was asked if she understood why he, Hitchens, didn’t believe in God.

“His tone was marked by a sincerity that wasn’t typical of the man,” Taunton writes. “Not on this subject anyway. A lifetime of rebellion against God had brought him to a moment where he was staring into the depths of eternity, teetering on the edge of belief.”

This is when the story takes a really fictional turn for the worse. Taunton, who alludes strongly to Hitchen’s conversion, acknowledges in his book that he has “no reports of a deathbed conversion” for Hitchens, but continues to speculate that the author of God is Not Great, sought out the Church before his dead in 2011.

“At the end of his life, Christopher’s searches had brought him willingly, if secretly, to the altar,” Taunton writes at the end of the book. “Precisely what he did there, no one knows.”

He continued by claiming that Hitchens believed he was too famous of an atheist to admit that he had a change-of-heart.

Friends of Hitchens, however, are furious as these false claims by Taunton.

Steve Wasserman, a friend of Hitchens for more than 30 years, called the book’s claims “petty” and “appalling.”

“I am not in the position to dispute what Taunton says were private conversations,” he said by phone from New Haven, Conn., where he is executive editor-at-large for Yale University Press. “But I really think it is a shabby business. It reveals a lack of respect. This is not a way to debate Christopher Hitchens’ beliefs — to report unverifiable conversations, which amazingly contradict everything Christopher Hitchens ever said or stood for.”

Benjamin Schwarz, Hitchens’ editor at The Atlantic, said, “That Christopher had friends who were evangelicals is testimony to his intellectual tolerance and largeness of heart, not to any covert religiosity.”

Taunton stands firm by his claim, ignoring the final work by Hitchens, Mortality, in which he kept a diary of his final years and never once seemed to soften on his hatred for organized religion and his feelings about a so-called God.

“I would say to any would-be critics, read the book,” Taunton told journalist Kimberly Winston. “You will see that this a gentle treatment of Christopher Hitchens, far more gentle than his (book-length) assaults on the Clintons or Mother Teresa. I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt.”

That’s because Hitchen’s was honest in his claims, unlike you Mr. Taunton. Hitchens provided evidence for the claims he brought forward, not mysterious, unrecorded conversations between someone he had just met and himself.

Christopher Hitchens had integrity.