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Title: Stealing Jesus : How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity by Bruce Bawer ISBN: 0-609-80222-4 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 20 October, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.61 (119 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Testimony of a Former Fundamentalist
Comment: Speaking as a former fundamentalist, and a "born again" Christian for 25 years, I believe Mr. Bawer if right on. I am no longer a member of a fundamentalist church, or any mainstream church for that matter, because I refuse to put God in the box that the fundamentalists do, and I refuse to accept all their dogma. I must say that human beings in general tend to see the world through whatever system of thought they have been taught,and it takes a courageous and creative person to see through it to the truth outside the box. One does not have to understand or accept everything Mr. Bawer says to agree that fundamentalism is not the "religion" of Jesus, it is not healthy or kind, it does not even make sense. This is coming from someone who spent 25 years studying it from the inside, and in the end saw the futility of believing that way. I recommend the book. Even though you might not agree with everything, there is something valuable here for everyone to consider.
Rating: 5
Summary: And The Truth Shall Set You Free...
Comment: In the 1970s, as a young teen, I was literally and unmindfully being terrorized into fundamentalist Christianity by Hal Lindsey's book, "The Late Great Planet Earth" (see my review), and also by an older co-worker. In my early 20s I had attended a couple of Fundamentalist churches during a time in my life when I was hungrily seeking God. While I was there, I was further indoctrinated and terrorized by the types of churches Bruce Bawer brilliantly and superlatively exposes in his book "Stealing Jesus." I wish this book had been written back then. Perhaps I could have avoided more emotional pain.
The mind-set of fundamentalist Christianity was creatively and accurately brought to light by the author. It is a mind-set where correct dogmatic belief and accurate Biblical interpretation and literalism is valued above virtues such as compassion, love, understanding, and forgiveness. It is about being "right" instead of loving. The Law versus Love. Bawer demonstrates throughout the book that beneath the fundamentalist rhetoric lurks the shadow side of humanity, the ego. The ego is about control and being right. When we view ourselves as "saved" and others as "lost" that establishes a dichotomy in where the worst of humanity can thrive.
The subtitle "How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity" is a bold and daring statement. It is also very accurate. If you believe that Jesus was guiding us toward a sacred experience of an all loving God, and that Jesus was demonstrating the complete and inclusive love of God from which we are to live in and to love others, then that is the type of Christianity that fundamentalism betrays. My experience of Fundamentalist Christianity in sermon after sermon was of being persecuted into the right way of believing, thinking, and acting, with the sometimes not so subtle threats of what would befall the person who fails to believe, think, and act, as a "true believer" should. That is manipulation and control through fear and guilt and ultimately it is a betrayal of Christianity.
One of the characteristics of fundamentalism is that it is supported through loyalty and a desire to be told what to believe. Critical and analytical thinking, coupled with a heart that yearns to uncover its own truth, is not usually tolerated. But if you are someone who has had trouble breaking away from a legalistic and fundamentalist religious system then this book will bring comfort to your journey.
Rating: 5
Summary: A challenging and urgently important book.
Comment: If you are a Christian, what do you believe? There are as many different answers to this as there are Christians. Personally, I've long felt that, to call yourself a Christian, all you really need to subscribe to are the Apostles' Creed and the Ten Commandments, and even certain points within those are open to debate. (Even such a straightforward commandment as, "Thou shalt not kill"; does that include soldiers during wartime? Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Amish think so, but most other denominations disagree.) But as Bruce Bawer warns us, there are always those who would try to dictate what all Christians should believe, and in America today such people--as represented by what Bawer calls "legalistic" Christians, of the ilk of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson--are in the ascendant. In "Stealing Jesus," a bracing and compulsively readable book, Bawer demonstrates that fundamentalist doctrines--which its adherents claim are traditional Christianity in its purest form--in fact were not formulated until the early 19th century, or codified until publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909. The Scofield Reference Bible, for those unfamiliar with it, emphasizes and annotates those portions of Scripture that fundamentalists interpret as setting forth the coming of the End Times, the Rapture and specific prescriptions for personal salvation. Those passages stressing Christ's message of love, community and selfless service to others are pointedly ignored. As Bawer sees it, the spiritual war in America is one between the Church of Law, which stresses salvation for the few true believers and damnation for everyone else, and the Church of Love, which stresses the need to follow Christ's teachings and emulate His example. Bawer shows in convincing detail that through vicious political inflghting, the Church of Law has gained such ascendancy in the U.S. today that when the mass media refer to Christianity, they always mean fundamentalism. Even worse, the agenda of the fundamentalists often has little or nothing to do with faith, and often is shockingly racist, misogynistic and homophobic. "Stealing Jesus" sounds an important warning to those Christians who don't want the world to think Pat Robertson speaks for them. Even more, it challenges lukewarm and devout Christians alike to think about their faiths, clarify their own beliefs and stand up for them; it may also serve to show some secular humanists that it's possible to give your heart to Jesus without sacrificing your mind.
As much as I admire this book, I disagree with Bawer on certain points. For example, he is comfortable with the suggestion that Jesus may not literally have been divine; here I have to agree with the fundamentalists that without the divinity of Christ, Christianity is nonsense. (This may explain why Bawer, an Episcopalian, never quotes in "Stealing Jesus" from C.S. Lewis, the most renowned Anglican writer of the 20th century; Lewis himself insisted that Jesus could only be either the Son of God or a liar and madman. Lewis, however, also didn't live to see the ascendancy of Robertson and Falwell, and would have been appalled at their flat denial of the worth of human logic, intellect, and imagination.) There are also times when Bawer lets his cultural prejudices show, as when he describes the congregation of an Atlanta fundamentalist church as "people brought up on TV and country music." (I happen to have three close friends who by night are country musicians; by day they are a computer systems designer, a librarian at the Environmental Protection Agency, and a producer at CBS News. They are all extremely well-read, and if anything would think that Bruce Bawer is soft on Pat Robertson.) Nevertheless, Bawer's main point is undeniable for anyone for whom the spirit of Christianity is more important than its letter. It is put best in Bawer's quote from Harry Emerson Fosdick, the great liberal theologian of the 1920s: Speaking about fundamentalists, Fosdick said, "They call God a person, and to hear them do it one would think that our psychological processes could naively be attributed to the Eternal. It is another matter altogether, understanding symbolic language, to call God personal when one means that up the roadway of goodness, truth and beauty, which outside personal experience have no significance, one must travel toward the truth about the Ultimate--"beyond the comprehension of the human mind." Of course, that is vague; no idea of the Eternal which is not vague can possibly approximate the Truth."
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Title: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism : A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture by John Shelby Spong ISBN: 0060675187 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 10 April, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart by Peter J. Gomes ISBN: 0060088303 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 30 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile by John Shelby Spong ISBN: 0060675365 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time : The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith by Marcus J. Borg ISBN: 0060609176 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 03 March, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The God We Never Knew : Beyond Dogmatic Religion To A More Authenthic Contemporary Faith by Marcus J. Borg ISBN: 0060610352 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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