Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity

Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity. By Bruce Bawer. New York, Crown Publishers Inc., 1997. x + 340 pp. $26.00 (cloth).

This is a rich book. It is full of passion and clearly articulated experience. It bursts with wide-ranging references, ideas, analogies, stories and carefully quoted evidence. It is an uncomfortable read. Bawer asks questions I have been asking, addresses issues with which I am wrestling, but his analyses were uncomfortable, his manner of questioning challenging.

Bawer's basic contention is that the term "Christian" has been hijacked by a particular hybrid of legalistic, materialistic, dogma-bound religiosity. He characterises this obsession with law, doctrine and authority as the religion of law, in sharp contrast to Jesus' teaching with its focus on love. Law and love are used in preference to other labels (liberal/conservative) and instead of Fundamentalism throughout the book. The other motif is the tension between the vertical and horizontal planes of existence: the "vertical line is the line of spiritual experience; the horizontal line is the line of doctrinal orthodoxy" (p. 33).

Bawer begins by trying to work out what Christianity may be, reflecting that "I probably wasn't more than seven or eight when I first noticed that the word could mean very different things depending on who was using it" (p. 3). He goes on to consider the context within which the religion of law has grown and flourished within America since the founding fathers. He uses a mixture of personal experience and theological reflection, exploring attitudes towards children, women, homosexuality, ethnicity and concepts of family. There are copious references and the bibliography offers Internet sites. A little more referencing within the text would be helpful.

One of the doctrines that keeps cropping up is hell and the devil. The depths to which some "Christians" will sink to terrify juvenile trick-ortreaters at Halloween was eye-opening. The comic-strip tales of perdition and torment struck me as more primitive, abusive and hideous than even the most eloquent medieval doom painting in an English parish church. If your formative view of God is of a brute who cannot wait to consign you to eternal suffering, what sort of relationship will you ever have with him, let alone with other people? Yuck.

I particularly enjoyed chapter 15, "Did Lucy Convert?", which includes especially juicy and provocative comments such as that middle class parents are "discombobulated" by Buddhism (p. 292) and "Christmas-oriented American popular culture generally, effectively replaces Jesus with Santa Claus" (p. 292). Bawer's consideration of the role of media and materialism within secular western culture is valid beyond the States.

The final chapter, "Abiding Messages, Transient Settings" is very moving. There are several parables in the book but the little story of the young man from Indiana is especially strong. It is to Bawer's great credit that he can incorporate such a tale in the text and then get an intellectual grip such that he can comment "for many Americans who call themselves Christians, religion is not at all a matter of spiritual experience, of seeking to live out God's radical love, but rather of adhering to certain laws and pledging assent to certain doctrines" (p. 318).

Stealing Jesus has the enormous merit of being written by someone who is not afraid of being on the fringe, of crying wolf even when those who hear would rather be told that the slathering quadruped near their flock is only a sheep dog. The challenge is, am I going to cry with him or claim that the canine is a pet?

DIANA EVANS

Ecton House

Peterborough Diocese, United Kingdom

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Fall 1998
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