Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity

published	October 20th 1998 by Three Rivers Press
binding	Paperback
isbn	0609802224 (isbn13: 9780609802229)
pages	352
description	In 300-odd pages, Bruce Bawer has opened a floodgate of incisive religious criticism that will reverberate across the American political scene. He has...more [close] In 300-odd pages, Bruce Bawer has opened a floodgate of incisive religious criticism that will reverberate across the American political scene. He has put into eloquent and decisive language what many mainline Christians and non-Christians have quietly suspected but been unable to verbalize--namely that Fundamentalist Christianity is barely Christian at all. A Baptist theologian says he is "not interested in who Jesus was." Pat Robertson argues the Golden Rule as Jesus's justification that "individual self-interest is being a very real part of the human makeup, and something not necessarily bad or sinful." In page after page, Bawer reveals a so-called Fundamentalist movement that readily displays a blatant disregard for the most salient message of the Gospels: selfless love and service to all. As for the significance of this revelation in the face of the ballooning presence of Fundamentalist Christians in American politics, readers will have to decide for themselves. [close]
date added	02-12-07 edit book

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06/10/08

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Bruce Bawer sets out the way that fundamentalist churches have laid exclusive claim to the label "Christian" and have twisted Jesus's teaching of love and redemption to one of punishment and exclusivity. Bawer argues that "fundametalist" Christianity is more accurately termed legalist Christianity. This religious approach is marked by an obsessive insistence on absolute obedience to moralistic rules and theological correctness, at the expense of Jesus's commandment to ...more Bruce Bawer sets out the way that fundamentalist churches have laid exclusive claim to the label "Christian" and have twisted Jesus's teaching of love and redemption to one of punishment and exclusivity. Bawer argues that "fundametalist" Christianity is more accurately termed legalist Christianity. This religious approach is marked by an obsessive insistence on absolute obedience to moralistic rules and theological correctness, at the expense of Jesus's commandment to love. Bawer lays out the history of legalistic Christianity, showing how it is rooted in a reaction against modernism, both in the churches and in the broader culture.

Rather than being a return to tradition, Bawer shows that fundamentalism is a form of religious radicalism. This radicalization has sped up in the late 20th century, a process well-illustrated by developments in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest of fundamentalist denominations. The SBC was taken over by extremists who forced a shift away from the stress on individual conscience and equality of members to an insistence on doctrinal obedience and the submission of wives to husbands, parishioners to pastors.

Religious radicalization was applied to politics in the form of the so-called Religious Right. Bawer argues that they have infused politics with "unchristian rancor, disinformation, and scare tactics". Rather than practicing a politics informed by their beliefs, the Religious Right seeks to restrict other people's civil rights in the name of religion. He shows that, from its very beginning, political fundamentalism has been based in a politics of exclusion. [He quotes Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, as saying that the Religious Right did not grow out of the anti-abortion movement; rather, it began when the Carter administration required Christian schools in the South, as a condition for maintaining their tax-free status, to show that they had not been formed as racially segregated institutions.]

Most fundamentalists are convinced that they are the only true Christians and that only their beliefs are valid. Through misreadings and distortions of history, they think that America was founded with their system of belief as its basis. They believe that it is their mission to use the power of the state to compel modern American society must conform to fundamentalist Christian morality. Pat Robertson has characterized the constitutional provision against state-imposed religion as "a lie of the left".

In an example of the truism that politics makes for strange bedfellows, fundamentalist Christians have made common cause with neo-conservatives in an effort to dominate the conservative movement and the Republican party. This alliance is ironic, given that many neo-cons are northeastern, Jewish, and intellectual. One might wonder what they make of Bailey Smith, former president of the SBC, who said, "God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew."

As a gay man, Bawer focuses much of his book on fundamentalist attitudes toward homosexuality, which are hostile(to say the least). Bawer sees this as part of the fundamentalists' narrow take on morality and a hostility toward difference. Some critics have written that Bawer spends too much time on gay issues, but given the centrality of homosexuality in fundamentalist thinking, I think Bawer is justified. Since he wrote this book in the mid-1990s, fundamentalists have focused most of their efforts on opposing gay marriage. (Sometimes, the fundamentalist obsession with homosexuality attains the level self-parody, as it did when Jerry Falwell warned us of the gay Teletubby or when James Dobson, notorious for burning Harry Potter books, outed Spongebob and Patrick.)

Bawer criticizes secularists - journalists, liberals, and academics - for being ignorant of the nature of religion in America. He characterizes liberal elites as assuming that American society is mainly secular (reflective of themselves) and for buying into the idea that religious conservatives are representative of all Christians. It is rare in popular culture for religious life to be taken seriously. Bawer sees this attitude as creating a spiritual vacuum in American culture that has been filled by fundamentalism.

This book resonated with me a lot, because it reflected a lot of what I had to deal with, growing up.

When I was seven, my family moved to an area with a strong Southern Baptist presence, an island of Bible-belt Southerners in the Upper Midwest. My elementary school was a battleground between the Team Jesus and the forces of Satan. By the time I was in 3rd grade, I was convinced I was going to hell. I was afraid that the Episcopal and Methodist churches where we sporadically attended holiday services, what with their talk of compassion and love, weren't going to save me.

Since my parents weren't going to take me to a tent revival, I decided that my hope was in daily Bible reading. I discovered that my classmates' understanding of the Gospels was on the level of the Weekly World News and that their theology was akin to second-rate scientology. Their conception of Jesus was mostly a celestial combination of Saddam Hussein and a professional wrestler.

Like Bawer, I came to see that the teachings of Jesus are the crux of Christianity; everything else is extra. ...less

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Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity

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