Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
From the author of the widely acclaimed A Place at the Table, this is a major work, passionately outspoken and cogently reasoned, that exposes the great danger posed to Christianity today by fundamentalism.
The time is past, says Bruce Bawer, when denominational names and other traditional labels provided an accurate reflection of Christian America's religious beliefs and practices. The meaningful distinction today is not between Protestant and Catholic, or Baptist and Episcopalian, but rather between "legalistic" and "nonlegalistic" religion, between the Church of Law and the Church of Love. On one side is the fundamentalist right, which draws a sharp distinction between "saved" and "unsaved" and worships a God of wrath and judgment; on the other are more mainstream Christians who view all humankind as children of a loving God who calls them to break down barriers of hate, prejudice, and distrust.
Pointing out that the supposedly "traditional" beliefs of American fundamentalism—about which most mainstream Christians, clergy included, know shockingly little—are in fact of relatively recent origin, are distinctively American in many ways, and are dramatically at odds with the values that Jesus actually spread, Bawer fascinatingly demonstrates the way in which these beliefs have increasingly come to supplant genuinely fundamental Christian tenets in the American church and to become synonymous with Christianity in the minds of many people.
Stealing Jesus is the ringing testament of a man who is equally disturbed by the notion of an America without Christianity and the notion of an American Christianity without love and compassion.
Synopsis
From the author of the widely acclaimed A Place at the Table, this is a major work, passionately outspoken and cogently reasoned, that exposes the great danger posed to Christianity today by fundamentalism.
The time is past, says Bruce Bawer, when denominational names and other traditional labels provided an accurate reflection of Christian America's religious beliefs and practices. The meaningful distinction today is not between Protestant and Catholic, or Baptist and Episcopalian, but rather between "legalistic" and "nonlegalistic" religion, between the Church of Law and the Church of Love. On one side is the fundamentalist right, which draws a sharp distinction between "saved" and "unsaved" and worships a God of wrath and judgment; on the other are more mainstream Christians who view all humankind as children of a loving God who calls them to break down barriers of hate, prejudice, and distrust.
Pointing out that the supposedly "traditional" beliefs of American fundamentalism—about which most mainstream Christians, clergy included, know shockingly little—are in fact of relatively recent origin, are distinctively American in many ways, and are dramatically at odds with the values that Jesus actually spread, Bawer fascinatingly demonstrates the way in which these beliefs have increasingly come to supplant genuinely fundamental Christian tenets in the American church and to become synonymous with Christianity in the minds of many people.
Stealing Jesus is the ringing testament of a man who is equally disturbed by the notion of an America without Christianity and the notion of an American Christianity without love and compassion.
New York Times Book Review
"Stealing Jesus" may prove of value simply for its clear exposition of what today's American 'fundamentalists' believe and want to do. Bawer's readers will no longer be able to greet that term with a condescending smile.
Editorials
New York Times Book Review
"Stealing Jesus" may prove of value simply for its clear exposition of what today's American 'fundamentalists' believe and want to do. Bawer's readers will no longer be able to greet that term with a condescending smile.Library Journal
Author of A Place at the Table, a groundbreaking book on homosexuality, and of articles on religion, Bawer argues that fundamentalism is a recent development that defies the values of Christianity.Kirkus Reviews
Bawer wants to rouse liberal America from its lazy indifference to the rising tide of Christian fundamentalism.A literary and cultural critic, Bawer has written on spirituality in modern fiction (The Aspect of Eternity, 1993) and normality in the lives of gay men and lesbians (A Place at the Table, 1993). Now he turns his critical sights on the history, reigning personalities, and ominous future prospects of Christian fundamentalism in America. Bawer traces fundamentalism back to the 19th-century English theologian John Nelson Darby, who first articulated the doctrine of dispensational premillennialism—a periodization of sacred history that will culminate in a thousand-year reign of Christ—and to C.I. Scofield, who incorporated Darby's ideas as commentary in his Scofield Reference Bible. Bawer goes on to critique Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Hal Lindsey, James Dobson, and Bill McCartney (head of the much- publicized Promise Keepers). He subsumes these men under the larger rubric of a wrathful "Church of Law," which he contrasts with the more truly Christian "Church of Love," best represented by the late Harry Emerson Fosdick, famed liberal preacher at Riverside Church in New York City. That the most distinguished American representative of the Church of Love is dead is just Bawer's point: Nonlegalistic Christians must find their voice again before the legalistic ones steal Jesus away. But with his love/law dichotomy, Bawer succumbs to the very type of black-and-white thinking he decries in fundamentalists. The dichotomy is especially unfortunate in that it both perpetuates an ancient Christian prejudice against law that has often spent itself on Judaism and Hebrew scripture, and distorts religious experience, which some scholars have understood to include both loving and wrathful dimensions.
Bawer lightens his critique with stretches of autobiographical narration, but the overriding (and unrepentant) tone of fulmination lends his book the feel of a sermon that has gone on too long.