Rating: 
Summary: Law vs Love? More like Euphemism vs. Literalism
Review: Stealing Jesus is a well-written book with a bit of a weakness. Although it gives an in-depth background of the history of fundamentalist thought, it does not give a well-reasoned answer to it. The author depends too much on recent 'scholarship' like the Jesus seminar to bolster his points of view. Bawer is a homosexual who is an active Episcopalian. He takes fundamentalists to task for the way they have the gall to take what the Bible says seriously. He does not understand why fundamentalists place so much emphasis on things like the literal resurrection of Jesus, the virgin birth, Christ's words as recorded in the gospels, etc. To Mr. Bawer, the commandments and doctrines in the Bible are bad because they are "law" and he knows that by legalistic Biblical standards he is an outsider not only because of his homosexuality, but also his heresies regarding core dogmas of the Christian church. He points out the inconsistencies in the fundamentalist "eenie miney moe" method of choosing which Biblical laws to empahsize (homosexuality is a horror, but the law against sex during menstruation is never mentioned, for example), but does not say why he still accepts the Bible as a valid guide in faith and morals. I sometimes wonder why people who reject all that is creedal in Christianity remain in the Church only to embrace its ritualism and call that the more honest of the two paths. If someone denies the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, the miracles and the inspiration of the Bible, why continue the pretense of naming oneself a Christian? Unfortunately, Mr Bawer never answers this question. I was left wondering why he did not become a Unitarian, as his beliefs regarding Jesus are no more orthodox than theirs. As a history of fundamentalism this book does a great job, but it is a bit disingenuous to say that those who accept the Bible as divinely inspired and believe in a risen, divine Messiah are on the same level as those who find the Bible an interesting amalgamem of lore and morals and enjoy the ritualism and camaraderie found in fellowship halls.
Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking, yet hints of hypocrisy
Review: Bawer's book is very thought-provoking. My problem with it is that he equates every one that believes in Biblical inerrancy to be a legalist. He says, and I paraphrase, "Biblical scholars now say that the letter to the Ephesians was not written by Paul." Bawer makes it seem as though every scholar now agrees with that point, and that anyone who doesn't is locked in the 'old school' of thought. I do agree with a lot of the points he makes regarding today's high-profile Christian "celebrities" (my emphasis), but it does seem as if he got really angry one weekend and wrote a book while pulling three consecutive all-nighters. My advice: Read this book, like all others, through the lens of objectivity and discernment, then talk about it with others.
Rating: 
Summary: Disguised Hatred in a book claiming to Promote Love
Review: Bawer's book, Stealing Jesus, is simplistic, self-serving, and self-contradictory. Allegedly lauding Christian love, his book is a hate-tract against the body of New Testament evidence in favor of a creedal emphasis. His starting point is the bogus absolute truth that being gay is good, from there he strings together distortions of both Gospel and Epistle records, and proceeds to selectively and unfairly bash Christian orthodoxy. United Church of Christ minister, Dr. John Gilmore, Cincinnati, OH
Rating: 
Summary: A Personal Analyses of the Dangers of Fundamentalism
Review: Stealing Jesus is an odd book. Not exactly a work of intense research, both an analyses and a testimony, it is best thought of as one man's confrontation and analyses of Christian Fundamentalism on a historical, personal, and spiritual level.Bawer's thesis is simple - Christian Fundamentalism in America is a comparatively recent phenomena that largely ignores the actual words of Jesus, is obsessed with control, is often shallow, and is socially and psychologically dangerous. Bawer examines this from the rather interesting perspective of a committed gay Christian who is obviously very, very serious about his religion. There's a passion here to his work that gives it, despite some flaws, an honesty of spirit. Bawer really, really means what he says and is honestly concerned with people. Bawer treats us to a history of religion and Fundamentalism in America that's extremely eye-opening, especially concerning modern day assumptions about what Christianity is and has been and how religion has functioned in America. Revealingly, America has proved to be far more religiously diverse and dynamic than many suspect - and that today's idea that Christian means a vaguely right-wing personl obsessed with hell and judgement is an unfair picture of American Christianity and Christians in general. Bawer then analyzes modern occurances in highly revealing ways - information we've seen before, but again given his passion, his testimony, he helps put things in perspective. He addresses sexism, racism, and homophobia of course, but spends a great deal of time on greed, materialism, selfishness, and less-discussed aspects of pathology in Fundamentalism. However, don't expect modern secular/liberal/pop culture to get off easy. Bawer blasts the spiritual and cultural emptiness and ignorance of our culture with equal passion. He makes the case that our culture's shallowness and ignorance is dangerous, and is a place where Fundamentalism can take root. He also notes that, essentially, many of us belong to subcultures who were blatantly ignorant of cultural and social changes and lack-of-changes. Is it a perfect book? No. It could have been longer and had more research, especially on psychodynamics. But did it reach it's goal? Yes. It's a heartfelt, passionate work on one man's research and experiences. Will some be offended? Doubtlessly. But I think they'll be offended because Bawer is speaking honeslty and from the heart about issues people don't want to address. Simply, he argues Fundamentalism has hijacked Christianity at the betrayal of its principles, leaving a wake of pathology and intolerance, and spilling into politics and modern life. Certainly as we've witnessed time and again, people convinced God (or the equivalent, such as Evolution or History) is on their side will do the most terrible things. In an age of incredible weapons and a connected world, we can no longer afford to assume we're perfect. This book somehow gives me the image of Jesus going after the moneychangers in the temple - this is a man honestly, egolessly offended at something horrible. Indeed I found myself, a non-Christian, finding myself actually feel close to Christianity for the first time in over a decade. Should it be read by non-Christians. Probably. Should it be read by Christians? Definitely.
Rating: 
Summary: They have the numbers, we the heights
Review: I approached this book with an open mind, really. But I found too often that its author essentially argues against one kind of intolerance and in favor of another kind, supports one subculture against another. The author believes the political atmosphere is right and his lifestyle compatible with a growing "liberal," mainstream all-tolerant church, and to muster the opinion of "right-thinking" people everywhere against a constructed spectral menace. In this book he brings his case to the court of public opinion in the hope of forcing, "legislating" as it were, conformity for the misfit fundamentalist sects whose many sins he enumerates in detail. OK, who doesn't have a bone of contention with one branch or doctrine of the church? More often than not the gripes are personal, vary widely, and cannot be intelligently addressed by "them and us" type critiques such as this one. In his book, Bawer does just that: bands Christians together into "legalistic" and "non-legalistic" categories. "Fundamentalists" for Bawer become the convenient boogey man for crimes such as anti-intellectualism. Bawer's position is school of resentment. The mainstreaming and normalizing of the church mainly from the perspective/agenda of gay identity politics. His arguments absolutely lack any intellectual, or revolutionary bite. It is a position informed by everything and post everything, one that pretends, just as he accuses his opponent of doing, of having found the treasure of eternal morality. Bawer's book fails to make me see the cause for alarm he so frequently raises with modern "legalistic" Christianity, with its concommitant (alleged) threats to other faiths and democratic freedoms. If anyone feels threatened, it is he. And inasmuch as our democratic freedoms may appear to be at stake from the fundamentalists, we still have the separation of church and state. Yet to relativists like Bawer, separation of church and state is, if anything, part of the problem. What happened to simply letting each decide for himself or herself and leave it at that? As much as I may differ with various branches of the protestant church, with their many foibles, I nevertheless defend their right to worship in peace and privacy, free from not only government interference, but from societal pressures to conform as well. What Bawer calls fundamentalism has been around a very long time (despite what he conveniently claims) and is itself a definite kind of free expression and protected speech. Bawer, like so many, takes care to aim at the public manifestations of fundamentalism, particulaly the TV evangelist, already a cliche in our time and hardly representative of all those who take their Bibles seriously. His alarmist rhetoric takes the form of the eleven o'clock news, purportedly speaking for the majority, warning us that these "fundamentalists" are socially and psychologically dangerous, or that "millions of children" as he put it are being taught wrong thinking by their wrong-thinking legalistic Christian parents. It never ceases to amaze me how often we are asked by self-styled intellectuals to look the other way when they engage in irresponsible rant, commit to print outrageous fallacies, or abusive rhetoric; as long as it serves the right cause, it is deemed ok. With that in mind, this book is largely little more than an appeal to "the enemy of my enemy." The problem with this kind of critique is it reduces to propaganda, a mere politcal pamphlet, instead of working out in reasonable prose a personal journey of discovery of some sort and limiting the scope of the dicourse to the personal. Bawer's "can't we all just get along" tone, it must be noted, necessarily includes the condition that we all agree with his nebulous relativistic guidelines. How can we go wrong as long as all toe the same line of the right-thinking relativism? Here is where he is greatly mistaken in his appeal; just because we do not solve our problems by fighting it out we must all somehow agree to a new list of tenets handed us by self-styled right-thinkers such as the author, even if they were to be credentialled pedagogues of the academic and media institutions. Not as long as they write as poorly as this. The real gospel in Bawer's book is conformity, not diversity.
Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking, yet hints of hypocrisy
Review: Bawer's book is very thought-provoking. My problem with it is that he equates every one that believes in Biblical inerrancy to be a legalist. He says, and I paraphrase, "Biblical scholars now say that the letter to the Ephesians was not written by Paul." Bawer makes it seem as though every scholar now agrees with that point, and that anyone who doesn't is locked in the 'old school' of thought. I do agree with a lot of the points he makes regarding today's high-profile Christian "celebrities" (my emphasis), but it does seem as if he got really angry one weekend and wrote a book while pulling three consecutive all-nighters. My advice: Read this book, like all others, through the lens of objectivity and discernment, then talk about it with others.
Rating: 
Summary: A challenging and urgently important book.
Review: 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."
Rating:
Summary: Christianity at a Crossroads
Review: As a person who fell away from faith partly in reaction to the fundamentalist teachings of several Christian sects this book resonated with me. The difficulties I had with uncritical, unthinking acceptance of scripture led me to question the whole business. Abject legalism, and in the case of some, totally wrong prophecy, slowly eroded my faith and I finally rejected all religion as narrow-minded bunk. However, as I got older I felt that perhaps I was myself oversimplifying religion by assuming that the televangalists and ranting vision-seeing fanatics who caught the headlines were the spokespeople for Christianity, or even that Christianity was the only religion to consider. This book thus comes as somewhat of a comfort. You don't have to believe that the world was literally created in six days, that all of the books of the Bible are exactly true in a historical sense, or even that Jesus was the Son of God to at least share in the grand mystery of this universe. As pointed out by Bawer, fundamentalism is not as old as they would like you to believe, nor are they "fundamental" to the faith. I have to be honest here - I am basically an agnostic, but I do believe that there is a remarkable mystery behind life and its long evolution that science may never discover. You can call that mystery God, the Tao, nature, or whatever, but it does seem to defy analysis. I am satisfied with that mystery and with the Bible as a worthwhile guide, but not as absolute word of God. The writings of men, however inspired, are always subject to corruption and change. To me worship of the book is not a substitute for rational thought nor is legalism a good substitute for compassion. Most religions have some form of the "love your neighbor as yourself" commandment. Christianity is no exception. In fact Jesus said on at least two occasions that if only two commandments were obeyed all else will follow- Love the lord and love your neighbor as yourself. If the various "Christian" sects that struggle with each other and with other religions would actually put those concepts into practice this would be a much different world. While I cannot share Bawer's exact beliefs, I do understand them. We all wish to make sense out of the universe and especially our lives. My quarrel is not with faith, but with fanatic fundamentalism and the seekers of power and wealth in Christ's name. I think that Bawer has certainly done us all a favor by exposing the hypocrisy and even hatred in these worshipers of doctrine over spirit.
Rating:
Summary: Stealing G-d: How Fundamentalism Betrays Religion
Review: As a Jewish girl raised in the southern Bible Belt, my religious experience began early and struck hard. Both my parents worked and the only day care they could afford was the local Christian daycare center, where I received my first introduction into the world of proselytization and religious betrayal. As a child, my only memories of Christians were hearty women towering over me, telling me I wasn't allowed lunch or snacks unless I prayed to Jesus in thanks. This left a legacy in my mind that caused me to feel a pervasive resentment and distrust of fundamentalist Christianity -- and indeed Christianity in general. As I grew older I questioned my prejudice . . . and Bawer's book was what I found. This book completely changed my perspective on not only Christianity, but all the major world religions. To think that this book is merely a criticism of Christianity is superficial and undeserved, for the actual message carried by this book is so much deeper. In a world torn by the violence of religious extremism, the psychological, economic, emotional, and social pressures that endorse the trend toward fundamentalism in Christianity can easily be expanded to give us a greater understand of fundamentalism in ANY religion. Victor Hugo's adage that the faults we see in others are those we see in ourselves comes to mind when I consider this criticism of Christianity from the inside out. As a predominantly Christian nation, we so easily criticize Muslim extremism, and yet extremism exists among our own ranks. If we can see faults in the rest of the world (religion-wise or otherwise), then we can easily find those same faults within our own ranks. Bawer exposes this hypocrisy with solid arguments and examples whose reality is striking. Props to Bawer for an open-minded book endorsing tolerance and self-reflection!
Rating:
Summary: Bawer is the one who is stealing Jesus
Review: There is a hidden agenda in this book, and anyone who has read Bawer's A Place At The Table will, or should, know that the real point of Bawer's attack on "legalistic" Christianity is to get rid of the rule against homosexuality. He has to be more inclusive in his attack on these people to disguise the fact that he is (probably) interested only in the gay question. How many people would buy an attack on "legalistic" Christianity if they realized that the Ten Commandments, which are very legalistic, include laws against murder, adultery, and a number of other things that no decent person wants legitimized? What if a murderer were to complain about "legalistic" Christianity and its failure to "love" the murderer instead of having a law against murder? Before you buy into Bawer's talk about getting rid of "legalistic" Christianity and having a vaguely-defined "love" in place of laws, think about living in a society where there are no laws and no police. Does Bawer also want to get rid of "legalistic" governments because they have laws against homosexuality? And how would you have a government that isn't legalistic?
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