How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity: What Were Jesus's Main Teachings? (1998)

• published: 11 Jan 2015
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Theodore Bruce Bawer (born October 31, 1956, in New York City), who writes under the name Bruce Bawer, is an American writer who has been a resident of Norway since 1999. He is a literary, film, and cultural critic and poet who has also written about gay rights, Christianity, and Islam. Bawer's writings on literature, gay issues, and Islam have all been highly controversial. While championing such authors such as William Keepers Maxwell, Flannery O'Connor, and Guy Davenport, he has criticized such authors as Norman Mailer and E.L. Doctorow. A member of the New Formalists, a group of poets who promoted the use of traditional forms, he has assailed such poets as Allen Ginsberg for what he views as their lack of polish and technique. Bawer was one of the first gay activists to seriously propose same-sex marriage, notably in his 1993 book A Place at the Table, and his 2006 book While Europe Slept was one of the first to skeptically examine the rise of Islam in the Western world. Although he has frequently been described as a conservative, Bawer has often protested that such labels are misleading or meaningless. He has explained his views as follows: "Read A Place at the Table and Stealing Jesus and While Europe Slept and Surrender one after the other and you will see that all four books are motivated by a dedication to individual identity and individual freedom and an opposition to groupthink, oppression, tyranny." In his 1997 book Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity, Bawer stated, in the words of Publishers Weekly, “that fundamentalist Christianity...has been preaching a message of wrath and judgment” that “is incompatible with Jesus' message of love.” While criticizing “Bawer's sometimes strident tone,” Publishers Weekly said that his “graceful prose and lucid insights make this a must-read book for anyone concerned with the relationship of Christianity to contemporary American culture.”[64] Walter Kendrick, in the New York Times, noted that like A Place at the Table, Stealing Jesus was an “alarm bell,” in this case about Christian fundamentalism. Although Kendrick complained that, Bawer's hopes to the contrary, there was “no hope of converting the fundamentalists,” he concluded that the book might “prove of value simply for its clear exposition of what today's American 'fundamentalists' believe and want to do.”[65] The response of fundamentalist Protestants and traditional Catholics to the book was more critical. “The thesis of Stealing Jesus is an antinomian heresy rooted in gnostic dualism about the flesh and spirit,” pronounced Catholic priest George W. Rutler in National Review, suggesting that “Bawer could some day write something about the real Church, if he read St. Francis de Sales's Treatise on the Love of God, spent a few days in Lourdes, and quieted down with a good cigar.”[66] Stealing Jesus was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in the category of Spirituality/Religion. Bawer has written widely on religious topics. In an April 1996 article for the New York Times Magazine, he reported on the heresy trial in the Episcopal Church over the ordination of gay clergy.[67] In a 1997 New York Times op-ed, he discussed what he saw as “the growing divide between North and South in American Protestantism and the declining significance of denominational distinctions.”[68] In a 1998 article about Robert Duvall's film “The Apostle,” Bawer expressed surprise “that a movie with such a dark, realistic texture...should candy-coat the religious subculture in which it is set.”[69] In a 1998 review of New York Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore's autobiography, Bawer described him as “a more complex figure than the privileged lefty portrayed by his critics.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Bawer