My best guess is it is based on my browsing history because I have looked at all the Dan Brown books on Amazon. What Amazon failed to spot is that I did not just look at the books – I reviewed them. If only they had incorporated my star rating into their recommendation algorithm!

Here is my review:

1.0 out of 5 stars

More Boring than this Review,

12 July 2010

This review is from: The Lost Symbol (Hardcover)
I am proud to say I have never bought a Dan Brown novel. I always read other people’s copies, and in short – I suggest you do the same with this book.

A friend borrowed this from the library so I read his borrowed copy quickly before it was due back. In that way there is no official record I read it at all.

And a good thing too. The research in this novel is as bad as ever, the plot preposterous and formulaic (All Dan Brown books have the same plot structure – I guess he feels “why change a winning formula?”). The characters are wooden and lifeless and the action soars across a blank page – a world in which no one but the main characters seem to really exist.

Dan Brown sets this novel in Washington DC – which he ought to be more familiar with than the European cities he visited on his bus tour before basing his novels on those (Note to Dan: Next bus tour, remember to look out of the windows and stop chatting with the person next to you). Sadly citizens of Washington suggest otherwise. Seems that Washington geography gets the Dan Brown treatment.

A new twist for this book though is the sheer dullness of the story. It is tedious.

Brown managed in his earlier books to keep people turning the pages – not entirely legitimately! He is a past master at the cliff hanger chapter end, and the shortest chapters known to man! Those are not really chapters so much as breathing spaces. But in this story the paging turning was a distinct chore. This is really not a fun book to read even for the reader looking for something mindless.

The plot ending is in the “obvious” category. I guessed correctly within the first few chapters (AKA pages), and thereafter was just thinking “get on with it”. The plot is also full of holes (like why Langdon is even necessary in this story – he clearly isn’t) or why people would not recognise…well I had better not mention that one in case you want to avoid plot spoilers.

I have found a huge list of factual errors, and there are going to be hundreds more if I could be bothered to google them. But how sad would that be? As usual the biggest piece of fiction in this book is the standard boilerplate statement that it contains some fact in it!

As something of an expert in Internet Protocols, the “funky format” IP address had me cringing like this was Digital Fortress all over again.

If Brown cannot get technical details (and he cannot), he should just gloss over the details rather than write cringeworthy wrong ones. In essence, if the Internet Protocol address is not in the format of a released protocol, then its not Interent Protocol, is it?! In which case you would not route to the address in the first place!! And as for the description of traceroute – what he calls some mysterious behaviour is in fact the normal behavior of traceroute when traversing routers that filter ICMP messages. Oh and a serious firewall is just blocked ports – you don’t get to see the coding! I could go on but I would get very boring!

All this could have been avoided if the narrative had not tried to linger on all these errant details. Just show the hacker working into the night and drinking a lot of coffee and the story would run faster and not be so obviously wrong.

He also repeats his folk etymology of “sincere”, using it in the plot – which is sad as the etymology is wrong. Not even disputed – just plain wrong. He also uses a dubious etymology of abracadbra (in this case it is disputed and has no evidence, but could possibly be right – although not the way he spells it. J K Rowling fans will know a better spelling).

The ending of the story wraps up with some mystical nonsense which manages to misread and reverse the words he quotes from the Bible. The “meat for men” passage must be understood in the context of paul *opposing* a mystical interpretation of Christianity. The Corinthians were the ones proposing a mystical interpretation, and Paul says it is wrong!

Still it makes a good story …well no, it doesn’t…but I guess he hoped it would.

Elsewhere the “you are the temple” quote in 1 Cor 3.16 refers to the church, not individuals.

His history is naff too. The Christian cross was a symbol for Christianity from the earliest times – certainly before the 4th century he asserts. We know it was attested as being a standard symbol for Christianity in the second century, and a reading of Corinthians should leave us in no doubt that it was so in the first century too.

The hydrogen explosion suggests he does not understand chemistry either, and the noetics quackery suggests he has some general issues with science.

But perhaps the most annoying error of all – for me – was his repeating the old cannard about Columbus proving the world was round! If people had thought the world was flat in the 15th century the portuguese would not have been navigating with the astrolabe to get around Africa would they!

And indeed, no one thought it was flat. They did not agree entirely on how large the world was, even though Erastothenes had succesfully measured it nearly 2000 years earlier. Columbus was wrong (but lucky). His estimates for the circumference of the earth were wildly understated, based on a misunderstaning of Marco Polo and other such issues, but perhaps mostly because he believed the story of a shipwrecked Portuguese sailor who claimed to have been blown to land in the west (probably Brazil), and the finding of two dead men of “oriental” origin in a Kayak in Ireland (probably Inuit who were swept there).

A Harvard professor probably should have known this rather than repeating the misinformation of a 19th century French atheist (Letronne) who made up the alternate history for his own antireligious reasons. Dan Brown should really spend a bit more time researching his books if he is going to put in all these educated sounding asides in his stories.

On the plus side, I think he got a couple of things right. The history of Cravats was correct (although the folk etymology he puts in the mouth of a past headmaster appears to be his invention. The Croation derivation of Cravat appears to be uncontroversial). Some other fact was correct I think…which is an improvement for Brown as usually the facts are 100% wrong.

Anyhow, anyone thinking of reading this – don’t unless you do what I did and read a copy that someone else borrowed from the library! The book is even more boring than this meandering review!

Better luck next time Amazon (I am not holding my breath. I do not think I ever bought a book off an Amazon recommendation).

I have now, with the aid of a bar code scanner, imported about 1500 books of my library into LibraryThing, and written a couple of hundred reviews. Thus I have added a widget that displays a random review from my collection on this page.

Here is also a random selection of my LibraryThing books. You may notice on the talk on that site that I have so far read 144 books this year.

So how was it that Amazon broke into people’s private property and censored a book that is itself about the evils of such things?

It seems that Amazon had distributed books for which the producer of the book did not have appropriate permission in the United States of America, where (like Europe) copyright law is several degrees beyond sensible. Whereas many people in many countries have freedom to read 1984 for free, as it has entered the public domain, in the USA many more years will pass before the book will be deemed to be in the public domain.

The upshot of this is that even though you can download a copy of 1984 from sites in such enlightened countries as Australia, you may not make that work available in the USA. Or rather, you may not *sell* that work in the USA. As Amazon only sells their ugly e-reader in the USA to date (leaving the rest of the world with the much better offerings from Bookeen, Irex and others), all books downloaded to the Kindle were deemed to be sold into the USA and thus the work was not in the public domain.

Thus there was a clear legal issue. Amazon were liable for selling works to customers over which they had not secured the rights. This book and others were produced by third parties who merely used Amazon as a distributor.

Amazon on discovering they had sold these books in contravention of the law then went into people’s private property and deleted the items – sometimes when customers were in the middle of reading them. They provided a refund, but that is really not the point!

Suppose someone did this with a paper book. I can upload a copy of 1984 and self publish through a service such as lulu.com, who will distribute to Amazon and thus I can sell the book through Amazon. Suppose I do this, and people buy the book, and then the evil deed is discovered. What should Amazon do? Do they send in thugs to break into your home and destroy every last copy of the book?

Of course not! Copyright theft is only theft inasmuch as it deprives someone of legitimate income from their work. The estate of George Orwell, assuming we accept their continued income is completely legitimate, is deprived of money if I do this, because buyers of my book would presumably have paid for the legitimate work instead.

Thus I would clearly be liable to the estate for damages. I can be prosecuted for my criminal actions and sued for damages. I should, of course, pay reparations for the loss by the legitimate rights holder. Amazon likewise have some liability here, and should make reparation. But the books that were sold were sold. No one will attempt to recover them – after all, what is the point? Once reparation is made, there is now no loss and thus the theft is rectified.

So why would Amazon think they can break into someone’s private property and delete their digital books? Oh – because they are digital! And that means people have signed their rights away when they clicked “I agree” on their setup screens. They gave Amazon the right to invade their property at any time and to remove anything that is doubleplusungood.

So if you are tempted to buy an Amazon kindle, think in this carefully. Do you want to buy a device that is not really your own, and that is forever at the mercy of a company who could delete all your books without even asking you? Amazon are late into this game anyway. There are plenty of book readers that have no such restrictions. Or you can use dead trees. But I for one don’t now want anything to do with the Kindle. And not *just* because it is so terribly ugly.

But Bawer’s ignorance of the evangelical tradition that opposes dispensational premillennialism also shows another major deficiency of this work. Bawer’s work is a classic case of over-reach. The book title suggests he is speaking about fundamentalism, but his polemic is delivered against not just fundamentalism but also conservative evangelicalism, Catholicism, Mormonism and indeed any section of the church that seems to hold to any credal statement. For this reason I was mystefied as to what the book intends to do.

To be clear, the book argues that much modern doctrine in the non liberal wing of the church is not historical Christianity. Inasmuch as the example of dispensationalism is presented, the case is well made – but to what end? Because we are invited at the end of the book to abandon any belief that suffers the “legalism” of orthodoxy for a faith that revolves entirely around a love for God and for one another (as Christ commanded of course). This he argues is found only in the liberal churches. But inasmuch as the book points out a lack of historical orthodoxy in modern fundamentalism, it returns in spades to his brand of Christianity which, in the course of this book, denies the doctrine of the virgin birth, the resurrection of Christ, the miracles, much of Paul’s thought, the place of the Old Testament, the authenticity of Ephesians and so much more. Without a doubt there is nothing historical about Bawer’s conception of Christianity either.

Bawer succumbs to the common problem of harking back to a golden age. He writes approvingly of the historical Baptists who stressed tolerance, and of St Francis of Assissi as genuine examples of what Christianity ought to be. But he is wrong if he thinks either of these examples would recognise his brand of Christianity as the historical faith.

To what extent does that matter? Some will argue that if Bawer’s Christianity is the better way then it is just a lamentable reflection on Church history that it took 2000 years to develop, when the Jesus of love is so clearly seen in the gospels. But what gospels? When Bawer discusses Matthew 23 he makes it clear that he feels that this is Matthew’s later addition and not the authentic Jesus. He has already jetisoned the physical resurrection. How do we know that Bawer’s conception of Jesus is the authentic one?

Marcion – the second century theological dualist – did something like what Bawer is doing. He started with a conception of God and then adjusted his Bible to match. The rejoinder was “Marcion reads scripture with a knife”. Bawer does the same. We are fond of saying “what would Jesus do”, but the problem is that the answer to that question is largely informed by our own preconceptions of Jesus. Bawer claims he is a Christian because he has fallen in love with Jesus and his teachings – but it really is not clear that what he considers to be Jesus and his teachings is the historical Jesus and his teachings. As such, this book is fundamentally flawed.

The book is fundamentally flawed also for its over-reach (as I said above). Bawer does something at the start of his book that is quite illegitimate. He writes:

*

‘But it seems to me that the difference between conservative and liberal Christianity may be succinctly summed up by the difference between two key scriptural concepts: law and love. Simply stated , conservative Christianity focuses primarily on law, doctrine and authority; liberal Christianity focuses on love, spiritual experience, and what Baptists call the priesthood of the believer. If the conservative Christians emphasize the Great Commission – the resurrected Christ’s injunction, at the end of the Gospe; according to Matthew, to “go to all nations and make them my disciples” – liberal Christians place more emphasis on the Great Commandment, which in Luke’s Gospel reads as follows: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.”

‘Am I suggesting that conservative Christians are without love or the liberal Christians are lawless? No. I merely make the distinction: Conservative Christianity understands a Christian to be someone who subscribes to a specific set of the theological propositions about God and the afterlife, and who professes to believe that by subscribing to those propositions, accepting Jesus Christ as saviour, and (except in the case of the extreme separatist fundamentalists) evangelising, he or she evades God’s wrath and wins salvation (for Roman catholics, good works also count); liberal Christianity, meanwhile, tends to identify Christianity with the experience of God’s abundant love and with the commandment to love God and one’s neighbour. If, for conservative Christians, outreach generally means zealous proselytising of the “unsaved,” for liberal Christians it tends to mean social programmes directed at those in need.’

This phrase: “conservative Christianity focuses primarily on law, doctrine and authority; liberal Christianity focuses on love” is wrong in the way that the phrase: “Librarians are old harridans with horn rimmed spectacles and two piece suits” is wrong. We know its wrong because we can find plenty of exceptions to the rule. Nevertheless we have a wry smile because we at least recognise the stereotype.

But having created a stereotype, and having then argued that he is “merely making a distinction” he goes and casts his net wide and suggests that the out-group that will be the focus of his polemic will be henceforth called the legalists, and that this shall include all non liberal forms of Christianity. He misunderstands conservative Christian thought in his generalisation above though when he suggests that for all conservative Christians, salvation is by adherence to a set of propositions about the afterlife, and through evangelism as a work (and for Catholics other good works too). This completely misunderstands the central Protestant tenet of justification by grace through faith. The Protestant position is summed up by Paul’s words in Romans:

‘That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved’ (Romans 10:9)

Interestingly Bawer suggests the original formulation of the doctrine (the one that he approves of) was just the profession that Jesus is Lord. He handily forgets: “and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead”. He does not explain why he omits the latter. In fact generally his work is lamentably short of footnotes that might serve to explain his many leaps of logic that leave one scratching one’s head.

But in any case, insamuch as conservative protestants believe that we are justified by grace through faith alone, Bawer’s argument that these people should be called legalists entirely misses its mark. He is wrong to say that the belief of protestants is that the doctrines of the afterlife must be subscribed to, because it is quite clear that adherents to the doctrine of justification by faith agree with Hooker that one need not know they are justified by faith to be justified by faith.

Bawer does not like Paul. He has a go at Paul “the lawyer” when he writes:

*

‘ Other propositions from the books traditionally ascribed to Paul, however, foreshadow the Church of Law. Indeed, some of the following passages are among the most quoted and preached upon by legalistic ministers:

‘ “Should anyone, even I myself or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel other than the gospel I preached to you, let them be banned! (Gal 1:8-9)’

*

My eyes went wide when I read this. Firstly because Bawer has changed his translation to suit here. I cannot find a translation that says “banned” (something the Christians must do). Rather the word here means something like “accursed”, although is rendered as “judged by God”, “eternally condemned” etc. in various translations. Bawer reads this through the eyes of a post Theodosius anaethema I think, but Paul is saying that it is God who condemns the other gospel of the Galatian error – not the church.

But what really made me sit up at this point is that the whole point of Paul writing to the Galatians is to argue that salvation is God’s gift of grace and nothing to do with legalism. It is not works done in our own righteousness – it is God’s gift. As such, this is the most antinomian book in the whole Bible. Galatians is the epistle of grace as opposed to law. This is not Paul the pharisee speaking. This is Paul the apostle telling us that we are under a covenant of grace. What Bawer does with that passage – suggesting it shows Paul as a pharisaical legalist – is nothing short of scandalous.

He does it again here:

*

‘In the King James Bible, the world law appears in the synoptic Gospels only thirteen times altogether, and crops up a dozen or so times in john. In the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul, by contrast, the word appears scores of times. Given Paul’s background as a Pharisee … this is not surprising.’

*

Actually it is Paul’s work preaching the gospel of grace, as opposed to law that accounts for this. Paul mentions law and consistently tells us we are not under law but under grace. How anyone can suggest that this shows Paul being Phariseical is beyond me. This attack is either profoundly ignorant, or more likely, utterly disingenuous. What could have been a well reasoned attack on how some strands of modern Christianity have become phariseical in their attitudes turns instead into an attack on the whole history of Christian thought (including the thought of those he claims to admire) because he completely ignores the intent of Paul’s words in the epistles.

Let us be clear: Inasmuch as Bawer says that legalistic Christianity is “Stealing Jesus” he says exactly what Paul does in saying let the legalists be anathema. The problem is that Bawer’s definition of legalistic Christianity is way to broad in complete ignorance of conservative Christianity that really does stress grace, the love of God, tolerance, aesceticism, concern for our world and the people in it etc. He cannot argue that love is the preserve of the liberal churches when it is clearly not the case. He lambastes Willow Creek Community church and yet has to grudgingly admit that in fact they do have plenty of social programmes (ah but many other churches don’t, he argues. Quite right – they don’t to their shame – but he fails to recognise that conservative Christianity is not all as he wishes to paint it).

Part of his problem is with what he sees as the simplicity of the Christian message. He argues that conservative Christianity is successful because it spoon feeds a pre-packaged faith that does not require people to think. Again we recognise some truth in the stereotype, but it is lamentably over drawn. Whilst we could draw attention to Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians that the wisdom of God is foolishness to men, perhaps the mor important point here is that for Bawer, it is not just the simplicity of the message at fault, but that it is – for him – the wrong message (and if his argument were more carefully drawn, many would agree with him – but the scatter gun approach he uses makes the argument meaningless).

Bawer argues that if people like hack writing, we should not give them more hack writing – we should refine their tastes. But no! That is intellectual snobbery of the first order. Writing is communication. If one communicates through writing then the writing is good – whether we call it hack writing or not! We cannot mandate that tastes need to be re-educated to fit our preconceptions of good writing. And so his analogy to religion: if God communicates to people, and changes hearts and minds, then who are we to say that the people are consuming “hack” religion? Who are we to argue that their tastes be refined? This is one of the most insidious statements in the book – that somehow people should be re-educated to want liberal Christianity.

I think Bawer makes some good points that, in a more carefully reasoned work, could have led to a convincing thesis and call for change. He writes for instance:

‘their [conservative churches] success owes everything to American missionary work among the poor and undereducated. In their suspicion of the intellect and their categorical assertion that the Bible contains all truth’

There is truth that church growth usually arises this way. Although in fact that was also clearly the historical model. Paul tells us that God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise.

If course even in this passage Bawer over-reaches. I am not sure I ever met a conservative Christian who believes the Bible contains all truth. Rather it is argued it contains all truth necessary to salvation. It contains the words of God, they will say. But there are truths not in the bible. Methane is a symmetrical molecule with no dipole moment. That is a truth, but I don’t remember reading it in the Bible. I could be wrong but I doubt it is there! No conservative Christian thinks that the Bible contains all truth.

Speaking on the resurrection, Bawer tells us that Mark’s gospel is almost certainly the earliest dated gospel, and it does not mention the resurrection. This will be a surprise to those familiar with Mark 16, but there are arguments as to why textual critics think we should jetison the ending of that chapter. But those same textuial critics date the gospel no earlier than 70 AD (cannot possibly have the prophetic events described having been foreseen). So the argument Bawer propounds – that the early Christians did not believe in a physical resurrection of Christ – rather loses its force when we consider that 1 Corinthians was probably written in 52 AD, was certainly among the earliest writings of the Church and is quite specific in, for instance, chapter 15 – that Christ was raised from the dead – and that there exist witnesses to His resurrection “alive today” (i.e. in 52 AD).

Bawer simply cannot assert that the early church did not believe in the ressurrection of Christ. That view is ahistorical, and profoundly silly.

He also time and again misrepresents evangelical doctrine. For instance he writes of the doctrine of plenary inspiration of scripture:

*

‘a generation later, however “his son, A. A. Hodge, and colleague, Benjamin Warfield, pushed his ideas to new heights of certainty. . . . literalism became dogma.” In their view, God had not merely inspired the Bible; he had dictated it word for word.’

*

It is clear that Bawer has not read Warfield’s work on the Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. Because in that work he specifically denies that God dictated words to the apostles. He does argue that every word is inspired by God, of course. He argues that every word therein is as God wanted it, but when asked how God imparts these words to the apostles, Warfield says it is not dictation. Rather, to ensure that Paul, for instance, would write the exact words God wanted in the Bible, God ensured that the man Paul was raised up in just such an environment with just such experiences and knowledge and giftings that he would naturally write, in the circumstances to which he wrote, those exact words that God wanted in the scriptures.

This is not dictation. It is a recognition that Paul spoke the words as they occurred to him for the occasion to which he wrote, and yet even as he did so they were the very words of God.

Now people are entitled to disagree with this doctrine – but to characterise the doctrine as divine dictation is to misunderstand it, to set up a straw man and is thus totally fallacious as an argument. Bawer does not understand evangelical doctrine, and this is demonstrated time and again in his book, and the book suffers greatly for that.

Elsewhere Bawer complains:

*

‘Robertson declares for instance, that the Anglican Church is full of “liberals” who are “fighting to secularise the Anglican creed.” The people to whom he refers are, of course, Christians, but because they believe differently, he calls them secular.

*

There may be many problems with what Robertson says and how he says it – but this example is not obviously one of them. Bawer does not footnote this as usual – his work is devoid of footnotes, so one cannot be sure what Robertson was alluding to. But the argument that is often made is that the liberal church is trying to secularise the creed by expunging areas that the church is not seen as politically correct – for instance when it says that sex outside of the marriage relationship is sinful.

If this is what Robertson was saying, then note that in the above he is not saying that it is the liberals who are secular. He is saying that it is what they are doing to the creed that us an attempt to secularise it (making it more like the secular thinking). Bawer reads this as an attack on the Christianity of liberals – but I don’t think the argument is sustained.

But then Bawer goes into what he sees is the nub of the problem. He writes:

*

One legalistic church in Ohio that seeks to be “culturally relevant” complains on its Web site that “in the liberal church, even the doctrines of the Bible are allowed to change. But even then they often continue to refuse change in structural and cultural areas. This is the worst-case scenario – changing the things we should never change, but holding fast to the things we should be willing to change.” This is the cry of many a legalistic pastor, and it is 180 degrees off on both counts. Legalistic churches by definition cleave to doctrines that can’t hold up, while discarding liturgies designed to create holy space and time.

*

They cleave to doctrines that can’t hold up? Like the resurrection of Christ. The defining doctrine of the church? As we saw, it is only Bawer’s view that this was not the doctrine of the early Church. We know from 1 Corinthians that this was in fact the defining doctrine of Christianity from the very beginning.

Yet what Bawer values is a liturgy designed to create holy space and time. The liturgy that consists of credal statements and responses that are derived entirely from the historical orthodox Christianity. How a liturgy derived from a doctrine one rejects somehow makes its way to the essence of Christianity baffles me in much the same way as this book baffles me. Other than being a lengthy polemic against non liberals, this book seems to have no real purpose.

And yet it is so sad that all this seeks to hide the occasional gem that could, in a more studied and sympathetic work, lead to genuine change where the problems of fundamentalism are identified. Bawer writes astutely: “so if you want to be seen as saved, you pretend not to have problems.” And inasmuch as that happens in the Church (and it happens), this statement is profound and needs to be considered carefully. Unfortunately I doubt anyone who needs to hear that will find it in Bawer’s book.

Bawer again shows his predisposition with this statement:

*

A favourite text is Ephesians 5:22-24, which is traditionally (but, most biblical scholars now say, erroneously) attributed to Saint Paul.

*

Most scholars? He seeks to imply a lack of debate here that is quite inappropriate. Indeed there are easily as many scholars who contend for the Pauline authorship as who oppose it (and for very good and well discussed reasons). That is not to deny that some scholars do have good arguments why they contest Pauline authorship – but rather than engage in, or even footnote the debate here, Bawer does what he does repeatedly – he seeks to close down the argument as though the debate is over! This is what he does with his inflammatory and counter intuitive “legalist” label too, to the very great detriment of his work.

He also contradicts himself often because of his over-reach:

*

It does not seem entirely a coincidence that the advent of television has coincided with the rise of legalistic Christianity …

*

And yet in the chapter on Darby we are led to believe this rise came long before the advent of television, and indeed as he uses “legalistic Christianity” to mean “non liberal”, we might note that the thing he berates has always been with us. It is simply wrong for him to assert that this is a modern phenomenon. This is where Bawer has over-reached. If he were speaking specifically of fundamentalism, and if he had spent some time on defining and understanding fundamentalism (something that is made somewhat tricky by the myriad uses of the term – as a church historian friend of mine was speaking to me about recently), then he could have noticed a correlation between the rise of fundamentalism and the rise of TV, although in any case, correlation does not imply causation, and without some theory as to how one influenced the other, the argument would be post hoc ergo propter hoc. The fallacy for finding causation where only a correlation is identified.

Bawer also denies the Trinity can be found in the writings of the early church, to which I can only reply by recommending “What St Paul really Said” by N T Wright – a Pauline scholar who will show you exactly why this view is wrong. I will not rehearse the arguments here in this already overlong review.

Bawer also finishes off by denying the divinity of Christ. He says:

*

‘Jesus never claimed to be anything but human.’

*

Actually it is well established that Jesus did claim that very thing. Without a doubt he claimed that he and the father are one. He claimed on several occasions to be God, which is why he escaped being stoned for heresy, but was later put to death on a cross. Bawer nails his colours to the mast. He believes in a non miraculuous non resurrected Jesus who preached a message of love but claimed no divinity, and was followed on by legalists who misunderstood that message. That is not the faith of the church though, so a book that berates errant eschatology in a wing of the protestant church seems very very odd.

Finally, Bawer closes with a discussion that goes:

*

‘Christians today are extremely uncomfortable with the implications of Jesus’ humanity – with among much else, the notion that he experienced such emotions as fear, vulnerability, and sexual attraction.’

*

To which I can only point to John White’s excellent “Eros Defiled”, where he makes exactly those points –and non controversially, because in fact Christians are very comfortable with the idea that Jesus was fully human. It is just they believe he was also fully God.

So again, with a better understanding of that which he attacks, and a more carefully reasoned, sympathetic and targetted book – Bawer might have had something useful to say. I fear however that the occasional gem he does uncover is largely lost amongst error, irrelevancy and his own theological mindset that deserves to be challenged itself.

This book is then a timely call to Christians to re-evaluate their unchallenged assumptions, and to realise that so much of politics is anti Christian, that they do the church a dis-service in not taking a stand against it. The book has practical ideas of how to make a stand, and is a wake up call for anyone who thinks God would vote for a certain political party!

There is less here for non Americans. The context of the book is clearly America and its politics, and an outsider would be wrong to read this book to feel smug about their own politics. In the UK religion is much less polarised, but the policies of the parties are no more moral for this. Non US readers should read the book with humility, wondering how the lessons and ideas here can be applied in their own context.