BBR, PO Box 625, Sheffield, S1 3GY, or www.bbr-online.com/academic Credit card orders may be phoned or faxed: 01246 271 662 (P&P £2) Further information about Geoff Heath and his other publications can be found on www.bowlandpress.com William Harwood reviews Perfect freedom: Why liberal Christianity might be the faith you’re looking fo by Brian Mountford John Hunt Publishing, 2003, ISBN 1-84298-1 12-9, £7.99, 104 pp, ppb Fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity are the two most pernicious forces for evil on this planet today. But in both Christianity and Islam, fundamentalism is an aberration rejected by the overwhelming majority of believers who are not motivated by a pathological hatred of all persons whose gods are not reflections of the megalomania they see in the mirror. Moderate Muslims have denounced Osama bin Laden, whose Muslim fundamentalism gave us the World Trade Centre atrocity. And even as unquestioning a biblical literalist as George W. Bush has denounced Jerry Falwell, whose Christian fundamentalism caused him to applaud the Trade Centre atrocity as God’s punishment of America for tolerating liberalism.
Brian Mountford advocates a kind of Christianity that accepts the literal truth of even the most discredited Christian myths, but rejects the pretence that right and wrong are whatever fallible, human biblical authors ranging from nice guys to selfrighteous hatemongers say they are. And when a biblical teaching is self-evidently evil, such as Leviticus’s myriad of death penalties for various forms of heresy, Mountford rejects the pretence that any god, let alone a benevolent one, was looking over the writer’s shoulder and telling him what to say.
Mountford’s interpretation of Christianity stems from a purely subjective evaluation of the sacred writings. He shows no evidence of ever having read a book by a historian specializing in religious origins.
In accepting the literal truth of Jesus’ divine incarnation, virgin birth and resurrection, he shows no awareness that the same myths were told of fifty other saviour gods many centuries before Jesus’ birth.
He accepts the nativity myths of two gospels as both accurate, even though Matthew’s tales could be true only if Jesus was born during the lifetime of King Herod, whereas Luke’s could be true only if Jesus was born precisely ten years after Herod’s death, and even though the new star, the gift-bearing magi, the shepherds, the massacre of infants, and Jesus’ birth in a stable, were all borrowed from myths previously told of Mithras, Zoroaster, Krishna, Abraham and various others. Fortunately, since Mountford is arguing against those elements of traditional religion Perfect Freedom that encourage and trigger hatred, violence and intolerance, and the borrowed myths do not fit that description, his lack of expertise in history does not invalidate a book that makes many legitimate points.
He writes (pp. 4-5), "Liberals believe that Christian discipleship and theological understanding is an ongoing, developing process and they therefore expect theological ideas to be questioned in the same way as other knowledge claims are investigated... and they see the importance of honouring and respecting people of other faiths and of no faith." Anyone who does not agree with that is dangerous.
Mountford is unlearned in religious history and documentary analysis. But he is far from naive. His sub-chapter, "Why does Christianity and religion in general encourage division and war?" should be mandatory reading for all biblical literalists, not merely fanatics and zealots.
As a humanist, I find Perfect Freedom both encouraging and discouraging. It is encouraging when it shows an Anglican priest looking. at Christianity with a degree of objectivity and recognizing that there are imperfections that must be evaluated in the light of humankind’s moral evolution since the Bible was written. It is discouraging when it shows the same person, in the process of reading the Bible, shutting his mind to its negative implications. Mountford can read the catalogue of the biblical god’s incomparable atrocities that not even Hitler equalled, and believe that his god did not and could not have done such things. But he cannot make the leap from recognizing the Bible as the work of imaginative authors, to recognizing it as imaginative fiction in which a god played no inspirational role whatsoever. Can one recognize that the Bible is fiction when it says in fourteen places that the earth is flat, but accept it as non-fiction when it describes "God" revealing his existence? To a humanist, no! To a liberal Christian, apparently yes!
Dr William Harwood is the editor/translator of The Judaeo-Christian Bible Fully Translated, volumes 1, 5 & 7, (Booksurge.com).
He lives in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada.
Review of Perfect Freedom: Why liberal Christianity might be the faith you're looking for by Brian Mountford, John Hunt Publishing, 2003, ISBN 1-84298-112-9, £7.99, 104pp, ppb.