STEALING JESUS: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity.

By Bruce Bawer. Crown. 352 pp. $26

When Harry Emerson Fosdick preached his famous 1922 sermon, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?," he answered with a rousing no. "They are not going to do it," he declared, "certainly not in this vicinity." Within a few years, it seemed that Fosdick was right. Following the humiliating Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925, fundamentalist Christianity was all but extinct in the vicinity of Fosdick’s New York City pulpit and in other urban areas. For the next 50 years, the movement was largely confined to the back hills, storefronts, and radio waves of a white, anti-urban underclass. It was, from the perspective of the national culture, invisible.

Since fundamentalism returned to public view in the 1970s, the mainstream media have scrutinized its clout, both cultural and political, and its demographics. But, by and large, the culture mavens have given a free ride to fundamentalist theology. Because there have been no modern-day Fosdicks subjecting these tenets to searching examination, many people have come to view fundamentalism and Christianity as essentially synonymous.

Bawer, however, contends that the teachings of fundamentalist Christianity are at odds with American history, principles of reason and fair play, and the Gospel itself. In fact, he argues that the fundamentalists are the heretics and apostates, twisting the text in pursuit of preordained conclusions. Fundamentalist Christianity "has stolen Jesus—yoked his name and his church to ideas, beliefs, and attitudes that would have appalled him."

The author proves surprisingly well suited to his task. A literary critic and author of A Place at the Table, he writes neither as a historian, although he is a good one, nor from within the gilded circle of professional theology. He has grown up in the age of fundamentalist ascendancy; he has had an adult religious experience that caused him to join the Episcopal Church, of which he is a knowledgeable and devout member; and, in addition to having read and understood the literature of fundamentalism, he writes readable, at times even elegant, prose.

Bawer offers sophisticated theological and cultural portraits of Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and other Christian Right leaders, as well as their less-known allies and predecessors. In a distinction that at times becomes too simplistic, he contrasts their exclusive fundamentalism ("The Church of Law") with inclusive liberal Christianity ("The Church of Love"). At a time when nearly everybody regards "liberal" as an epithet, Bawer lauds liberal Christianity as the essence of the Gospel, the kind of religion that Jesus would both recognize and practice because he preached it. This is a passionate, articulate, timely, and utterly useful book.

—Peter J. Gomes