Bawer makes the point that right wing, conservative and "fundamentalist" Christians have shaped the Christian story in their own form. Ideas and doctrines, never part of the original Christian message, are not understood as normative. In fact, those who urge thoughtful and open biblical scholarship are seen as the "heretics" and deniers of the faith.
Among the distortions of interest in our time is the claim by right wing Christianity that the founding "fathers" intended this to be a "Christian" nation. Some interesting facts are offered.
"Even as they extolled Christian moral principles, the founding fathers expressed skepticism about the chief Christian doctrines, including Jesus' divinity. 'I have…some doubts as to is Divinity,' wrote Franklin, 'tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now…'He quotes Harry Emerson Fosdick's 1932 book, "As I See Religion,""Adams became 'more and more plainly Unitarian as he aged. Though a regular churchgoer, Adams rejected the notion of the Trinity as superstition and with it the idea of the divinity of Christ.'
"And Jefferson 'despised clergymen all his adult life' and evinced a 'hatred of the established faith' that was well-night unparalleled in his time…' A year before his death he describes himself as a Unitarian…Jefferson dissented so strongly from many conventional Christian tenets, indeed, that during the 1800 presidential campaign he was…'denounced in press and pulpit as an atheist…Clergymen told their parishioners that a vote for Jefferson was a vote against Christianity…' (pp. 70, 71)
"Many who use the symbols of religion do not know what they are doing. They read poetry as prose, take similes with deadly literalness, make a dogma from a metaphor. 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." (p. 115)The book is helpful in understanding the core beliefs, not only of fundamentalist religion, but of the "Christian right," which is so prominent today. The thing to be feared is the dogmatic claim of truth and the passion to impose that version of truth on a whole society, even a whole world.
It is not difficult to understand the passion behind the crusades and witch-hunts and other persecutions of "false believers." And it is not difficult to understand the short leap from this kind of faith to the various militant, racist, homophobic groups rising up across this land.
Once when speaking at the Unitarian Church I lifted my voice as I said: "This kind of religion is dangerous!" During the discussion time a young lady commented that I raised my voice and sounded dogmatic about my opposition to fundamentalism. I said that I noted the same thing. "It must be because I have strong feelings that this kind of religion is dangerous to all of us."
Bawer helps us understand the problem as well as offering views with greater dimension that allow us to think through our own position.