Liberal Bible-Thumping

 By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

 May 15, 2005

 Even aside from his arguments that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were
 married and that St. Paul was a self-hating gay, the new book by a
 former Episcopal bishop of Newark is explosive.

 John Shelby Spong, the former bishop, tosses a hand grenade into the
 cultural wars with "The Sins of Scripture," which examines why the
 Bible - for all its message of love and charity - has often been used
 through history to oppose democracy and women's rights, to justify
 slavery and even mass murder.

 It's a provocative question, and Bishop Spong approaches it with
 gusto. His mission, he says, is "to force the Christian Church to face
 its own terrifying history that so often has been justified by
 quotations from 'the Scriptures.' "

 This book is long overdue, because one of the biggest mistakes
 liberals have made has been to forfeit battles in which faith plays a
 crucial role. Religion has always been a central current of American
 life, and it is becoming more important in politics because of the new
 Great Awakening unfolding across the United States.

 Yet liberals have tended to stay apart from the fray rather than
 engaging in it. In fact, when conservatives quote from the Bible to
 make moral points, they tend to quote very selectively. After all,
 while Leviticus bans gay sex, it also forbids touching anything made
 of pigskin (is playing football banned?) - and some biblical passages
 seem not so much morally uplifting as genocidal.

 "Can we really worship the God found in the Bible who sent the angel
 of death across the land of Egypt to murder the firstborn males in
 every Egyptian household?" Bishop Spong asks. Or what about 1 Samuel
 15, in which God is quoted as issuing orders to wipe out all the
 Amalekites: "Kill both man and woman, child and infant." Hmmm. Tough
 love, or war crimes? As for the New Testament, Revelation 19:17 has an
 angel handing out invitations to a divine dinner of "the flesh of all
 people."

 Bishop Spong, who has also taught at Harvard Divinity School, argues
 that while Christianity historically tried to block advances by women,
 Jesus himself treated women with unusual dignity and was probably
 married to Mary Magdalene.

 Christianity may have become unfriendly to women's rights partly
 because, in its early years, it absorbed an antipathy for sexuality
 from the Neoplatonists. That led to an emphasis on the perpetual
 virginity of Mary, with some early Christian thinkers even trying to
 preserve the Virgin Mary's honor by raising the possibility that Jesus
 had been born through her ear.

 The squeamishness about sexuality led the church into such absurdities
 as a debate about "prelapsarian sex": the question of whether Adam and
 Eve might have slept together in the Garden of Eden, at least if they
 had stayed longer. St. Augustine's dour answer was: Maybe, but they
 wouldn't have enjoyed it. In modern times, this same discomfort with
 sex has led some conservative Christians to a hatred of gays and a
 hostility toward condoms, even to fight AIDS.

 Bishop Spong particularly denounces preachers who selectively quote
 Scripture against homosexuality. He also cites various textual reasons
 for concluding (not very persuasively) that St. Paul was "a frightened
 gay man condemning other gay people so that he can keep his own
 homosexuality inside the rigid discipline of his faith."

 The bishop also tries to cast doubt on the idea that Judas betrayed
 Jesus. He notes that the earliest New Testament writings, of Paul and
 the source known as Q, don't mention a betrayal by Judas. Bishop Spong
 contends that after the destruction of Jewish Jerusalem in A.D. 70,
 early Christians curried favor with Roman gentiles by blaming the
 Crucifixion on Jewish authorities - nurturing two millennia of
 anti-Semitism that bigots insisted was biblically sanctioned.

 Some of the bishop's ideas strike me as more provocative than
 persuasive, but at least he's engaged in the debate. When liberals
 take on conservative Christians, it tends to be with insults - by
 deriding them as jihadists and fleeing the field. That's a mistake.
 It's entirely possible to honor Christian conservatives for their
 first-rate humanitarian work treating the sick in Africa or fighting
 sex trafficking in Asia, and still do battle with them over issues
 like gay rights.

 Liberals can and should confront Bible-thumping preachers on their own
 terms, for the scriptural emphasis on justice and compassion gives the
 left plenty of ammunition. After all, the Bible depicts Jesus as
 healing lepers, not slashing Medicaid.

 * Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company