Books in Brief. - book review

National Review, Feb 11, 2002

Christianity on Trial: Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, by Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett (Encounter, 244 pp., $15.95)

When Pope John Paul II began, a few years ago, his litany of repentance for the sins of Christians throughout history, he made many Christians uneasy: At a time when the "tolerance" of secular culture amounts to a polite contempt for religion, why would any Christian leader choose to open his flock to even more abuse? But John Paul, like the authors of Christianity on Trial, respects history. History, like memory, has power, shaping both the present and the future, giving us context and meaning. This is why a man with amnesia is, in a sense, a "non-person": He's liable to believe anything about his past that outsiders choose to tell him. So too with cultures: When we forget our past, we lose our identity. Thus, when the Pope publicly repents for sins of Christians in the past-a task he calls the "purification of memory"-he's recommitting his Church to justice and truth, and giving notice that he expects the same honesty from others.

As Carroll and Shiflett persuasively show, however, the unhappy ax- grinding of secularized intellectuals seriously distorts Christianity's record-and this is bad news for the future, because we can't avoid past mistakes if we don't properly understand them. The authors correctly observe that "anti-Christian bigotry relies on forgetfulness and loss of perspective. Its antidote is historical memory." They draw the reader into a clear, compelling, and rigorously honest encounter with history. They neither downplay the sins of Christians nor descend into polemics; instead, they offer a skilled, informed, readable examination of the case against Christianity-and why, too frequently,

that case is not merely wrong or overstated, but dishonest. The "trial" of Christianity by today's critics too often resembles a kangaroo court; this book offers an intelligent alternative.

-Francis X. Maier