The Pagan Christ

In The Pagan Christ, Tom Harpur has presented an argument for a new and revitalized, more spiritual form of Christianity because, he claims, the literalist interpretations of the Gospels that characterize today's Christianity no longer stand up to scholarly research, and worse still, make it a divisive force in world politics by proclaiming to be the only real Church.

With his accounts of the Egyptian Jesus story and its many parallels to the New Testament, and Christianity's transformation from a spiritual religion to literalist Christianism supported by book burnings, excommunications and other acts of treachery by the Church of the second and third centuries CE, and of the place of evolution in his revised Christianity, he has brought to the layman knowledge that is indispensable to one's thoughts and conclusions about religion. In his view of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, as myth containing universal truths rather than history containing specific truths, he provides us once again with sumptuous food for thought. Its failing, if it can be called a failing, is that his arguments in the end provide no answers; they question today's orthodox beliefs, but they don't replace them with anything of true substance, except an individual's own spirit, his Christ within, and these universal truths.

Whatever his standing with the official Church, Harpur obviously has an audience with which to share his thoughts on religious matters. And he has had many such thoughts as his list of published books will attest. His credentials are validated by his accomplishments in the fields of teaching (University of Toronto), writing (9 bestsellers), and audio and visual media (from interviews to series he has conceived). Though many of these earlier endeavours may have been controversial, with The Pagan Christ, in which he questions the very foundations of Christianity and ends by recommending a new and better version, he is taking a very great risk. Or perhaps risks, because he faces different risks with different audiences: from his followers he faces the risk of abandonment for advocating a new and all too embracing Cosmic Christianity which reframes their own into one among many equals both from within and without orthodox Christianity; from his peers, that is, university professors and Biblical scholars, he faces the risk of ridicule for his over dependence on three researchers to whom many do not give the same recognition; and, from that non-Church-going group of doubters, he faces the risk of being the impetus for their final rejection of any and all religions for having revealed once again and in more detail the many historical inaccuracies, misinterpretations and falsehoods upon which many religions are based.

In the end, Harpur seems to have forgotten that those who see themselves as Christians, not Muslims or Jews, not Hindus or Sikhs, see their religion as offering a different (and in some cases, a superior) truth. And under that large umbrella of Christianity, it's the differences one from the other, that make them special. His book is worth reading; his effort is a noble undertaking. But it is naive on his part to think that by sharing this knowledge, he can bring about the kind of change he imagines.