Helen Lewis

He is in some ways an incredibly feminine figure, a passive one.

He lets things happen to him.

He doesn't storm into Pontius Pilate's front room with an AK-47 and gun everyone down.

He lets himself be killed to die for our sins.

And therefore, there's this interesting sense that actually Jesus is kind of slightly an embarrassment to some of these people.

They've had to, in this American Christianity, particularly evangelical Christianity, had to wreck on him as a much more masculine figure.

than the biblical record suggests.

I raised this with someone, one of the pastors I interviewed in Doug Wilson's church, and I said this, I said, it's really hard to match up your idea of this masculine patriarchal Christianity with the Bible.

And he said, oh yeah, but remember when Jesus overturned the tables in the temple, the moneylenders?

So, you know, there again has been a kind of attempt to go back through the Christian tradition and find the bits you like.

Often these guys are more keen on St.

Paul than they are on Jesus because St.

Paul was a preacher.

He was a controversialist.

You know, he was somebody who had a, you know, he had literally had a divine revelation, you know, and then he was also somebody who was patriarchal.

There are lines from there saying, you know, godly women should be quiet.

You know, women shouldn't be preaching.

So, you know, the relationship with Christianity is also very tense, I think.

Well, it's also very funny because successive popes just turn out to be a terrible disappointment to them, which is just like somebody who was raised Catholic, just really funny.

No, have we got another pope?