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Francesca Stakapulu, that's the I've got the correct. Yeah. Yeah, I have. Um is the professor of Hebrew Hebrew Bible and ancient religion at the University of Exeter.
Francesca Stavrakopoulou and Tom Holland discuss religion, history, and controversies surrounding religious texts and beliefs at the World Humanist Congress.
Key Takeaways
- Religious texts must be studied critically, acknowledging their complex and often problematic historical sources.
- Academic inquiry into religion can provoke strong reactions, including threats, especially when challenging orthodox beliefs.
- Understanding the origins and evolution of religions involves recognizing the role of mythmaking and ideological rewriting.
- Open, honest, and respectful dialogue about religion is essential for intellectual rigor and social progress.
- Supporting reformist and tolerant voices within religious communities is vital for integration and coexistence.
Summary
- Francesca Stavrakopoulou is a professor specializing in the Hebrew Bible and ancient religion, approaching texts from an atheist but non-hostile perspective.
- Tom Holland is a historian and author focusing on late antiquity, empire, and religion, including the origins of Islam.
- Both speakers emphasize the challenges of studying religious texts critically, acknowledging the problematic nature of historical sources.
- Holland discusses the controversy and threats he faced after releasing a documentary and book questioning traditional Islamic narratives.
- The discussion highlights the tension between academic inquiry and religious sensitivities in public discourse.
- They explore how religious history is often shaped by mythmaking and ideological rewriting.
- The speakers reflect on the impact of religion on society, human rights, and intellectual freedom.
- The event encourages open dialogue about religion without hostility, aiming for rigorous and honest discussion.
- They touch on the importance of supporting progressive voices within religious communities for tolerance and integration.
- The conversation also briefly addresses animal behavior and its relation to religious sensibilities.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Francesca Stavrakopoulou's background
- 05:42Tom Holland's work and approach to history
- 10:48Controversy surrounding Holland's book and documentary on Islam
- 17:12Challenges of studying religious texts critically
- 20:52Religious mythmaking and rewriting history
- 25:48Impact of religion on society and human rights
- 31:01Supporting tolerant voices within religious communities
- 34:00Broader reflections on religion and animal behavior
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Um with very morbid research interests, mainly on corpses. Um, but she's she has other interests, too. She's presented a three-part television series on the BBC, The Bible's Buried Secrets, and contributes to Channel 4's series, The Bible, a History. Um, Tom Holland is
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also familiar off the telly. Um he's the presenter of BBC Radio 4's Making History, has presented a large number of TV documentaries and is author of Rubiken, The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, Persian Fire and Millennium, the End of the World and the
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Forging of Christendom, the It works better if I'm not reading right. Um okay. Okay.
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Okay. I'm going to stand up then while I'm speaking and then sit down. Okay, great. So, what we're going to do is we're going to go straight into the discussion. We're not going to have a we're not going to have a presentation
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first, but what I am going to do is ask each person to describe their work so that you can at least hear them at the beginning. Um, right. So, that's me sitting down. Would you describe your work?
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Should I stand up? Um so as Zoe said I'm professor of uh Hebrew Bible and ancient religion at the University of Exat. So in other words I work in an academic context um in a theology and religion department. I'm
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also head of department um at the moment which brings its own calculations. Um my research work is focused on primarily the Hebrew Bible. So what was in the Jewish tradition is called Tanakh. In the Christian tradition is called the
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Old Testament. And I approach these texts not from the point of view of a believer unlike most of the other people in my profession. Um I'm an atheist, always have been. Um I'm not anti-religion. I'm not hostile to
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religion, but I find religious points of view very difficult sometimes when I see that they can damage or limit other human beings, um, other non-human animals, you know, uh, and particularly when it limits our our ability to be
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able to talk about the Bible in an intellectual, rigorous, critical way. Thank you very much. Yeah, that's perfect. And and Tom, would you do something similar?
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Um I I imagine that the reason that I've been invited here is because of one particular book that I've written uh called In the Shadow of the Sword, which is about um the empires and the religions of late antiquity. So that's
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the fifth, sixth, 7th centuries AD. Um and what made it particularly problematic was what I wrote about the origins of Islam. Um I I I came to it not as someone who was primarily interested in Islam but just generally
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in the relationship between um empire, mythmaking, ideology, religion in antiquity. Um the first book I wrote was about the um collapse of the Roman Republic. The second one was about um the Gopersian wars. Um, the third one was about the establishment and
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emergence of a distinctively Latin form of Christianity in the 10th and 11th centuries. And in all those books, I was fascinated by the way in which our understanding of those respective periods was crucially shaped by people who had rewritten their own history. Um,
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this is fundamental to writing history. your you your acceptance and understanding that the pe your sources cannot be trusted as some as things that are transparent and the more they touch on uh say the origins of cities or the
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origins of understandings of God the more problematic these sources become um and having written about the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians and then the way that um a distinctive monotheistic civilization emerged from the rubble of the Roman Empire in the west. It seemed
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obvious to me to then turn and look at what happened in the Middle East in the sixth and seventh centuries. Um I'd looked at the process by which barbarian invaders in the west became kind of Roman became kind, you know, became
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Christian. the degree to which medieval civilization derived or was a complete break from what had gone before in the Roman period. And I wanted to bring that perspective to the Middle East. So that I was at least as interested in writing
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about the fall of the Roman and the Persian empires in the Middle East than I was in writing about the origins of Islam. So that was my perspective when I began it. What I had not realized was that um the sources for early Islam were
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incredibly problematic even by the standards say of New Testament history or the history of the early Roman Republic. Um and my realization that basically a huge amount of what Muslims believe to be as it were gospel is no such thing.
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Uh, and I remember coming back and telling my wife, um, I think this book is going to cause me some problems. And she visibly blanched. Um, and gradually over time, I kind of adjusted to the fact that, um,
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that I was going to have to write a history of the origins of Islam that was unlikely to meet huge favor with uh, with devout Muslim readers. Um, and I became adjusted to it. book came out um and there was a degree of controversy
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but nothing too terrible. Um I had also u been commissioned by Channel 4 to make a film about it. Um that was broadcast uh a few months after the book came out.
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It was called Islam the untold story. Um Channel 4 had commissioned it because they knew that it would be controversial. They knew that that having someone on television standing up and saying basically uh Mecca isn't Mecca. Um we don't really know where the
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Quran comes from. we don't really know who Muhammad was. Um would be brilliant. You know, it was a massive tehe hehe he from all the commissioning editors, but simultaneously they had incredibly cold feet as did I, as did everyone
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involved in it. And so by the time it finally came to the screen to go out, um there was no breath in the listings magazines that this was controversial.
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Channel 4 did not hype up, did not flag up the fact that this was going to be a controversial film. So therefore, when uh Muslim families across Britain saw that I was going in search of the origins of Islam, they thought, "Oh,
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wonderful. Hour and a half of a gentleman going in search of our beloved prophet." Uh and then I popped up and um they weren't best pleased. And there were um well, there was there were a lot of threats. Um the fact that I had a big
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nose was repeatedly pointed out, implying that I was Jewish. Um, one person said, "I clearly like dressing up as a Roman emperor in my bedroom." Don't know how they knew that. Um, and there were these threats kind of shaded into really
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very violent and unpleasant um, menaces directed at not just at me, but at my family, at my children. Um, and for two weeks it was in incredibly unpleasant experience. Um, you may remember there was another film uh about the origins of
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Islam that came out rather similarly called the the um what was it called? Uh I can't remember it was the film that um resulted in the American ambassador in Benghazi being lynched and it was made by a sort of
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Yes, that's right. And it was it was made by by by um an American cop who was setting out deliberately to make Muhammad look as ridiculous as possible and to be as insulting as possible. And um there was uh the only time that I saw
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the police who'd been sort of keeping track on all the threats and everything looking really nervous was when um uh Iranian Press TV, the Iranian kind of propaganda channel um released a released a halfhour documentary conflating that film and our film and
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implying that they were part of an international conspiracy to defame the prophet. Um and there was a really terrifying day where we were waiting to see if this would get any traction whether you know people would start burning us in effigy. Um unfortunately
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it didn't. Um and all the anger remained focused on the innocence of Muslims and uh we got left behind and so from that point on it's all been fine. Um and here I am luckily still alive to tell the tale. So thank
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you for the invitation. So for how much longer? [Applause] Yeah, that a chilling story. Um, I want to start off talking about authority and who is considered to have authority to discuss religious texts and what that does to scholarship and to in to
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intellectual life generally. So, you tell me what you think. Stand up again. Yes. Like Tom, I had um similar, not quite the death threats uh that Tom received, but um when I made a TV series, um I went on TV and it was called Bible's
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Very Secret, and it was a it was about looking at the ways in which archaeology can either support or um challenge some of the claims made in the Bible. So, we looked at things like the Garden of Eden, King David, um the nature of
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monotheism um which didn't exist and still doesn't exist. Um, and the result of that was that I was really uh attacked um verbally um in the streets a couple of times um letters, emails by Christians um and Jews, primarily
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Christians who felt that I had no authority to go on TV and say that kind of stuff about the Bible, about their text. So the fact that I have a degree from here ology um from Oxford. I've got
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a masters in studies. I've got a doctorate. I used to teach here at Oxford. I'm a professor now in exit. All of that doesn't count for anything. Um I have people saying things like, um, oh yeah, well, you've got quite a nice
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smile, so I expect that's why you got your degrees. I'll give any degree. Um I've never had that problem.
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uh but interestingly even one newspaper uh TV reviewer um reviewed an episode of the TV series by saying something along the lines of um I'm sure whoever commissioned this three-part documentary uh challenging the historicity of the Bible uh in no way considered what
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Francesca looks like or the fact that she um she wanders across the screen like she's shimmy down to the Song of Songs. So in a lot of ways my authority was being challenged both because I wasn't a believer but also because I'm a
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woman and this is very common in my particular profession. Um most people in theology and religion uh university departments not just in the UK but on consonant and in the states most are men most believers of one flavor or another.
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Um and because of that there's a real issue particularly among more evangelical members of the academic guild which includes students includes undergraduates including some of my own undergraduates. Um there's a real issue with the idea that a woman can have any
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authority in talking about biblical texts. What right am I as a woman? So certain Christian evangelical movements um aren't very keen to put it very on women teaching about the texts. So authority is quite an interesting topic primarily because I seem to bump against
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norms um bump against accepted uh sort of parameters if you like of of teaching and discussion because I'm an atheist and because I'm a woman now because I'm an atheist I like to think that actually that gives me a very objective you know
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numbers could be properly objective but it gives me a much more objective position from which I can dig back into the texts into archeological sites look at the cultural history of these particular periods and say in all probability this is what it was like
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this not the way the Bible tells it and the reason the Bible tells it in this way is because of a certain ideological agenda whether that's agenda power or urbanism um whether it's about identity group identities whatever it is as an
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ideological agenda and that's the same with all religious writing all religious writing is propaganda in one form or another is ideological it's trying to persuade the reader or the hearer to believe thing about the world, about their own worldview and their own place
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within it. All all religious writing is like that. But all religious writing is also they're also human products. So it doesn't matter what you think about the Bible, whether you think it's divinely inspired or whether you think that it
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kind of dropped out of the heavens, whatever you believe about it, it's still all religious writings, whether it's the Tanak or the Quran or the Bible, they're all human products.
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They're all products of human societies and human cultures. And they've all had a massive impact on the way in which we understand ourselves today, whether we like it or not, particularly the Bible, particularly in the West. So, as a
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Western woman, I'm hugely shaped by some of the ideals that are promoted and privileged in the Bible. And so, why haven't I got the right to examine this major cultural artifact, this cultural icon that the Bible is? Why can't I
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examine it? Why can't I deconstruct it? Why can't I look at this piece of literature like I might look at the Odyssey or any work of Shakespeare?
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These are all things that have influenced our cultural well-being, our cultural fabric, our sense of identity, both individuals and societies. So why the bloody hell shouldn't I look at it?
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[Applause] Thank you very much. Um so Tom this what impact does it have do you think when only believers can examine texts? Do you think that is mainly an impact of accuracy or there are other implications?
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Well I I I think that there are actually quite significant differences in the religious traditions and the hermeneutical traditions between Christianity and Islam.
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Um and I I absolutely agree the tradition that um Francesca embodies and to the degree I try to as well seems to me firmly rooted rooted in um really um a Christian understanding of the world that's been secularized. Um
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the bi the Bible may well be believed to be the word of God. But even back in the Petristic era, so the early centuries of of of Christian study um people were aware that these different books, these different
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portions which were being stitched together to form the Christian Bible um derived had human origins. And so when the uh when the Christian Bible ended up being canonized, you had within it uh four accounts of the life of Jesus for
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instance, um you had an old and you had a new testament. Um and so the job of trying to work out what the relationship was between these different texts, how did they come to be written? Where where were they written? Why were they
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written? Um runs all the way through from late antiquity through the Middle Ages into the Renaissance period. Um the methodologies of looking at texts in this way even though they are being practiced by believers are sharpening and intensifying the
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ability to look at ancient texts and to take them apart. And what happens in the 18th and then even more in the 19th century is that that tradition is bled of its Christian context and it is then applied to not just to
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biblical texts but to say to classical texts as well. And so the spirit of looking at ancient civilizations and ancient texts ultimately derives principally from a Christian tradition. And I think that that means that in the 19th and maybe
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right the way up into the 21st century, although it can often be shocking for Jews and for Christians to have their scriptures dissected and taken apart in this manner, it's not a total shock. It is kind of going with the grain of that
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tradition. Now with Islam, it is different. Islam has an intellectual tradition that is just as rich, just as sophisticated as the Christian one. But it has been shaped by its own understanding of God and its scriptures.
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The Quran is the word of God in a way that outdoes even the Bible because Muhammad has according to Muslim belief has nothing whatsoever to do with the origin of the Quran. The Quran comes from God. It is co-eternal with God. It
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has existed since before the beginning of time. And therefore it gives to the Quranic text a heft and and an authority that vastly outweighs say that of the Bible. And so there is nothing within the Quran that would encourage Muslim
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scholars to ask questions such as for instance well where might the various constituent elements of this text have come from? Where and when might it be written? And the thing is that the the Quran is actually an incredibly
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difficult text to get to understand. It is very very elliptical, very very abstract. There are none of the convenient details that you get in the Bible sort of naming famous rulers or famous events. There's almost nothing of that. There's only the only um the only
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uh major power that is mentioned in the Quran are the Romans and they get one single mention.
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And so as a result, Muslims to explain how it was that the Quran came into being started writing lives of their prophet which explained it. And it's very difficult to understand the Quran as Muslims would appreciate it without also having this
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kind of cladding that is provided by the biography of Muhammad. And the earliest biographies of Muhammad that we have are about 200 years after his lifetime. Um, and it has traditionally been assumed that the the biographies of Muhammad
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explain how the Quran came into being. But actually, it's the other way round. The Quran exists and so therefore the biography of Muhammad is constructed to explain it. And the nearest analogy that I can think of um is the way that people
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have tried to make sense of the life of say Shakespeare. We don't we have the plays but we don't know enough about him. We want to know more. And so you have this grand romantic tradition in which Shakespeare falls in love with a
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dark lady or he hates his uncle or you know stuff that you pull out of the plays and the sonnetss. And so likewise you look in the Quran the verses are full of references to of how important it is to look after
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orphans. And so in the traditional account of Muhammad's life, Muhammad is an orphan. There's an account of someone hiding in a cave. In the traditional biography, Muhammad hides in a cave. And so what it serves to do is to preserve
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the Quran within this kind of concrete of context. And what adds to it even more is something that I think derives ultimately from from the Talmud, from the Jewish tradition, which is the notion not just of a written law, a
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written text, which is what the Quran represents, but um an oral one. And these traditions are embodied in the hadiths sayings of Muhammad which again have the force of divine law because Muhammad is a prophet and of God and so
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therefore what he says has divine force. Now in fact these sayings again are not compiled until about 200 years after the lifetime of Muhammad. And so therefore the likelihood that they are theimma verbber of a historical Muhammad are
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vanishingly tiny. And it's even clearer when you reflect that the the the phrases that are embodied within the hadiths clearly derive from other traditions. They they they reflect notions of Roman or Persian provincial law, Jewish notions, Zorastrian notions
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all framed within this presumption that they were spoken by Muhammad. And of course the reason for that is that as people from Zarastrian Christian Jewish traditions convert to Islam, they want to bring something to this evolving religion. And the only way they can do
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that is to ascribe the traditions that they are bringing to emergent Islam to this prophet who lived in a desert a long way away from the fertile cresant.
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And so that's why you have this disjunction which seems perfectly apparent to me. You have a religion that places its origin in the depths of a desert with the kind of sands as this prophylactic expanse around it. But it
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clearly derives from the Middle East. It clearly reflects traditions of the late antique Middle East. And that tension is recognizable to someone who has been brought up in the Western and ultimately Christian tradition in a way that it is
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not to those who've been brought up in the Muslim intellectual tradition. And so therefore it is shocking to devout Muslims to have this methodology deployed on the life of Muhammad on the Quran in exactly the same way that it is
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for Jews and Christians analogously. But it is also even more shocking because it I think seems to Muslims to be an approach and a methodology that is grounded in ultimately Christian presumptions and worse than that godless Christian presumptions. So I think that there is a
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massive tension there between the rival traditions and understandings of authority that are embedded within Christianity and Islam. And I think that um although I hadn't really considered it, the process of writing this book and thinking about it has made me realize
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that I am in my presumptions and my methodologies vastly more Christian than I had appreciated when I began it.
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Very interesting. Um so I want to talk a bit about persecution complex. You you you think Christians have a persecution complex. You think Muslims have a persecution complex. Which of which which of it which of them shall we
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say is the most sensitive to scrutiny at the moment? Well, or over time. You can choose your time period.
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Should I? Yeah. Um it's a major point um of reference in contemporary Christianity particularly Protestant forms of Christianity. Um the to be truly Christian is to undergo or experience some kind of persecution.
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It's a huge theme. It's a recurring motif in a lot of New Testament texts.
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Jesus is supposed to have, you know, made reference, you know, you will be persecuted for believing in me. You've got all sorts of stories and traditions um in text like the book of Acts, a lot of the Pauline letter matters.
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There's a sense in which Christians in the West, and I'm being quite careful about saying the West here, the West have tended to argue that they're being persecuted. So, for example, the case the court cases last year that went to um the European Court
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of Human Rights whereby a woman who was working for British Airways um tried to say that she had been um she had been persecuted for her beliefs by her employer because she wasn't allowed to wear a crucifix uh you know as part of
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her her uniform with British Airways. They use the language of persecution quite often um to describe a feeling of of being threatened of some somehow their religious privileges, their religious rights aren't being regarded um in the same kind of concrete way as
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they used to be. Eric Pickles has just been made minister of faith uh to replace Worski and you know if you recall he's he's made it quite clear several times on things like question time um he refers to militant atheists
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like we're all kind of strapping up for guns and bombs and going militant atheists um who are at persecute Christians who don't respect Christian faith and Christian beliefs and practices those Christians aren't being persecuted Christians are being persecuted in Iraq at the moment
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Um, Christians are being persecuted in Egypt, for example. That's real persecution. And there are Muslims being persecuted all over the world, too. But Christians in the west quite often have a sense that somehow because of the increased emphasis on secularism which
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is different from atheism because the increased emphasis on secularism in the west um of which I'm a firm supporter there's somehow a sense that what used to be a given what used to be a given that certain Christian privileges would
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be honored respected ring fenced and that that's no longer the case and they're crying persecution because it's a part of their identity. It's a part of Christian identity to be persecuted, to be thrown to the lions like Daniel in
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the den or like in the Roman period. Um there's this sense somehow that you're not a real Christian unless you're suffering. Look at the example of Jesus.
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Um but it's bollocks. They're a real Christian. I'm sorry about my language. My mom will slap me. There's there's a real sense somehow that to be they don't understand how privileged they are in the West. You know, Christianity has
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been privileged in the West for 2,000 odd years. Um, there are people that really are being persecuted and suffering in the world, not just for their religion, but for their sexuality, for their gender, their ethnicity. Tone it down, Christians, is what I would
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say. Thank you very much. Okay. I I I agree. I think that that the idea of persecution has always been fundamental to Christianity in a way that it isn't to Islam. uh and it reflects the simple fact that um Jesus
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ended up nailed to a cross and Muhammad didn't. Um and all through the early centuries of Roman rule um sorry of of of Christianity's emergence. Um it became taken for granted that to be martyed was the supreme um privilege
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that a Christian could have. Uh, and you have amazing marties, um, blood curdling descriptions of all the horrors that were inflicted on martyrs in the arena.
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The crowd cheering and baying as people are strapped onto burning chairs or tossed to lions or disembowled.
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Um, and as a result, when Constantine converted, uh, there was a slight feeling of disappointment that this was no longer a career option for an ambitious Christian. Um and so it's not coincidental that around this period um you start to get people going out into
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the deserts and becoming uh monks becoming hermits and they cast themselves as milit christi as soldiers of Christ and the people they're fighting are no longer the Roman authorities but devils um and they take it very very seriously.
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They are going out into the desert. They are uh subsisting entirely off uh that people have trotten in. Um they are chaining themselves up like cows to make their life harder. My favorite uh hermit is um an incredibly um uh wealthy woman
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who buys herself um a cell with an amazing view, beautiful view um and then spends 20 years not looking out of it.
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And she she does this she she does this to demonstrate that she is truly a soldier of Christ and and that the demons are there to be fought. Now what happens with um with Islam is that this model of monasticism of people going
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into the desert and fighting demons is very very important and and and the desert in Islam as in Christianity is a a realm where you you commune with God and you commune with the devil. Um, but of course what Muslims are able to or at
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least I be careful when I call them Muslims, the Arabs in the seventh century, the the the conquerors of this great empire, they are able to literally be soldiers of God because they are the shock troops of a great global empire.
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Um, and so when they start talking about being soldiers of God, they are going off and they are fighting Romans.
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And it becomes increasingly embarrassing to them that they are drawing for this notion, this idea that you you become aesthetic, that you um you leave your home, you go into a place of struggle and hardship and you fight. It becomes
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embarrassing that this is this is clearly being derived from the example of Christian monks. And so I talked earlier about how the biography of Muhammad is fabricated. It becomes very important to these militant Arab scholars who are going to the frontier
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with Rome in the Taurus mountains that their example come not from monks but from Muhammad. And so that within this biography of Muhammad that is slowly being constructed, Muhammad is cast as a warrior. And we all know because
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it's been discussed endlessly that there are very pacific verses in the Quran and there are very bellose verses in the Quran. Um and what happens over the course of the 8th century is that these scholars construct a notion called
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abrogation whereby the earlier verses are abregated by the later ones and they cast the specific ones as being abregated by the more bellose ones. Um, and they do this by constructing a biography of Muhammad in which he becomes increasingly successful as a
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warlord. He fights a lot of battles. He has a sword called the cleaver of vertebrae. Um, he is a warrior. Um, and so therefore, it's written into the DNA of uh, Christianity of its of its messiah and of its saints that the true Christian
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suffers persecution and his glory lies in heaven. Um the Muslim notion of a martr is very different. A Muslim martyr by and large is one who dies in battle. Um and Islam by and large is the dominant religion of
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powerful empires. What has happened um recently is that Muslims really for the first time have become um minorities within societies that do not ascribe a privileged position to Islam. Um and so they too are now starting to pick up on
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this sort of Christian notion of persecution I think. Um and there is a sense in which the the mingled self-pity and militancy of these jihadis who are going off to Syria to um attack and behead and destroy the established
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Christian communities there who've been there for 2,000 years and who as Franchesco said are genuinely being persecuted. Um that actually they are um behaving rough rather like militant Christians which is probably the most insulting thing I could say to you.
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So kind of moving on, kind of taking on the um persecution, how do you account for what seems to be a kind of growing sensitivity? You know, a feeling that there is actually less you can say about religion now than there was 20 years
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ago. Um I think 911 uh still leaves very large um within the cultural frame when it comes to thinking about religious sensitivity. What can we say about religion to when do you draw a line between being intellectually c
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culturally critical of a religious system um or belief or practice and when does that line when do you cross that line and move over into religious offense? You know, there's the old adage that, you know, offense isn't given,
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it's taken. And I think to a certain degree that that's true. But I do think that 911 made us all very nervous about being openly critical about cultures that are very different from our own um about religions that are
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very different from our own. If you remember all the hype in, you know, not just in the immediate aftermath of 911, but in the the few years after, the hype about, you know, you read about, you know, you read about um Islamic
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terrorism, Islamic extremism, but there's always a reference, you know, but the other hand, there's Christian fundamentalism. Well, what about Christian extremism? We we've seen examples of Christian extremism. We've seen examples of Christian terrorism, not just in the last few years, but over
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the course of the last 2,000 years. But there's a real sensitivity about the way in which if we talk about Islam in particular that we are othering a whole culture, a whole group of people because their religious belief systems are so
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different from the cultural norms of the west. Whether or not you're a Christian in the west, we are a part of this Christian culture. So when it comes to religious sensitivity, I think there's a lot of fear primarily because Islam in
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particular has been vilified unfairly. It's been demonized unfairly. has been caricatured unfairly as an intolerant belief system, an intolerant social group, an intolerant culture. But actually, Christianity is much is much the same. It is increasingly intolerant.
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Partly it's a reflection, I think, of this idea that somehow Christians are being persecuted in the West. Um, so when it comes to things like religious offense and religious sensitivity, for me, the secret is to be polite. So
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you probably wouldn't imagine it given the language I mean so fast but um the secret is to be polite. Just you know don't say anything that you wouldn't want somebody to say to you. That's my general take on it. You know just be
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polite to people. It doesn't mean to say that you can't disagree with them. Of course you can. But be polite. You know don't point out that uh don't accuse them of certain racist or religious caricaturures. Um you know try
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to be careful in your language. But you can say absolutely anything as long as you frame things properly. So just don't rely on racist caricaturures or religious caricaturures. Unlike, you know, given the current conflict that's going on um in Israel with Gaza, some of
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the media, the language of the media has been inflaming certain sorts of prejudice and caricature about both Judaism and Islam, which is completely inappropriate, but it fans the flames.
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So to a certain extent I think you can say absolutely anything critical of any religion but be polite about it. You're talking about a religious system as well as talking to a person. I think you have to concentrate on the person when you're
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in debate with them rather than necessarily the the religious system that you're critiquing. Does that make sense?
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Yeah. I mean what do you think being polite cuts it or do you think Yes. I think you should always be polite.
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You should be polite but you should be polite but honest. But um in in reply to your question um why Why have we become more nervous about offending religious?
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I I think that um it reflects the fact that maybe during maybe when I was a child, so growing up in the 70s, um most people in Britain kind of the the habit of Christian faith was lost. Um,
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and people always tie that up with the uh the life of Brian. But for me, the the figure, the comedy figure who best embodies that is the vicer in Dad's Army, who is, if you remember, wholly ineffective, and he's he's sort of limp
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wristed and bully and hopeless. Um, has not an ounce of spirituality within him. And I think that he became sort of representative of how pe most people in Britain thought of religion as something woolly and wet.
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Um and therefore when people suddenly started burning a book because it had offended their profit. Uh and then even more when they um flew two planes into skyscrapers in the name of their religion. um people in the west by which I mean by
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and large you know the kind of people who are here today uh and the people who um are in government and who are in the media and are in academia um the opinion formers um the people who basically run
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this country and run countries across the west they don't have the the habit of religion we don't understand it um and we've had to re-educate educate ourselves about it. Uh and that's been a a complex and difficult process because
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we suddenly find out that um not every religious person is like the vicar in dad's army that actually some of these people really believe this And that comes as a shock. And what adds to the difficulty is that the religion that
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is creating most of the waves is not one that is native to Britain. Um and as Franchesca said that it is um it is one that can all too easily be cast as the other. Uh and there has been an
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understandable and commendable anxiety on the on part of people not to demonize a minority. It's it's incredibly dangerous to do that. Muslims are disadvantaged. They are um you know they do suffer prejudice in this country and therefore to attack a
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religion that is often the basis of their life is is very difficult. Now, nevertheless, I think it is vital that Islam be subjected to the same spirit of inquiry as all other religions have done. And that is for the I I think
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for the good of everyone in this country because religions are not static things. Yeah, they are dialogues between people at a given point in time and given scriptures and traditions. And so therefore, they're not, you know, there is no
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platonic essence called Islam or Christianity. These are constantly evolving things. And so therefore, the Islam that is in Britain and in the West will evolve. It may react against the dominant culture, but I think it's just as likely to um absorb it.
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And so what's going on within say British Islam at the moment is an incredibly intense ideological conflict.
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Um it's as intense as anything that Britain has seen since I would say the 1650s, the you know the decade of the protectorate in in England. Um and what you have is an incredibly intense and vibrant intellectual, theological,
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philosophical debate that is going on. You can find it on Twitter. You can find it on the internet. You can find it in um magazines across the country. It is unbelievably vibrant and dynamic. But the problem the problem is that
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people in the BBC, people who edit newspapers, um they do not really get it. And so they tend to think that whoever shouts the loudest and has the largest beard is the most Muslim. And the classic demonstration of this was at
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the beginning of this year when Margie Noaz, a former hisiz but terrier extremist now turned um almost the polar opposite but still a Muslim um tweeted a link to the Jesus and Mo cartoon where Jesus and Muhammad are
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kind of the Eric and Ernie propping up, you know, hanging out together. Um and he said, "This does not, as a Muslim, I am not offended by this." Um he was then subject to an absolute campaign of demonization by some of the more
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unpleasant elements within British Islam. And shamefully neither the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, no newspaper reprinted this cartoon. And the argument was that by not reprinting, they didn't want to do it because it would offend Muslim sensibilities. But Marj is a Muslim and had demonstrated
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that it didn't offend his Muslim sensibilities. So implicitly the media in this country were taking an ideological side in a debate within British Islam and what's worse taking the side of the most intolerant and doctrinary aspects of Islam. And what is vital, I think, for
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those of us who admire Islam and want to see a British form of Islam emerge that is compatible and tolerant and integrated. It's vital that these people who are campaigning for that within Islam get our support because at the moment they
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are being marginalized and silenced by the mainstream media who would much rather parade someone with a hook and that is really what's got to change I think.
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Yeah. I mean that does that gets to the core of it, doesn't it? that actually how do you create a conversation around faith that doesn't just believe the most extreme um I think Tom hit the nail on the head
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when he talked about um the way in which in particular in this country but but generally in western Christianity for example Protestantism has become it's like the kind of diet coke isn't it of Christianity it's like kind of decap
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coffee like what's the point you know if I if I were ever to be a Christian which is not going to happen. I'd much rather be Greek Orthodox or Catholic. I mean, come on, give me the real magic. Give me
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the real But I think that's the thing. I think in some ways when you look at the way in which certain Western Protestant respon Christian responses both to Islam, to secularism, how they differ from, for example, Orthodox, you know,
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Eastern Christianities, um, or Catholic, Roman Catholic forms of Christian, how they differ in their responses. Most of the the people in the Eastern Orthodox communities are kind of pretty much just getting on with it. They have a very
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longheld, very firm tradition that's still changing. It's developing. But I think to a certain extent it it's it's got such a strong identity at its core that it doesn't really need to engender perhaps Islam in the UK might feel
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threatened by or Christianity in the UK and the states might feel threatened by. So I suppose how do you build this kind of what's the question? How do you build a conversation?
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Yeah. How do you build a conversation that doesn't just privilege the the kind of the most offended?
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I think you need to start more generally with building a conversation around groups that are much more diverse in their makeup. So that includes women um who are very underrepresented uh in most mainstream religions um and it includes
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people from different sorts of backgrounds. A really good example is the rise of um new religious movements in this country and in Europe and in the states. So this includes things like, you know, Mormonism, but includes a lot
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of new sort of nature religions and neopaganism. They're just as disgruntled, fed up, pissed off with how boring the religion debate has become, how disconnected mainstream religions, Christianity, Jews, and Islam in particular, how disconnected they've become from what they consider to be
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more important social aspects of being and living and thinking and loving in the world. And I think you need to include a lot more new religious movements in any debate about religion.
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get religious people out of the House of Lords and construct a new kind of construct a new kind of forum that's about the intellectual and social privileging of diverse religious voices and non-religious voices but to include more minority groups. I was once in I
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was interviewed on um the radio a few months ago about Scientology and the high court in the UK had decreed that Scientology you know was a religion and what did I think about this surely it was a cult every religion is a cult the
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word cult means practice and action in belief that's basically what it means every single religion began as a cult and offspring of some other form of religion scientology Mormonism whatever it is that has exactly the same authority is as valid as Christianity,
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Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism. And I think we need to recognize that. Why privilege these monotheistic texts just because they come lugging with them a huge, you know, bit of baggage that primarily is including scripture and a few guys with beards. I
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I think it's time for a change, a change in the way that we see religion.
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What I mean, what do you make of that? Including yet more religions. Oh, the more the marrier.
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Well, Um I mean paganism is is fascinating. I when I was growing up I was kind of I I was brought up um in the Church of England. Um my mother was um always provided me with the kind of moral
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exemplar and so I've I've never had a an issue with the moral teachings of Christianity. I've always respected them. Um but simultaneously I had a real thing about Apollo and Athena and I they were the ones I really wanted. Um, I
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realiz I realized I didn't really like gods with big beards. And I know I've been going on about beards, but I I realized I have a kind of subliminal association of the really long beard with people telling you that you can't
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do things. Um, and I kind of like preferred the Greek gods because they just got on and did it, even the ones with beards like Zeus. Um, and so I I would kind of really love to be able to
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to believe in a Greek god, you know, or in a, you know, or goddess or goddess. Um, yes. Uh, but of course it's impossible. Um, and now what's he called? Oh, my brain is going. Um, wonderful Ronald Hutton. Ronald Hutton.
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Yeah. um who uh is a historian of anyone read Ronald Hutton you okay he's a historian of the 17th century uh began that wrote biographies of Charles II all kinds of things like that um and then started writing all kinds of very
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sympathetic and incredibly scholarly uh accounts of of about paganism in the 20th century um and then outed himself in an extraordinary um essay uh in which he revealed that he had been brought up as a pagan and to a degree was still a
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pagan. But he then horribly blotted his copy book among the pagan community by uh demonstrating conclusively that um all these pagan traditions and rituals that pagans wanted to believe were uh timeless, primordial, had been inherited from underground currents that had um
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been kept alive during the the centuries of Christianization in Britain and had now flowered back into life were holy bogus that they'd been invented from scratch in the late 19th to early 20th century. Um and that this idea that the
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witches or whatever were uh you know an archaic priesthood or something were utterly made up. Um and of course in that all he was doing was applying the same scholarly methods that have been applied to Christianity or to Islam or
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to demonstrate that that what all uh belief systems do is to invent a backstory for themselves. um and that what we tend to think of as the story of religions, the beginnings of religions are simply backstories um where the
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concrete is set. And Ronald Hutton demonstrated conclusively that the same process is going on now with neopaganism. Um and understandably this didn't go down tremendously well with with his fellow pagans because they felt betrayed. they wanted um you know he's
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the most celebrated the most um cerebral uh of all pagans and he had been true to his academic calling um and I think that that that really all the things we've been talking about that is the the core
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tension it's the tension between the desire for belief because that desire is is deeply within humans I feel it myself the desire for belief and the awareness that we have as educated westerners that there are all kinds of reasons why these beliefs
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cannot be true. Be it because the sources are inadequate and they seem to disprove what are claimed in scriptures or because there were no dinosaurs in the garden of Eden or because of the big bang or whatever. There is a massive
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tension within I think quite a lot of us between I always talked to to both Zoe and Franchesca about the Thomas Hardy poem as embodying my feelings about religion uh where he he he's talking about on Christmas Eve the old story
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that um you the animals talk on Christmas Eve and he describes people in the par saying wouldn't it be wonderful let's go down to the stable what if what if course you know it's not going to happen you know animals don't on
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Christmas Eve, but there is this kind of magic of imagining what if. Um, and that really sums it up for me and I think it sums it up for an awful lot of people in this country. And so I I think that
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there's not we shouldn't think that there is a hard and fast division between the religious and the non-religious. I think there's a a sizable constituency in the middle where there is a kind of incredible tension between the desire for belief and the
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impossibility of belief. Great. Yeah, you wanted to come in. Yeah, come in. I think I think I disagree um on point about there's something um that somehow there's something in all of us that leans towards belief that somehow
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I didn't say all of us. I said a lot of us I agree but I think I think that's very human thing and I and I think but I don't think it's necessarily means that it's an exclusively human thing. So by
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that what I'm trying to say is when you look at the way in which across time across societies and cultures human beings have treated other treated their dead for example you find certain animals doing similar sorts of things.
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It's well documented that elephants tend their dead and the bodies of of their dead relatives. Um I've been reading a book recently uh that talks about fish exhibiting certain sorts of watery behaviors. Um all sorts of animals do
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it. cats and dogs and I so I I think yes there is something within living beings that enables us both to be social to form loving communities and relationships and that's the same thing I think that reaches out to us and makes us want to
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care for the ill look after the dead um that feels sympathy and empathy for other living beings and it's not just a human thing it's an animal thing and I think that is the thing that's at the very heart of most religions to be
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honest I think it's that sense of community and solidarity and wanting to be in groups that are cohesive and tied and share certain sorts of patterns and behaviors that we see. I think that's where religion begins. And I think
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that's where almost sort of day deifying of the corpse of your ancestors. You know, one of the oldest oldest religious artifacts that we have in the world come from Jericho. Um and they're the famous plastered skulls of the dead. So the the
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dead corpses have been decapitated, their skulls have been reworked, they've been covered over in lime plaster, they've had sea shells or animal shells cut into their eyes. You know, these things like 6,000 years old. And it's the earliest example where you suddenly
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find the dead become something else for the living. And in a way, that's exactly what happens in a lot of religions that the dead become something else for the living. Christianity obviously kind of tries to go one step better and
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literally makes a corpse become something else for the living by claiming that Jesus resurrects from the dead. I think he'd be spinning in his grave and I think he's in his grave. I think he'd be spinning in his grave if
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he knew what was being said and done in the name of in his name in terms of certain sorts of attitudes um to other people certain sorts of attitudes to Judaism in particular that Christians have exhibited. But I think that's where
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it comes from. I think it's not so much a I think that what you describe as that wanting to believe is actually sound like a hippie, but it's kind of wanting to love. And I think that's that's what it is.
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I I I would go further though and say that it's it's an expression of other things that are that are within our hearts that are also kind of becoming attenuated and cramped. Um and one of them is our relationship with the
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natural world. Uh and it's evident when you look at any um ancient belief system and going back even beyond Jericho, back to the the cave art, it's evident that uh the relationship with wild animals is absolutely a fundamental part of the awe
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that these very very ancient peoples are bringing to their understanding of the divine. And of course, we know nothing at all about what these people believed except what we've got in these caves.
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And you can interpret them almost any way you want. But I've never read an account of cave art that does not emphasize the significance to the artists of the natural world. And I think that um that that what is
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happening now in the in the the 21st century uh in regard to the natural world is rather similar to what I was saying that that it become it's become almost impossible to believe in mystery and angels in whatever you want because
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um we know so much about science. We know so much about history. Likewise, it's becoming increasingly impossible to connect with the natural world and to see nature as something intimidating, ferocious, and autonomous. You mentioned elephants. You know, the elephant is in
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danger of going extinct in the wild. The lion is, the tiger is all these creatures that for our ancestors and indeed for our great grandfathers even embodied wildness, embodied savagery, they now live on the sufference of horrible people who believe that rhino
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horn will cure their impetence. So these animals are going to be wiped out to sati satisfy someone you can't get a hard on.
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And the knowledge of that I think cramps and inhibits our sense of the sacred that derives from the natural world what EA Wilson called biophilia. Um, sorry that's a downer.
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But but I think I think I think that that in that sense there is, you know, our relationship with the natural world, our desire to believe that there is wilderness and there are wild animals out there is also kind of an ele aspect
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of our longing for the sacred. Wow, that's pretty deep, huh? Yeah. Um, if I can put us on even more of a downer.
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Oh no. Um, can you trace a line between what we might call a new religious sensibility and the really intractable conflicts that are going on say in Israel and Gaza or between ISIS and or the Yazetti? Um can do you look at
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that and say this is this is a rel this is religion becoming more um forceful or do you think that religion is actually used as a mask for pre-existing geopolitical conflict?
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I certainly think that religion is often used as a mask and a prop um to make certain claims um about other people's and to justify certain sorts of action.
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Um a lot of people think that the dispute that's going on in Israel and Gaza at the moment a lot of people are confusing the Israeli government with Judaism.
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There are certain members of the Israeli government that similarly confuse what it is to be Israeli with what it is to be Jewish. Um, but the two are quite distinct.
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Israel is a democracy. Um, but Israel as a part of that democracy also has within its government some very conservative right-wing rabbitic um, and other religious Jewish um, factions.
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I completely think that politics and religion should be separate or I think we should see a disab here but that doesn't always solve everything. So look at the example of the states where church and state are separate but arguably American policy
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both home and abroad is a lot more religiously uh informed and motivated um than perhaps our own UK policy is. So to a certain extent I don't think yes religion causes wars yes religion causes dispute. Yes, religion and religious
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differences are an aspect an aspect of what we've seen going on um in the Middle East and in Israel and Gaza in particular, but it's not the only aspect. Um it's about identity. Judaism um has a particularly strong
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relationship correlation between Jewish identity and land. It always has done and that's ripped large in the the Hebrew scriptures. Um, and it's a it's a crucial ideological component and not just um about being displaced and and homeed again, but a very specific
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relationship to land. But that that relationship, that ideological relationship between land and identity within Judaism isn't a coherent one. It's not a uniform one. Yes, there are certain texts in the Hebrew Bible that promote genocide that tell the Jewish people that they need to
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wipe out all the indigenous inhabitants of the land of Canaan. But there are also other texts in the Hebrew Bible that simultaneously say, you know, you need to live peaceibly alongside these other people. These other people show you hospitality and you show them
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hospitality. You live together side by side. The Hebrew Bible writers and compilers didn't have an issue with that justosition of views. So I find it very hard to understand why certain members of Israeli government and policy makers why why they should have an issue um
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with it as well. Why can't they have that justosition quite comfortably? I don't know. So yeah, religion is used as a mask and a prop sometimes sometimes to cover certain things but sometimes religion is the cause um of of conflict
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and that's exactly what Jerusalem represents. Jerusalem. The battle for Jerusalem as opposed to the battle for Gaza or some of the Western Bank. The battle for Jerusalem is a is as much a religious one as it is a political one
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because it's the holy city. Does that answer your question? Yes, it does. It does. What What do you think?
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Well, religion is a manifestation of cultural identity and cultural identity is in turn um an an expression of human emotions and desires and ambitions and hatreds. Um and so religion will take on the appearance and the contours of the
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various conflicts or the various conflict resolutions that um of the people who who who believe it. Uh and it's clear that um it's perfectly possible for religion to play an incredibly valuable role in conflict resolution. I I'm sure that in Northern
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Ireland um the fact that both sides came from um although they Catholic and Protestant nevertheless they could agree on the notion that peacemakers are blessed um that provided a framework for them a presumption that this was an ideal that
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they should go for. I'm sure that was incredibly useful. Um, I think in in Israel and Palestine it's it's really I think I I mean I just think generally in the Middle East now it's very hard to look at it and not feel
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that religion is an appalling curse. You know, if you think about um what Palestinian radicals looked like in the 70s and you think about all those kibutsim and Israeli socialists, you think actually there even in the sort of the heyday of
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you know the aftermath of the of the ' 67 war and of the PLO hijackings and things. Nevertheless, there was potential there in the shared language of socialism for Jew for for Israeli and Palestinian people to get together and and forge a
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common future. I think that absolutely agree that the the fact that not only Jews but Muslims as well believe that they have a divine claim on the holy land. Um Jews by virtue of their descent from Isaac. Um Muslims by the descent of
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the Ishalites from Ishmael. um makes it really difficult. I mean, if both of both sides think that God's given them the land, there's not a huge scope for huge scope for dialogue there. And I and and so there I think that that that that
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religion has become more and more salient over the past two decades. I don't think it's caused it. I think that it's it's been reached for as as it suits the mood of the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples. the more entrenched
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their hatreds and their divisions become, the more religion kind of soaks into their brain patterns, the more appropriate it becomes. Um, but I think the most tragic manifestation of uh what of the evil, and I I'm reaching for a
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theological word there that um religion can can result in is what's happening in northern Iraq at the moment, which is unspeakable. Um, and I don't think that's because there is something intrinsic with Islam which results in um, people like ISIS becoming
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inevitable. I think it's because the people who who join ISIS, who set it up, have an unbelievably literalist um, interpretation and understanding of religion and of their scriptures that has no room for poetry whatsoever. And in that light, I think it's not
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coincidence that almost all of them seem to have been engineers or doctors. Again and again, you come across people who have flown planes into skyscrapers or who've tried to blow up airports or who've chopped people's heads off. They
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turn out to be doctors. They turn out to be engineers. And I think the reason for that is that they kind of think that God is like some great engineer or some great doctor who can has served them a
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textbook and all they have to do is follow it and everything will be brilliant. And so what they're doing now in the Holy Land is they're looking into the Quran and to the Hadith and they're finding some of the more bloodier ones
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and they're saying, "Oh, this is a literal thing that we should follow and we should do it." And so as a result, you have useless, incompetent 19-year-old inbetweener style guys who have to buy a bluffer's guide to the Quran going out
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there and chopping the heads of people who've of who belong to communities who've been there for thousands of years. And it's unspeakably tragic.
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[Applause] We're just trying to make as much clapping noise as the other room. Um I mean to put us on a more upbeat path.
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Um you I'd like to come back to your point about um division of church and state not necessarily being enough or not necessarily helping. Do you think there is a connection? I mean what do you think is the kind of way forward for
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secularism if not that? Um I mean I think we do need a disablishment of the Church of England primarily because most of the people in power um including the current coalition government in the UK um but generally speaking um in the west are people of
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the establishment and being of the establishment means to be a member of a certain sort of social group that's intellectually privileged um educationally privileged socioeconomically privileged white male middle class Um, and by definition that means a certain sort of cultural
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preference within that group is going to lean towards the sorts of things that the Church of England in this country represents um that certain sorts of churches in in the states represent. So it's a step um secularism is a step
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towards improving the situation. But I think we need a very honest and written constitution that makes it very clear that human rights should always always trump religious rights. Um, regardless um I I I really think that's an important
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thing to to enshrine if you like in a written piece of legislation. Some religious rights um you know I don't have a problem with religious beliefs and practices per se. I do have a problem when they are damaging either
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physically emotionally psychologically to any human being. Um, and I have to say I do have a problem when they're damaging to an animal. Um, as well I, you know, I don't approve of animal sacrifice in certain forms of religion.
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Um, I don't think that kind of thing can ever be done in an ethical way.
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Personally speaking, but then, you know, I'm a vegetarian and so, you know, I've got my own kind of baggage that I'm bringing to that debate. But I absolutely think that human rights should always always always trump religious rights. There is never a
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question that somebody's religious choices should somehow mean that they get privileged or special treatment. And I do think that should be a constitutional part of law. And I think the first time we should see it as as written legislation. If we were to have
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a written constitution, I would want that to be number one. So what what about [Applause] what about male circumcision for instance?
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Circumcision of of babies. Male female is male genital. Yes. I mean it's been cast as that.
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Should that be banned? I've done a lot of work on this um from my within my own research on body modification practices generally in religious and non-religious contexts.
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Um, I think male circumcision absolutely fine, but wait till the kid is an adult.
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Wait till 18. See how popular it would be then. I don't think I don't think it's appropriate. I mean, in my own research, I've I've published books on this. Um, historically speaking, there's a very close correlation within the
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Jewish tradition. Um, and it's pre-Jewish ancient Israelite context between child sacrifice and male circumcision. um circumcision becomes a substitute right for the sacrifice of a of a baby. Um there's all sorts of evidence to suggest it. Just as uh
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Yahweh worshippers moved away from child sacrifice, um I don't see why they can't move away from the circumcision of of male babies. Circumcision is fine if it's an educa, you know, if it's a choice that's been made by a responsible
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adult. So leave it to 18. If 18 is the legal age of an adult in that culture, it should be 18. I I don't think you should circumcise babies.
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You asking Franchesca a question has reminded me to let other people ask the questions. Um would anybody like to ask a question? Right. I'll have that question, that question, and then that question.
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Male sexuality of rel Do you want to take that straight away? Let's do three questions first and then we'll go to company answers. Yeah, Anthony was talking about um the possibility of self censoring in the likes of the threat of violence that we
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see in certain context. Just wonder if either of the speakers felt themselves in that situation.
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Okay. And you in the front. Um first I want to thank you. I learned so much today. So really thank you. Uh I love that off most of what you said, but I do have a problem with something you
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said Tom and I'm struggling with it. Uh I have a problem with something Tom said and I'm struggling with it and I think it's it's really crucial. Uh just quickly I come from Sudan. I still live in Sudan although I've lived in many
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other places including the UK and the US. Um I am Christian by upbringing. I'm an old religious person but I'm also a Muslim by culture. I lived in a Christian Muslim culture. So some of me is Christian, some of me is Muslim. I do
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believe we own the right all of us including in Sudan one of the most difficult environments in the world to say that we're all religious which I say openly but also to say we have the right to study Islam and have comments on
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Islam as much as Christianity. So I love the fact that you are studying Islam until you said something that really just like when you said the more you study it you realize that you come to it as a godless Christian that your
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methodology is a Christian methodology and I here started getting nervous what is Christian methodology what is western methodology to me research knowledge intellect human inquiry is human some of it came from China. Some of it came from Muslim tradition and went to Spain. We
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know where it all came from. So why are you still in some ways defining yourself as Christian, godless Christian, Western studying Islam? And if there was a Muslim who is non who's godless studying Islam would be different from you.
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Thank you. Who wants Do you want to do that first and then you can fight?
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I said that because I've been brought up. I I I I said that because I've been brought up in a Christian tradition. Uh the intellectual and cultural traditions of Britain are clearly shot through with Christian presumptions. Uh and as I
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said, the process of looking at um ancient sacred texts, taking them to pieces, trying to date them, acting on the presumption that even though uh believers may think that they are of divine origin, in fact, they are probably not and they are of human
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origin. and trying to ground them on that presumption. That seems to me, you know, I have to say, where does that tradition, where does that presumption come from? And it seems to me clearly that it comes from ultimately Christian
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intellectual um approaches to the Bible, to studying the Bible, to trying to work out how these different books within the Old and the New Testaments, the various gospels, the letters of Paul relation to the Gospels, all these kind of questions
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which are fundamental to the kind of discipline and work that St. Francesca does. They derive from the example of the church fathers through medieval study of the Bible into the Renaissance. And then what happens in the enlightenment is
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that this becomes decianized. And I am in that line of tradition. And the thing that faked it for me was the discovery.
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You see, I had thought that what the likeliest way in which this intellectual methodology developed was that um in the Renaissance uh people start looking at Plato or Virgil or whatever um and applying critical methodologies to these ancient texts and then they move on and
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they apply it to the Bible. But it's the other way round. It's it's it's the study of biblical texts that provides classical scholars with the model for how to analyze these ancient texts. So therefore, of course, I'm not in any way
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denying that there are not phenomenal intellectual traditions in other cultures, but I'm not Chinese. I'm not Muslim. The traditions that I have inherited come from Christian forebears.
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That's not to say that my approach is the only one or that a post-Christian approach is the only one.
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But there is nothing within, it seems to me, the Muslim intellectual tradition, which as I said is unbelievably rich and powerful, that would encourage a Muslim to look at the Quran and say, "Did this actually come from God?"
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Does that is that answer your question? Okay. Um, who wants to do male sexuality?
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I'll leave that to Francesca. I'm happy to talk about their sexuality. Um, within Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, God is a man. God has a penis. Um, this is a God whose penis is circumcised. Uh, originally, basically, and this is just
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talking in mythological sense. This is the way ancient people that wrote these texts believed that their god had a body and believed that that body was male.
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And that body, as we would, some of us would now define it. Um, that that body had a penis.
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So the normative sexual behavior of a person is to be male and to try and impregnate women. So this is at the very root within the Jewish traditions um of the cultural norms that developed particularly as Judaism and Christianity because of the
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privileging the the the rendering and icon of the Bible because of the Bible's place in Western culture. is that idea that God is a man and has a penis um but chooses not to use it.
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That basically is at the root I think of certain religious and cultural cultural um prejudice against male sexuality whether it's heterosexual or homosexual.
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The idea is that you know women weren't even classed as um a body within Christianity as such. We were deviant um formed versions of the real body which just happens to be male. There was no set sense of gender male and female.
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Despite what biblical texts might tell you, this idea about male and female wasn't as hard and fast um a sort of distinction. They weren't monolithic within the ancient world. Um there was there's evidence of a third gender in
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ancient worlds. You know, what we refer to as Unix, for example, um in some texts. So that idea about male and female being the only two options, that wasn't really the case in the ancient world at all for the biblical writers.
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The idea rather was that a proper body was one that had a penis and a penis that was circumcised. Circumcision um it's like a it's a fertility practice originally. It kind of like you would prune a fruit tree to to render more
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fruit. Prune the penis, you get more kids. Um that's basically what circumcision is all about. So the idea that that women women's sexuality particularly amongst early Christian writers a was linked with sin and transgression from an appalling uh misreading of the Garden of
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Eden story in Genesis. Um Christians are to blame for that. There's no such thing as the fool or sin or the devil uh in in earliest Judaism and and in Genesis. Um when Satan appears in the Old Testament,
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he's a good guy. He's a mate of gods. um but also that they blamed women um because the body became dirty. One of the biggest problems that Christianity has given the western world is the dichotomy of the mind and the body of
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the soul and the body. Once you decide that it doesn't really matter what happens to your body because your soul's going to go to heaven anyway that means you get a vilification of the body itself. And as a result what you do to
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the body whether it's torturing somebody, raping somebody, impregnating somebody, whatever it is that you do, somehow this material fleshy reality isn't that valuable anyway. And that's one of the the biggest um tragedies um of Christianity is that it lumbered us
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with this this way of looking at individual human beings um and particularly women and particularly those men and women who don't conform to certain sexual preferences um that God supposedly endorses in the Bible. Does that answer your question? Yeah.
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Can I just I mean there's there's an obvious contrast there with Islam that that Jesus despite what this probably bogus piece of papyrus says didn't marry according to tradition. Muhammad had quite a few wives. Um uh and in the
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Quran um captured slave women are part of the booty that is promised to the faithful. Um and in the Quranic paradise um you have you know it's brilliant. You have gorgeous women who you can defflower and then they become virgins
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again and oh they give you wine and it's wonderful. Famously of course uh what happens to the women when they go to paradise doesn't say it's just for the men. Um and I wonder whether um there's a kind of puritanism perhaps in um in
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some Muslim families within the west as a reaction to the perceived libertinism of society abroad. whether knowing that um as a warrior of God, you would be entitled to have slave girls and if you die, you will then go up to heaven and
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have all these eternally um reconstituting virgins. Whether that possibly, you know, the the sort of sexual frustration is is a part of it, but I'm not in any way qualified to talk psychology. So, I I don't know. I throw
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that open. I Okay. Well, while you're standing, why don't you have to go at the middle question too?
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What was remind me of the middle question. on the ground and threat on the reaction to your program. I know I I've I've consciously tried never to censor myself um because I don't I think that the threat of rel of violence is
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vastly overplayed. Um I think you know I in a way I feel that the Islamophobic thing to do is to imagine that if you say anything hostile to to to Islam, Muslims will come and kill you. That's what fear of Muslims mean. They they
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they won't and they don't and they haven't done. And the whole way through, you know, all even when I was getting the death threats, I never really worried about them except for that one day for obvious reasons because what it
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was saying was not so much. It wasn't really saying anything about rel about religion or Islam. It was saying that there are a lot of bastards on Twitter, but we all know that. Tom Daly knows that. Mary Beard knows that.
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Um, so I wasn't worried about that. I'll tell you the one thing where I do sense, you know, I have censored myself and what I was most worried about wasn't that I would get killed. It was that I
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would be exiled from the Liberal Club. That's what I was worried about. That's what I, you know, still sometimes worry about. If I say this, will I seem racist?
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Yeah, that's what I worry about because ultimately what matters to me really is to have the respect of people that I respect and the people I respect are are not racists. And so therefore, the idea of being seen by them as a racist is
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almost the worst thing that I can imagine. And that's what that's when I feel inhibited.
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Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? Um my experience is slightly different. Um I've had a lot of um hate mail. Um but I've also had a lot of love mail and I have to say that's worse than the hate
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mail. That might sound No, I've never had that. That might sound flippant. Um, but actually I'm more I was more frightened by some of the overtly sexual um threatening emails, tweets, letters that I got, you know, some guy turning up at my office
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door insisting that he wanted to talk to me. I was I was more frightened as a woman than I was as an atheist. Um, so in other words, I felt more of a threat from um very overbearing men, strangers,
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than I did from overbearing Christians and Jews. Um, I don't I I expect to be hated by certain religious people. Um, I try not to censor myself and I have to say I'm very sad to say this, but I
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often have to censor myself in the lecture room because a increasingly large number of undergraduates studying theology of religion in the UK are being taken taken over by the very um evangelical Christian unions that are on university campuses. And so they might
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come to study with us with a very open mind. They might be religious, they might not be, but they are very quickly, if they're failably Christian and Protestant. Um, they will very quickly be uh enveloped in the loving embrace of
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the evangelical Christian Union movement that's heavily funded by American evangelical movements. Um and then I have to self censor because I have it's so you know particularly the last few years I've been teaching the kind of stuff that I put on TV the kind of stuff
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you know I've been teaching this for years here in Oxford in exat and I've never experienced the kind of intolerance amongst uh students as I have in recent years teaching and that's when I have to self censor because I
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don't want to have to I've only got an hour or two hours in a lecture to get through certain material that I think is really important If I have to stop to defend and everything that I say on the
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basis of somebody's particular face position, then I'm never going to get through the module.
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But can't you just tell them not to shut up? Yeah. Yeah. I I do and I'm very clear at the beginning. I always say we're looking at these texts from perspective of an ancient cultural context, not in a
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Christian way. This is pre-Jewish, pre-Christian. Um but but people are very these are their texts. It comes back to the idea of authority. But these are my texts. How dare you tell me what's in them? Well, I'm the professor.
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I'm telling you what's in them from my particular perspective. So, you can you can So, I always say, you know, I'm very happy for you to have these kinds of discussions, but leave but but leave them at the door when you come in for a
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lecture because these are the certain things. So, I have to be very clear about why we're learning what we're learning, why we're using this methodology, what the intended learning out outcomes are. I have to hide behind that because otherwise I just end up
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having another debate about whether angels exist. But yeah, does that answer the question? I've got theology if I ask him please.
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Yeah. Can I can I have one more question? Okay. Answer that. The question was is there such a thing as a Christian method?
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Are we talking about a way of looking at religion as Christian western versus something else?
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No. I think what we're doing the Christian methodological as Tom was saying methodological approaches critical approaches to the Bible also gave rise to critical approaches to the to all historical documents and to all works of literature. Um that in itself
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was inherited from the rabbitic ancient rabbitic tradition in which debate and disputes about what particular Bible verses mean and what did God really intend when he said this and what did most of you know that all comes from a
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Jewish tradition and that in its turn comes from a much broader Mesopotamian tradition in which debate about and and ancient Egyptian in which debate and argument about what do the gods really mean you know so so it's it's a much
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broader cultural endeavor what I would today is that the West has been the most successful in um shouting its own preferences for science and rationality and logic loud and proud, dressed up as democracy and trying to colonize the
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rest of the world. I I'm perfectly happy with the way that other people do stuff, whether it's approaching text or history or however they want to do it.
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Completely fine. The Western paradigm is one paradigm. Um, and it's only Christian because the West has traditionally been Christian rather than Jewish or Muslim or Hindu.
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Okay. So, I really really want to take more questions, but I'm not allowed and I'm being I'm being somebody's shaking their head furiously at me and I'm very sorry, but you can um maybe you can catch them on the way out. Thanks everybody for
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listening. Thank you for coming.
Topics:Francesca StavrakopoulouTom HollandreligionHebrew BibleIslam originshistorical criticismWorld Humanist Congressreligious controversyacademic freedomreligious studies
