BIBLE ATTACKED

Hokitika Guardian, 28 December 1932, Page 6

BIBLE ATTACKED

BERNARD SHAW'S LATEST.

CHARGE OF IRREVERENCE

LONDON, December 4

Describing himself as the “Bishop of Evcirywiici.-e,” in his preface to his latest L.x>k, ‘‘The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of 'God,” Mr George Bernard' Shaw proves, according to the newspapers, a very irreverent bishop. They predict a typhoon when the book attracts the attention of religious people, owing to its offensive saroa-ms ait the expense of the Deity and the Apostles. The girl asks a white, missionary, “Where is God f” and is told “Seek and ye shall find' Me.” The girl, to her utter confusion, finds several Gods, the first a terrifying God, commanding her to kneel and worship and to sacrifice her favourite child) because He has power over diseases and storm and pestilence. The girl replies, “I am not a piccaninny. Net even a grown-up ninny would believe such nonsense.” Later she encounters other gods, and finally marries an Irish Socialist.

Shaw, interpreting the parable, save: “The Bible, is scientifically obsolete, hut in other respects remains interesting a-s a record of how the idea of God developed from the childish idolatry of a thundering, earthquaking, famine-striking, (pestilence-launch-ing, blinding, deafening, killing, and destructve omnipotent bogey man to the braver realisation of a benevolent sage, just Judge, and affectionate Father, evolving into the incorporeal Wprd which never becomes flesh.” THE APOSTLES. Of the Apostles, Shaw says “Sometimes they suggest that there was not a Christian among them. Judas alone showed a gleam of common sense.” The Bible, Mr Shaw contends, is not suited to modern tastes, although more alive than the Parliamentary debates, and better reading than the mendacious fashionable histories. The Ten Commandments are characterised as “mere lumber.” They sa-v no word against “those farms of robbery legalised hv those robber,s who uprooted tli,-.; foundations of our society, and will condemn n./to social decay unless we are awakened, like Russia, by a crashing collapse.”

•Tile “News-Chronicle” :says that Air Shaw has conceived it to be h:s function to shock people- This was necessary in the first campaign to destroy the banal conventionality of the British theatre, but the prescription is wrong in some cases, especially the last. It ■ will onlv wound, exasperate, and antagonise those whom he wants to read his hook- It is- mere foolishness and vanity. ;