This is a review of the one article devoted to Shaw in Marc DiPaolo's very interesting collection of kindred essays, Godly Heretics: Essays on Alternative Christianity in Literature and Popular Culture. DiPaolo's introduction states the problem of a Christianity that all too often does not seem to act in a “Christian” way, then provides context for the critique of or attack on such “unChristian” behavior by “heretics” who ironically seem to be more “Christian” than their “orthodox” critics. The reason there are so many quotation marks around words above (and below) is that this is as much a study of the language of religion as of religion itself. What do these words really mean?
The “heretic” challenge to putative “orthodoxy” is presented in two parts, in Part 1 focused on “Rewritten Bibles, Alternative Christs” (Jefferson, Kazantzakis, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Shelley, Shaw, Whitman, and, surprisingly, a Platonic Origen) and in Part 2...
