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Blasphemy in the Christian World
Recensie, Bijdragen, 16-01-09
“Blasphemy has in so short a space of time suddenly returned to become an extremely combustible part of modern life.” (p. 1) David Nash is right. After what has become known as the ‘Danish Cartoon Wars’ blasphemy, “the attacking, wounding and damaging of religious belief”, has reemerged from the Dark Ages into our modern world. The author has provided us with a readable book about the history, the actors, the victims and reactions on blasphemy, but unfortunately with too many details.
 Nash starts with a broad view of modern blasphemy. The Netherland play an important role in his discourse. Nash stayed several times in Holland for study and lecturing. He mentions well known figures from Dutch society, like Ayaan Hirshi Ali, Theo van Gogh, Pim Fortuin and many more. Unfortunately some annoying errors have not been corrected: ‘Pym’ instead of ‘Pim’ and cardinal ‘Adrianis’ instead of ‘Adrianus’. And – worst of all – he misspells the name of the ruling pope as ‘Reitzinger’. Besides these minor errors his analysis of the Dutch political situation is somewhat unbalanced, which is perhaps understandable (if not forgivable) if one reads Nash’s Forword in which he expresses his gratitude to Paul Cliteur, a well known but sometimes extreme right-wing writer.
Nash points out four ways in which the act of blasphemy can be seen. 1) How people think about God or the sacred. What words are held most blasphemous probably has to do with what is held most dearly. 2) As a display of power. He who can offend the deity of another has a certain power over the one offended. 3) A crime. The way most governments have treated blasphemy: as a crime to be punished. 4) As a k ind of flawed social interaction transgressing norms of manner. This is closely linked with the governmental care for public order which can limit the otherwise boundless right of freedom of speech ór blasphemy.
From his historical overview Nash concludes that in the Dark Ages those accused of blasphemy were the socially marginalized. The natural habitat for blasphemy was the tavern, where gambling and drinking let to a temporal lost of temper which cumulated into swearing and cursing. In and after the Enlightenment the blasphemers were no longer the poor who ignorantly forgot the laws forbidding blasphemy, but radical freethinkers who sought deliberately to provoke the religious status quo. Radical freethinking is of course not exclusive for post the Enlightenment, but can also be found within the communities around heretical preachers and thinkers in the Dark Ages. They too provoked the religious status quo but not in order to question God himself, but to question the specific views or actions of the Catholic Church. Here Nash shows that blasphemy and heresy are so closely intertwined that they can be used to express the same sin against State and Church. However the tension between the two concepts is felt in the text, but is nowhere formalized by the author.
In the end this book contains more than enough information to contemplate the resurfaced old crime of blasphemy. At the other hand the overwhelming amount of detailed information about blasphemy trails, discussions and polemics sometimes obscure the undoubtfully implied narrative structure of the text. Although it does not belong to the scope of this book some efforts could have been made to explicate certain similarities between blasphemy in the Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions. Nash’s blasphemy concerns exclusively the spoken attacks on God and church, but not other, even graver blasphemous deeds like destroying church property or sacrilege of the holy sacraments. This interesting topic deserved a more reflected approach than this author provides.
David Nash, Blasphemy in the Christian World. A History, Oxford University Press: Oxford (2007)
Bron: Deze recensie is gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrijft Bijdragen 69 (2008, nr. 4), p. 492-493.
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