Free Republic

As a leftist lesbian professor, I despised Christians. Then I somehow became one. The word Jesus stuck in my throat like an elephant tusk; no matter how hard I choked, I couldn't hack it out. Those who professed the name commanded my pity and wrath. As a university professor, I tired of students who seemed to believe that "knowing Jesus" meant knowing little else. Christians in particular were bad readers, always seizing opportunities to insert a Bible verse into a conversation with the same point as a punctuation mark: to end it rather than deepen it.

THE BBC has angered Christians with a TV drama in which the Virgin Mary is branded a prostitute and sex cheat. In The Nativity, written by EastEnders scriptwriter Tony Jordan, 15-year-old Mary is attacked by people who do not believe her claim that she is pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph accuses her of “whoring” and even suggests that her pregnancy might have been the result of rape. The Church of England has described the four-part drama, which goes out before the 9pm watershed from tomorrow, as “a gritty interpretation”. But Stephen Green, of the ministry Christian Voice,...