Christianity & Culture – In or Out?
Morris Gleitzman and Christian Mother Goose
Greg Clarke argues for Christianity taking its place within the world, not from a cultural corner.
I can’t remember how I stumbled across it, but it has really threatened my Christian faith. It’s a book unlike any other, challenging my worldview and giving me nights of tossing and turning in a cold sweat. The book is The Christian Mother Goose Book by Marjorie Ainsborough Decker, and it’s enough to make anyone an unbeliever.
No doubt in good faith, Mrs Decker has ‘improved’ the nursery rhymes you and I know from childhood into ones she feels better communicate the Christian message. So, ‘Lavender’s Blue, Dilly Dilly’ begins:
Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly
Lavender’s green
Teach me to say, dilly, dilly
John 3:16.
I am not making this up. The Old Woman Who Lives In A Shoe has so many children “And loved them all, too”. And as Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall, he shouts: “God can put me together again!”. You can probably compose Little Bo Peep and the lost sheep for yourself (if you have any Bible knowledge to speak of).
While I don’t resent the theology in the main, I deeply resent the artistry, and I also resent the cultural implication that everything outside the Christian ideal has to be rewritten, reshaped and ‘Christianised’ within an inch of its life.
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