Kingsolver is often ambivalent about Christianity, showing us its alternative effects. Before his comrades perished in the jungle, Nathan was someone ‘who could laugh, call [Orleanna] his ‘honey lamb’’, and she ‘cradled his head on [her] lap and read him the Scriptures.’ By using tender words like ‘honey’, lamb’ and ‘cradled’, but placing them within a past tense, Kingsolver shows that Christianity is not always cruel and oppressive. She also gives insight into completely different forms: Brother Fowles, who follows God in a looser, more liberal way, represents the ideal, embracing the human compassion that Nathan lacks. Kingsolver constantly displays Brother Fowles’ benevolence, describing him ‘smiling’ at Leah and calling her ‘darling’, and mentioning his ‘twinkling blue eyes’. These outward characteristics are probably a manifestation of his radiant inner faith, making him a symbol of the uncorrupted side of Christianity. Although he has an impressive knowledge of the Bible, he is not shackled to it – ‘God’s word…by a chain of translators two thousand years long.’ This portrays him, and accordingly his beliefs, as sensible and realistic. He professes Animism (the belief that an immaterial force animates the universe) and revels in the creation – ‘He makes [the world] fresh for us every day.’ With this simple expression, Kingsolver shows that Brother Fowles is worshipping God but also appreciating Him. His Christianity is accessible – Ruth May was ‘so enraptured with him she sat with her head practically leaning up against his trousers.’ His behaviour is not only a stark contrast to the severity of Nathan, but a direct parallel to Jesus – ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not forbid them.’ (Mark 10:14). He even ‘rested a hand on her head’, a reflection of the patriarchal care and love that should be important in Christianity.
Kingsolver has included Brother Fowles as a device to put Nathan’s Christianity into perspective, to reveal its flaws - but also to point out that Christianity comes in many guises. She also depicts another type of Christianity, as professed by Rachel. Rachel does not have the religious fervour of Nathan, or the social conscientiousness of her sisters, but she is religious nonetheless - ‘I have worn my little white gloves and pillbox hat to the First Episcopal Church in Johannesburg.’ The fact that she describes her attire before any mention of the church suggests the spiritual side of religion is less of a motivation than the external side. Between 1948 and 1994, there was great racial segregation in South Africa, owing to the Apartheid. White people maintained supremacy, yet proclaimed Christianity, ignoring moral obligation to fellow humanity. Rachel has the ignorance to complain about those who ‘make their houses out of a piece of rusted tin or the side of a plate’, and on her arrival in South Africa, she is overjoyed to see ‘white people everywhere’. Kingsolver makes it clear that Rachel’s Christianity is nothing more than an outward form of respectability: she gives her no intellectual insight into the religion, and she ignores supposed Christian rules, admitting, ‘perhaps I sound un-Christian’. She is also more enthused by her ability to recite John 3:16 ‘along with the best of them’ than by its actual meaning. Kingsolver probably attributes this attitude to Rachel in order to expose its hypocrisy.
It has been suggested that Nathan is represented through the epigraphs heading each chapter. For example, ‘And God said unto them…replenish the earth/And subdue it and have dominion…over every living thing’, taken from Genesis 1:28, seems to reflect Nathan’s dominion and desire to control the thoughts of others. ‘Bel is a living God…do you not see how much he eats and drinks every day?’(Bel and the Serpent 1:6) could be read as a metaphor of how draining Nathan is on the village of Kilanga, and how empty his promises about Jesus are. Perhaps Kingsolver extracted the verses from the Bible pertaining to the events in their chapters - this would make them a kind of commentary on Nathan’s role in the book. The quote from Revelation 13:1-9 describes ‘a beast’ rising up: Nathan is likened to a beast throughout the book, attempting to devour everybody through a brutal form of Christianity. By wedding ironic condemnation of Nathan to direct quotes from the text he relies on the most, Kingsolver could be revealing the ridiculousness of his methods of conversion. Perhaps she is demonstrating the folly of abusing God’s word, or perhaps she presents Christianity as so powerful that it takes Nathan over and makes it impossible to hear him except as an echo of the Bible.
Initially, Nathan’s family are depicted as passive, rarely bemoaning the iron grip their father has upon their lives. Rachel is not even allowed to wear nail polish, ‘Father feels make-up and nail polish are warning signs of prostitution’. By having Nathan associate make-up, which in 1950s America was a relatively normal part of teenager-hood, with prostitution, Kingsolver demonstrates that strict Christianity can lead to irrational paranoia. It is rare that any of his family criticise their father directly – Leah does not comment on the blatant injustice of her father carrying nothing to Africa except ‘the word of God…[which] fortunately weighed nothing at all’. Here Kingsolver might be being discreetly ironic about Christianity - the ‘word of God’ clearly does have a huge impact on his family’s lives, so perhaps the reason it weighs nothing is because it is, after everything, useless. However, I find that the acquiescence of Nathan’s family to his tyranny only increases the menace Christianity presents. Not only does Kingsolver show (without her characters having to tell us) the way Christianity can repress people, but we also realise that it can render them blind – Leah, for a significant part of the book, admires her father more than anyone: ‘He was gifted with such keen judgment and purity of heart’. This is so far from the truth I think Kingsolver must be using irony to expose the extent of Leah’s deception.
So again, Kingsolver is not criticising Christianity, but Nathan’s interpretation of it. If her book is a polemic against rigid adherence to traditional Christian doctrines, it is measured carefully – Nathan receives varying degrees of support from his family. Orleanna clearly believes in a God, but has been worn down by her husband’s religious tyranny and the suffocating demands of her life – ‘I could fall into bed for a few short hours and dream of being eaten alive in small pieces.’ Her exhaustion is a sharp contrast with her husband’s fervour, and presents us with yet another ugly side to Christianity - what happens when a love for God overrides a love for fellow humanity. The Bible itself is explicit that both are required: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart…Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.’(Mark 12:28 – 34). It is debatable whether Nathan truly feels love for God, but it is indisputable that he lacks compassion for his fellow man – Ruth May is not old enough to ‘take the responsibility of accepting Christ’, but according to Nathan she is old enough to be beaten: ‘that razor strap burns so bad’. There are accounts of violence towards most of his family, and he purposely smashes the last precious possession of his wife. By associating rage and cruelty with the character who professes Christianity most emphatically, it assumes more threatening overtones as something with the potential to do harm. Jesus’ teachings were based upon tolerance and love, but Nathan does not appear to embrace these values, preferring Old Testament notions of punishment and male supremacy (‘show us all up as dull-witted, bovine females.’). It is often challenging to accommodate literal interpretations of the Bible in a Christian-based society, let alone in an alien one, but Nathan will not accept deviation from his interpretation of the King James Bible, hence absurd, outdated views e.g. ‘a girl who fails to marry is veering from God’s plan’. No doubt there are modern-day Christians who would agree with his stance, but I feel Kingsolver is not one of them. She gives sympathetic portrayals of those oppressed by fundamentalist Christianity, thus laying the entire institution open to censure. Judith Bromberg has speculated: [Nathan’s] brand of missionary work was… self-serving and used Christianity as a whip to bend or break African culture to Western beliefs.’ I agree - Kingsolver is attacking the kind of Christianity which gives Nathan a single-minded drive to convert everybody and makes him neglect his earthly duties.
Ever since the Victorian era, the West has believed it has a moral duty to convert Africa to Christianity. It could be said that the fact missionaries make journeys like this at all is evidence of Western cultural arrogance, as they make the conceited assumption that Christianity is somehow ‘truer’ than any African religion - despite having absolutely no knowledge of them. Kingsolver is basing this aspect of her book on Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, in which six missionaries travel to villages in Nigeria and tell the natives their Gods are false, and they should be worshipping the ‘new God, creator of all the world’. As in The Poisonwood Bible, the missionaries struggle when they have to actually convince the Africans of Christianity rationally, not anticipating derision and disbelief. The natives are sceptical – ‘If we leave our gods and follow your gods…who will protect us from the anger of our neglected gods and ancestors?’ This is similar to the attitude of Tata Ndu, whose ‘concern is with the important gods and ancestors of the village’. Kingsolver probably made this parallel in order to expose ideas of Western supremacy – in The Poisonwood Bible, Ruth May is placidly complacent about her own racial superiority: ‘nobody wanted to cut off my hands…because Jesus made me white’. Racial prejudice has often led to the arrogant assumption that one religion is better than the rest. Kingsolver does not portray Christianity as vital to life, introducing another form: the extreme pragmatism adopted by the Congolese natives - ‘practically the whole town [was] praying to Jesus…the gods hadn’t been too angry, since no more bad things had happened...’ This view is paradoxical as it suggests that belief in something should result from practical advantages rather than truth-value, but it is highly understandable in a place where death and suffering are ubiquitous. I suspect Kingsolver here is mocking Christianity, because so many people have completely missed its point – ‘Jesus may have sounded like a helpful sort of God in the beginning, but he was not bearing out.’ It is easy to empathise with these people - why should they transfer allegiance to Jesus? On the face of it, he is no better than their Gods. It would require a high degree of cultural arrogance to assume they should accept Christianity just because it is the chosen religion of the West.
Kingsolver depicts Adah as an opposite extreme: intelligent and thoughtful, but an atheist. She presents rational, considered arguments against religion – ‘Getting born within earshot of a preacher…is entirely up to chance. Would our Lord be such a hit-or-miss kind of Saviour as that?’ a refreshing change from her father’s mindless conviction. She is the standard by which her father’s madness is measured. Essentially, Kingsolver is saying religious values should be secondary to living a moral life: if a person is stupid or evil, strict devotion to Christianity is no remedy. This is shown in Nathan, who remains loyal to his mission to the end, but fails to convert the people of Kilanga and dies violently. Adah’s reasons for rejecting God hold particular resonance when we consider the faith Kingsolver gives Ruth May. She is an eager advocate of Christianity, ‘My name is Ruth May and I hate the devil’. Here the juxtaposition implies her hatred of the devil is synonymous with her very identity, and is a considerable claim, especially from someone too young to have developed independent mindedness. Every view Ruth May holds is shaped by those around her: when she states ‘Jesus loves me and this I know’, it is obvious she is repeating what she has been told. The reader is thus led to wonder how much of her fierce Christianity she has considered and understood, and how much is blind faith beaten into her by her father.
Kingsolver is also careful to acquaint the reader with the kind of education the Price girls were getting in Georgia. Christianity was forced upon them, not only by their father but also by their Sunday school. Areas in the Deep South of America, even today, can be ignorant and culturally isolated. The mainstream view the girls were exposed to was racist – ‘they’re different from us and needs ought to keep to their own’, and culturally ignorant. When Ruth May gets taunted about Congo natives - ‘the cannibal natives would boil us up and eat us in a pot’, her teacher does nothing to allay the racial stereotyping, ‘she didn’t say one word or the other…so I don’t know.’ This kind of environment is also intolerant. Adah’s story of being punished for raising religious doubts – ‘Miss Betty sent me to the corner…to pray…while kneeling on grains of uncooked rice’ elucidates a fundamental flaw in Christianity. Belief should not be a will choice, so condemning souls for lacking is grossly unjust - especially, as Adah has pointed out, because beliefs are shaped by ‘the accident of…birth’. The teacher’s prohibition of independent thought also embodies a kind of arrogance: Christianity is the only answer and anything else is blasphemy.
In conclusion, I believe Kingsolver is damning about certain forms of Christianity. My response to the superficial stance of the Congolese is amusement, to the gentle Animism of Brother Fowles, admiration, and to Rachel’s ‘Christianity’, disdain. But Christianity, in its most general form, is only a set of beliefs and traditions, used to a thousand different ends. It cannot be held responsible for the way Nathan treats his daughters, or for the religious clash between Western values and Congolese beliefs. Nathan, with his oppressive dogmatism, encounters obstacles because he refuses to accept anything but his own beliefs, thereby displaying his utter cultural arrogance ‘…the few here that choose Christi-an-ity over ignorance and darkness!’ Kingsolver makes him a slave to an ancient, uncompromising text, depicting his struggle to force it upon people who have no interest in it. Nathan’s personal religion was poisoned when his company died ‘on the death march’. It was not Christianity that made him into (as Leah puts it) a ‘simple, ugly man’, it was a series of tragic events, falling upon an impressionable man at an unfortunate time. Through his downfall, Kingsolver effectively puts across the danger of being rigid and uncompromising about traditional Christianity.
