Mark Twain: A Christian Response to His Battle with God by Ray Comfort (review)

new insights into the authors’ works. An epilogue appended to the book reveals that Bush built his work not only on past research he had done on Lincoln and Twain, but on personal experience as well—the death of Bush’s six-year-old son in 1999. The book thus becomes a part of the tradition it describes, a work that not only helps the author to redeem somehow a past tragedy, but that may help others to do the same. Brent Gibson University of Mary Hardin-Baylor Mark Twain: A Christian Response to His Battle with God. By Ray Comfort. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2014. ISBN 978-0-89051-845-8. Pp. 1 + 159. $12.99. In Mark Twain’s story ‘‘Little Bessie’’ (unpublished until it appeared in Mark Twain’s Fables of Man in 1972), Bessie, a three-year-old of considerable intellect, repeatedly questions her mother’s religious beliefs regarding such profound subjects as the providence of God, the origin and existence of evil and suffering, and the virgin birth of Christ. Most of Bessie’s skepticism derives from conversations she has had with Mr. Hollister, an agnostic neighbor who often converses with Bessie. At one point in chapter 3 of ‘‘Little Bessie,’’ the exasperated mother sheds her piety and denounces Hollister in response to one of Bessie’s queries. ‘‘Do shut up!’’ she says to her daughter. ‘‘I wish that that tiresome Hollister was in Hamburg! He is an ignorant, unreasoning, illogical ass, and I have told you over and over again to keep out of his poisonous company’’ (qtd. in Comfort 64). The inclusion of this exchange between Bessie and Mamma in Ray Comfort’s Mark Twain: A Christian Response to His Battle with God is a striking irony, for the sentiment of Mamma’s response duly expresses the implicit purpose of Comfort’s book. Comfort presents Twain as an illogical blasphemer and dangerous liar to whom Christian apologists might attribute partial culpability for the supposed rise in atheism in the 20th century. As Comfort asserts in the introduction , Twain’s ‘‘philosophy about God and Christianity have sparked a revival of atheism and anti-Christian thinking across the world’’ (5). Christian readers beware of Twain. The explicit purpose of Mark Twain: A Christian Response to His Battle with God, at least as it relates to Twain, is to present to readers the Twain they supposedly do not know. According to Comfort, the Twain ‘‘revered’’ by most people is ‘‘an honest, moral, straight shooter’’ (36). Yet a closer look at Twain’s writings—particularly his posthumously published works such as Letters from the Earth or the ‘‘Ashcroft–Lyon Manuscript’’—reveals that the Twain of the public’s imagination is largely due to the author’s own efforts to ensure his more objectionable or personal writings were never published. Of course, these writings have been published, revealing a Twain more akin to, in Comfort’s words, 180 Christianity & Literature 66(1) ‘‘an indignant self-righteous Pharisee robed in pure white’’ but whose ‘‘robe may not be as clean as it seems’’ (36). Over fifteen brief chapters, Comfort takes tidbits from Twain’s writings (almost exclusively from Letters from the Earth) that are blasphemous or scandalous and attempts to rebut the positions articulated therein with Scripture. No one familiar with Comfort’s work will find it surprising that he addresses topics such as sex, evolution, atheism, evil, suffering, and the Ten Commandments with the goal of demonstrating that Twain’s perspectives on these issues are typical of nonChristians . In the final chapter, Comfort appeals to unbelievers to repent and turn to Christ before their time to do so, like Twain’s, has run out. Regardless of the good Comfort may be doing as an evangelist and apologist, as the author of a book centered on Mark Twain, he merits severe criticism. The book simply misleads readers. What is advertised as an exploration ‘‘through volumes of Twain’s writings’’ (back cover) to weigh and consider his theology, in actuality, deals with embarrassingly few of Twain’s works and fails to analyze his thought with any respectable depth. The book is not really about Mark Twain...