It's been a couple of years since Christian hardliners and the author Philip Pullman had a dust-up, so here, just in time for Easter, is the latest round. Pullman's new novel, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, is being published this week in the UK, right before the holiest weekend in the Christian calendar. (It will be published in Canada in April.)
In Britain, where Pullman lives, the book is cleverly packaged with either a black or white dust jacket, to reflect the dual nature of the Christ figures within its pages (Amazon.uk warns sternly that you cannot choose which cover you'll get, naughty or nice.)
The novel, part of Canongate's Myths series, offers this version of history: What if Mary had twins, one named Jesus and the other Christ, one an idealist and teacher and the other a pragmatist and - well, the title says it all.
Pullman fully expects the novel to be controversial but a few sparks have never frightened him before. The magnificent trilogy he wrote for young adults, His Dark Materials, was called "atheism for kids" by the Catholic League in the United States, and when the film adaptation of the first novel, The Golden Compass, was released in 2007, the Halton District Catholic School Board pulled the book off school shelves. (The trilogy, set in an alternative reality, feature a sinister Catholic Church-like organization called the Magisterium and a doddering old deity called the Authority.)
Pullman appeared at the Oxford Literary Festival this weekend, where he admitted to a questioner that the title of his novel was indeed provocative: "I know it was a shocking thing to say, but nobody has the right to live without being shocked."
I'll be talking to Philip Pullman soon about The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, so look for that interview in these pages. In the meanwhile, you can watch him defend his freedom to agitate at the Oxford Literary Festival: