The Bible: A History

Channel 4 have chosen Gerry Adams to present an episode of their series "The Bible: A History", the program about Jesus Christ. Words failed me when I heard about this a week or so ago and I failed to post anything about it as I just couldn't put my disgust into words. Fortunately Stephen Glover in The Mail has managed this task, so please read his article, here's a few extracts:

"Who would be the most unsuitable person in the whole world to introduce a television programme about Jesus Christ? One would be hard pushed to come up with someone worse than Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, and former member of the Provisional IRA.

Yet, believe it or not, on Sunday evening this man with blood trickling from his hands will present an hour-long Channel 4 programme about Jesus, part of a series called The Bible: A History.

A former terrorist personally implicated in at least one murder, and associated with many more, has been invited to make a documentary about a man described by his followers as the Prince of Peace, who lived a life that celebrated non-violence.


How on earth could this happen? You may suspect Gerry Adams was chosen to discourse on Jesus because he has freely admitted his sins, and apologised for his past. Christianity, after all, is a religion that extols forgiveness, and puts a high value on repentance. But Mr Adams is not sorry for what he did - not, of course, that he admits to having ever killed anyone. He says at least twice that violence was the only course open to people like himself.

I have seen a preview of the programme and it begins with a shot of the former terrorist at prayer. He informs us that he went to Mass while in prison. Then, with his vulpine features, and a sinister smile revealing shining, remodelled teeth, he tells us that 'along with others' he 'helped to bring peace to Ireland'. While stressing that he doesn't feel he has any blood on his hands, he says he wants 'to explore Jesus's message of forgiveness'.

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I repeat: how could a respectable television channel dream of allowing an unrepentant terrorist to explain Christ's life, and give viewers the impression that he has tried to live by it? There is even a preposterous, not to say sacrilegious, subtext implying a parallel between Christ, who according to Adams was persecuted by the Roman authorities, and Adams himself, who presents himself as a victim of British power.

In the interests of balance and fairness, Channel 4 should tell viewers something about the life of this former terrorist, since Adams himself certainly does not. Though he has refused to admit it, he was a member of the Provisional IRA as far back as 1972, when he represented the organisation in secret talks with the British government. A former IRA prisoner, Dolours Price, has referred to Adams as 'my commanding officer' in 1973.

The most damning information about Adams and his life as a terrorist was published in a book called A Secret History Of The IRA by Ed Moloney, a Dublin-based investigative journalist. According to Moloney's account, which has never been contested in the courts, Adams was at various times commander of the Belfast Brigade of the IRA and the IRA's chief of staff, as well as a long-time member of the IRA Army Council.

Moloney says that Adams was chief of staff when the IRA committed one of its most appalling atrocities - the murder of 12 Protestant civilians in the La Mon hotel on the outskirts of Belfast in February 1978. Moloney also contends that in 1972 Adams may have personally ordered, or at the very least approved, the killing of Jean McConville, allegedly an informer to the security services.

The closest we come - and it is not very close - to an admission of any involvement in such atrocities is Adams's musing about war towards the end of the programme: 'You have to harden yourself because it is not a natural thing to go out and harm other human beings.' Knowing what I do about Adams's past, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I imagined him stealing down some dank Belfast street with murder in his heart.

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He cannot plausibly claim to have lived a virtuous Christian life, which is why he is the last person on earth who should have been asked by Channel 4 to present a programme about Christ. He does not seem to have been much more decent in his personal life. For many years Gerry Adams covered up for his paedophile brother, and even helped him to work with children.

This seems to have been done not so much out of brotherly affection as to protect Adams's own reputation. When the scandal was revealed last December, Adams tried to win sympathy by claiming that his family were victims of sexual and physical abuse by his father, also called Gerry, who was buried with full IRA military honours six years ago.

As a Christian I am appalled that a man who once said he would 'wade up to my knees in Protestant blood' to achieve a united Ireland should have been asked by Channel 4 to introduce a programme about Jesus. I can see that it is a stunt, designed to attract maximum publicity to what has been a pretty undistinguished series. If Channel 4 had really wanted to make an enlightening programme about the life of Christ, there are hundreds of people far better qualified to do so than Gerry Adams.

Adams now presents himself as a democratic politician, and he has a right to be heard on that basis. But it betrays an almost unbelievable moral imbecility on the part of Channel 4 bosses to enable this unrepentant former terrorist to yoke himself to Jesus Christ, not to throw light on the noblest life ever lived but as a crude piece of self-serving IRA propaganda."