The Pagan Christ is a provocatively titled documentary that first aired on CBC TV in December 2007, just in time for Christmas.

The film made the case that the person called Jesus Christ was a fiction based on Egyptian and other myths that date thousands of years before the gospels were written. This argument was based on a 2004 book of the same name by the journalist and author Tom Harpur.

No doubt there were letters to the CBC about this, though I can't recall there being a huge hue and cry.

In my experience as the former producer of Tapestry, CBC Radio's program on spirituality and religion, some evangelical and fundamentalist Christians — as well as adherents of other religions — believe that CBC (and the majority of the mainstream media) are hostile to religion, or at the very least unsympathetic.

I know that because I would entertain letters on these very points for years, and would have to write back to these listeners.

Now, Tom Harpur was not viciously mocking anybody's faith or any sacred figure when he wrote his book. Nor is he is some fanatic Florida pastor, burning holy books of other faiths.

Harpur is, in fact, an ordained Anglican minister, a very liberal, progressive one to be sure, and he considers himself a good and faithful Christian.

For years he was a columnist and religion editor for The Toronto Star and his books have a pastoral, faithful quality. He isn't one of the angry New Atheists, nor some in-your-face artist who dips a crucifix in a cup of urine.

Allegory and belief

But put aside the outright provocation (and that might be hard, I know). It does seem that it is acceptable to air critiques about the most sacred aspects of Christianity — even question the identity of Jesus Christ — and that this has been the case for some time.

Living faith. A Lebanese girl holds a copy of the Qur'an during one in a series of worldwide protests in September over the controversial movie trailer that ridiculed the life of Muhammad. (Associated Press)

Liberal-minded Christians like John Shelby Spong, an Episcopalian bishop in the U.S. and Richard Holloway, the former bishop of Edinburgh (both articulate Tapestry guests), argue, along with many others, that the Bible should be read not as history but metaphorically, in an allegorical and symbolic manner, which was Harpur's point as well.

Was there a "real" Adam and Eve? I would say that most people see this as an obvious allegory, with a deeper meaning. So be it. One can be a pious Christian and still believe the poetry.

Was Jesus "divine"? These disputes riled members of the United Church of Canada in 1997 when Bill Phipps, the newly elected moderator, said that Jesus was not God but a human being. What really matters, he was quoted as saying, is the church's role in "mending a broken world."

As the historian Karen Armstrong reminds us in her magnificent A History of God: the 4,000-year quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, religion is a complex assemblage of ancient tales, reconstituted narratives and mystical impulses, recast to serve people seeking contact with a divine reality.

For Armstrong, studying the history of a religion can only augment the core messages — it doesn't have to violate its beliefs. Criticism is an absolute necessity.

The story of Islam

Religious scholarship is encouraged pretty much everywhere, in every faith, as far as I can tell. But when it comes to popularizing this research there is a huge schism developing, particularly when it comes to Islam.

The most recent case in point was when Britain's Channel 4 decided last month not to rebroadcast the documentary Islam: The Untold Story, which was written by the popular historian Tom Holland and was part of an ongoing series of serious-minded programs on faith and the history of religion in general.

After the initial broadcast at the end of August, a planned second airing was cancelled after Holland received many abusive messages, including threats to his life.

Holland's thesis, was much like Tom Harpur's: that Islam appeared to emerge over a period of time and probably after Arab armies had begun a long period of conquest in the Middle East, bringing them into contact with Christianity and Judaism.

But that argument angered those Muslims who believe the Qur'an is the literal word of God, recited to Muhammad, his Prophet, in Mecca on a particular date.

For these Muslims, their sacred history cannot be questioned and their opposition is posing a very delicate problem, not just for TV presenters but for those of us who want to understand more deeply what might be the common roots of our respective beliefs.

According to his supporters, Holland was respectful in his approach and was essentially summarizing the historical research that's been going on in scholarly circles. This is material from available evidence and documents, some of which he cites on his own website, in response to the critics.

What seemed to touch off the controversy in large part was that he was trying to present these tentative findings in a popular medium.

Just to ask these sorts of questions, on television, rather than in a secluded seminar somewhere, can cause more than a few headaches, it seems. Though in cases like this one, it may depend a bit on who — Muslim or non-Muslim — is doing the asking.

The din of riots

Still, this means that we find ourselves in this odd balancing act where many Christians, including committed believers, take it for granted that questions can be asked about the founding and spread of Christianity and the nature and authorship of the gospels.

It goes with the territory. But it's not a universal practice.

(As for the Hebrew Bible, it's pretty much accepted by all reputable scholars that its books were compiled and edited during the long Babylonian captivity and at other times in Jewish history. One noted literary critic, Harold Bloom, even contends that parts of the Old Testament were written by a woman.)

Now, we all realize that there are many reasons for the riots that broke out across the Muslim world recently over the movie trailer (unseen by many, surely) for a different film, not Holland's, that caricatured the life of Muhammad.

We also all know, from the reporting, how militants hijacked and exploited this video for their own purposes, and how the vast majority of Muslims, while no doubt angry about this incident, were not up in arms.

Canadian writer Irshad Manji has been arguing for years now for a more progressive interpretation of Islam. (John McConnico / Associated Press)

Still, from the discussions that followed, like the one recently on Cross Country Checkup, people are clearly walking on eggshells, even as there are notable Muslim writers and scholars who want their history thrown open.

That list would include the Canadian Irshad Manji who now teaches at New York University and who believes that any religion, including her own, deserves scrutiny.

As she told an interviewer in the spring, the debate should be about how, not whether, freedom and Islam should be harmonized.

Others, such as Raheel Raza , the author of Their Jihad, Not My Jihad: a Muslim Canadian woman speaks out, echo these sentiments, though the din of the riots may drown out these voices, for now.

Certainly there are disputes and arguments within the Muslim world about these issues, about the whole nature of what's acceptable criticism of Islam. We haven't heard the last of any of it, that's guaranteed.