Wilensky-Lanford devotes an entire chapter of "Paradise Lust" to "The Urantia Book," an alternative bible that was revealed to a group in Chicago over the course of 30 years, beginning in the mid-1920s.
Regina M. Schwartz, in her book "The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism" (1997), argues that the Old Testament's endorsement of violence — the fruit, she says, of monotheism, with its intolerance — has been so destructive that we should delete it from the text and "produce an alternative Bible... embracing multiplicity instead of monotheism".
At any rate, Darwin (1859, 1860, 1872a) described a scientific alternative to a Bible-based, Christian worldview, using in many sentences the language of a theologian.
Many have offered alternative readings of the Bible that, while still holding the Bible in highest regard, also afford new understandings of LGBQ people and marriage equality.
Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus, Brown's newest and potentially battiest release yet from Montreal publisher Drawn & Quarterly, presents an alternative interpretation of the Bible in which the Blessed Virgin was a prostitute, a fact Brown claims was "covered up" by gospel writers.
Like a reticent believer reading alternative meanings into archaic Bible verse, I interpret his more inflammatory Facebook outbursts as counter to what I know, deep down, they really are: views that even Piers Morgan would deem a bit too far there, mate.
The alternative is to revise the Bible.
Cheryl Long, editor of the Mother Earth News, the journal based in Topeka, Kan., that is the bible for the alternative energy self-help set, sees a similar trend.
For a sleeker alternative, there is the 2003 Bible "The Message // Remix," which uses modern language (not dude-speak) and looks like a box set of techno-CD's.
Based around the slow-living movement – which as the name suggests, encourages people to live a self-contained lifestyle, reconnect with the earth, shun technology where possible and drive a bit less – it fast became a bible for an alternative aspirationalism based around distressed furnishing, cable knits, blood oranges and "quiet" breakfasts.
Trout and Seattle's Brendan Ryan were the only players this season who failed to win Gold Gloves but did win Fielding Bible Awards, a more thought-out alternative.
