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You don鈥檛 have to look very hard to find some pretty disturbing stories in the Bible. Take this one from the book of Genesis.

Rachel cannot conceive, so she invites her husband Jacob to have sex with her handmaid Bilhah instead, in order that they might have a child through her. Bilhah falls pregnant and gives birth to a son - and then is forced to hand the baby over to Rachel and Jacob, for them to bring him up as their own. The Bible does not record what Bilhah thought of this arrangement. But thirty years ago, the novelist Margaret Atwood did. And her bestselling book The Handmaid鈥檚 Tale, began its serialization on Channel 4 last night.

And powerful stuff it was too. The Handmaid鈥檚 Tale describes a fundamentalist Puritan sect called the Sons of Jacob taking control of the United States of America and forcing women into reproductive slavery. In this Republic of Gilead 鈥� a reference to the hill country where Jacob once camped - women are forced to wear modest Puritan-style clothing, and take the blame for inviting any unwanted sexual attention. And the sexual violence inflicted on the Handmaid, imagined within the context of a religious ceremony, includes one of the most disturbing scenes that I have ever seen on television. This is clearly how Atwood imagines what happened to Bilhah in the book of Genesis.

The Handmaid鈥檚 Tale makes for uncomfortable watching, not least because, as a number of commentators have pointed out, these days it doesn鈥檛 feel as much like fiction as one would hope.

But however much I think it important for Christians and Jews to witness dystopian versions of their own scriptures 鈥� and to acknowledge the bigotry and fanaticism that has been inspired by them - I nonetheless take issue with Atwood鈥檚 familiar portrayal of Puritanism. And here I鈥檇 like to bring in another novelist of Atwood鈥檚 generation, the excellent Marilynne Robinson, who has long sought to rescue Puritanism from its association with life-denying moralism, not least in her remarkable novel, also called Gilead. For Robinson, the point about the central Puritan claim that we are all sinners is not that it rights off human beings as worthless and disgusting, but quite the opposite - that it gives us grounds to treat each other with forgiveness and understanding. That鈥檚 why the idea that all human beings are sinners 鈥渋s kindlier than any expectation that we might be saints鈥� she insists.

Robinson also reminds us of the considerable role that Puritans had in the formation of American democracy. Having fled a totalitarian regime in England, it was the Puritans of New England that first formulated the proto-Democratic political principles that became the United States of America. This is why I鈥檓 not entirely convinced by Atwood鈥檚 warning that Puritans could become a threat to the values of the United States. Because Puritans were largely responsible for those values in the first place.

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