This coming Sunday sees the start of Melvyn Bragg’s new television series about books that changed the world. And I suppose we each have our own candidates for books that changed us and taught us to see the world a little differently.

My own choice would be the story Jews throughout the world will be reading tomorrow night on our festival of Passover, the story of the book of exodus that tells how our ancestors, 33 centuries ago, were freed from slavery and began what Nelson Mandela called “the long walk to freedom”. Of course, we don’t just read it, we relive it, eating the unleavened bread of affliction and tasting the bitter herbs of oppression, and it all begins with questions asked by a child.

And though we think of it as the Jewish story, it was adopted by others as their own. When Americans won their freedom from the British, Thomas Jefferson compared it to the exodus. When African Americans marched for freedom they sang the words of Moses: “Let my people go.” More recently it inspired South American liberation theologians. It’s one of the great narratives of hope and it really did help change the world.

Why? Because it was the first time religion entered the human situation as a revolutionary voice. The religions of the ancient world, like their secular substitutes today, were justifications of the status quo. They explained why the rich and powerful had to be rich and powerful. Exodus said the opposite. The supreme power enters history to rescue the powerless. The God of all humanity asks us to grant freedom and dignity to all humanity. Above all He commands us to love the stranger because our ancestors were once strangers in a land not their own.

What strikes me this Passover is how badly humanity is doing in the 21st century. Still today religion is being used as an excuse for violence and bloodshed. Mosques, synagogues, Hindu temples and Buddhist shrines are still attacked. People still hate in the name of the God of love, kill in the name of the God of life, and practice cruelty in the name of the God of compassion. I wonder whether God himself doesn’t weep to see the evils committed in his name.

Passover begins with these words: “This is the bread of affliction our ancestors ate in Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat.” Freedom begins when we share our bread with others. A simple story, yet still with the power to change the world.

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