The UK telegraph has an obituary for filmmaker Larry Buchanan , who made such classics as "Zontar, the Thing from Venus" and "Mars Needs Women".

The obituary calls them "B-movies" but this is incorrect: B-movies were, in the Hollywood Studio days, the low budget half of a double-feature made by a major studio (the big-budget half was the A-movie). What Buchanan and Roger Corman and others made were called exploitation films.

Farther down the obituary refers to "the Bible-bashing American evangelist Oral Roberts". In the US we would say Bible-thumping; Bible-bashing would mean someone hostile to Christianity. Is this common British usage or a mistake?

Common British usage, as is the usage of B-movies to mean exploitation movies though most film buffs would know the difference.

With Bible-bashing I'd go further and say it's the ONLY British usage. No-one would use it to refer to someone hostile to the Christianity although it would be mostly used by people hostile to evangelicism.

With Bible-bashing I'd go further and say it's the ONLY British usage. No-one would use it to refer to someone hostile to the Christianity although it would be mostly used by people hostile to evangelicism.

I think that's exactly how we would use "Bible-thumping." They must mean the same then.

I agree with neveu that "Bible-bashing" would mean anti-Bible or anti-Christianity, though I've not heard it.

There is an obvious connection here with tub-thumping. Interestingly, although we would use tub-thumping, we'd not use Bible-thumping; we'd use Bible-bashing instead, as Bob says. Alliteration, perhaps?

If you want to hear some wonderful bible-bashers just go to Speakers' Corner any Sunday afternoon. Not only can you listen but you can heckle (indeed, heckling is encouraged).

If Speakers' Corner is too far for you to get to right now you can get an idea of the way it works by going to my website - www.retraining-uk.com - and downloading my speech. In the background you will hear the competition I was getting from a "Jews for Jesus" bible-basher.

My speech, by the way, is not about religion - it is about something far older and more important than any religion :-)

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I agree with neveu that "Bible-bashing" would mean anti-Bible or anti-Christianity, though I've not heard it.

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Among those of us who build model airplanes, the term, "kit bashing" means modifying a model kit in some major way. Based on the plethora of christian sects, I'd guess a fair amount of "bible bashing" has happened in that manner.