Because I think the Jesus canonized by the high Councils of the Church is basically an invention of Christian Neoplatonism, one in which Jesus would not recognize himself, it is lovely to have a work of fiction that imagines what he would really be like, a man in love with a woman, a man with a mission that puts him in tension with the woman he loves, and, to boot, and this is the twist that makes it all work so well, all this told by the woman he loves and leaves!
It’s touching, insightful, and historically rich, and you get a sense of his life and times not from some heavy erudite tome but rendered with the touch of a gifted novelist.
"An extraordinary novel . . . a triumph of insight and storytelling." -Associated Press
"A true masterpiece." -Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed
An extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny, from the celebrated number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings
In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties…
Religion is in the process of destroying itself, turning itself into a mockery of what it is supposed to be.
Nothing better illustrates that than the nightmare that does not blush to call itself Christian Nationalism, as if Jesus were a first-amendment, gun-toting, shoot first and ask questions later firebrand nationalist, in short, John Wayne. That, you would think is just a joke, which it is, a sick joke, and Kristin Kobes du Mez does a brilliant job of documenting how that is actually what they think.
John Wayne is what has become of Jesus, which does as much damage to the New Testament as it is doing to the country.
In Jesus and John Wayne, a seventy-five-year history of American evangelicalism, Kristin Kobes Du Mez demolishes the myth that white evangelicals "held their noses" in voting for Donald Trump. Revealing the role of popular culture in evangelicalism, Du Mez shows how evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism in the mould of Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson and above all, John Wayne. As Du Mez observes, the beliefs at the heart of white evangelicalism today preceded Trump and will outlast him.
The best way to deconstruct something is write a meticulous history of how it was constructed in the first place, and then you get to see that it did not drop from the sky.
That goes for Christianity. Instead of the one true faith gradually falling into eternal place, the authors find a mosaic of “Jesus peoples,” not part of the official pre-history canonized in the fourth-century councils, but people who for the most part could not read or write but thrived on oral traditions, loosely connected communities, not a single movement but differing views of who Jesus was and different titles for him.
They called themselves things like “the Perfect Day,” not “Christians.” An eye-opener.
From the creative minds of the scholarly group behind the groundbreaking Jesus Seminar comes this provocative and eye-opening look at the roots of Christianity that offers a thoughtful reconsideration of the first two centuries of the Jesus movement, transforming our understanding of the religion and its early dissemination.
Christianity has endured for more than two millennia and is practiced by billions worldwide today. Yet that longevity has created difficulties for scholars tracing the religion’s roots, distorting much of the historical investigation into the first two centuries of the Jesus movement. But what if Christianity died in the fourth or fifth…
Religion is making itself unbelievable. It is shaming God right out of existence. So, what's left to believe? Is there anything in which we can put our faith and trust, anything that matters, no matter what? I discuss growing up in Catholicism, becoming an altar boy, spending four years in a Catholic religious order, not to mock it but as a point of departure for getting at what is really going on there. This radical theology can be found anywhere, in art or science or everyday life. In it, the name of God is a placeholder for something of elemental importance, which calls for our unconditional loyalty, with or without “God” or “religion,” something that calls upon us before we have any idea of what to call it.
