Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age - Hardcover

Praise for "Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age"

"With well-researched clarity, Carroll explores the question posed by anti-Nazi Lutheran pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer: who actually is Christ for us today?... Because Christ actually is meaningful in some way to a billion Christians around the globe, this heartfelt investigation is of interest to many."
--"Publishers Weekly "
"Carroll...strives to reconceive Christ for a secular, post-Holocaust, post-Hiroshima era....readers
seeking a faith responsive to the zeitgeist will find it here."
--"Booklist "
"An in-depth, thought-provoking challenge to two millennia of Christian interpretation."
--"Kirkus Reviews"
"Written in the brisk, argumentative style that has won James Carroll a broad popular readership, "Christ Actually" avoids the interminable maundering of academic prose, even as its extensive footnotes indicate attention to advanced, if radical, scholarship. Conservative Christians may well be shocked and annoyed at Carroll's configuration of Jesus. Nevertheless, for its pushback against the boundaries of conventional interpretations and, above all, for its passionate presentation of the sinfulness of Christian anti-Semitism, his book deserves serious attention."
--"Commonweal" magazine

Praise for "Constantine's Sword"
"Monumental...An eye-opening journey through twenty centuries of history..This is a book for everyone."--Christian Science Monitor
"A triumph."--The Atlantic Monthly
"A deeply felt work, a book that measures the sweep of history against [his] experience as a man of the church."--Floyd Skloot, San Franciso Chronicle
"Remarkable . . . A book of a deeper sort."
--Andrew Sullivan, "The New York Times Book Review"
"A masterly history . . . fascinating, brave."
--"Time"
Praise for Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age

"With well-researched clarity, Carroll explores the question posed by anti-Nazi Lutheran pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer: who actually is Christ for us today?... Because Christ actually is meaningful in some way to a billion Christians around the globe, this heartfelt investigation is of interest to many."
--Publishers Weekly

"Carroll...strives to reconceive Christ for a secular, post-Holocaust, post-Hiroshima era....readers
seeking a faith responsive to the zeitgeist will find it here."
--Booklist

"An in-depth, thought-provoking challenge to two millennia of Christian interpretation."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Written in the brisk, argumentative style that has won James Carroll a broad popular readership, Christ Actually avoids the interminable maundering of academic prose, even as its extensive footnotes indicate attention to advanced, if radical, scholarship. Conservative Christians may well be shocked and annoyed at Carroll's configuration of Jesus. Nevertheless, for its pushback against the boundaries of conventional interpretations and, above all, for its passionate presentation of the sinfulness of Christian anti-Semitism, his book deserves serious attention."
--Commonweal magazine

Praise for Constantine's Sword

"Monumental...An eye-opening journey through twenty centuries of history..This is a book for everyone."--Christian Science Monitor

"A triumph."--The Atlantic Monthly

"A deeply felt work, a book that measures the sweep of history against [his] experience as a man of the church."--Floyd Skloot, San Franciso Chronicle

"Remarkable . . . A book of a deeper sort."
--Andrew Sullivan, The New York Times Book Review

"A masterly history . . . fascinating, brave."
--Time

A New York Times bestselling and widely admired Catholic writer explores how we can retrieve transcendent faith in modern times

Critically acclaimed and bestselling author James Carroll has explored every aspect of Christianity, faith, and Jesus Christ except this central one: What can we believe about—and how can we believe in—Jesus in the twenty-first century in light of the Holocaust and other atrocities of the twentieth century and the drift from religion that followed?

What Carroll has discovered through decades of writing and lecturing is that he is far from alone in clinging to a received memory of Jesus that separates him from his crucial identity as a Jew, and therefore as a human. Yet if Jesus was not taken as divine, he would be of no interest to us. What can that mean now? Paradoxically, the key is his permanent Jewishness. No Christian himself, Jesus actually transcends Christianity.

Drawing on both a wide range of scholarship as well as his own acute searching as a believer, Carroll takes a fresh look at the most familiar narratives of all—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Far from another book about the “historical Jesus,” he takes the challenges of science and contemporary philosophy seriously. He retrieves the power of Jesus’ profound ordinariness, as an answer to his own last question—what is the future of Jesus Christ?—as the key to a renewal of faith.