Tom Krattenmaker strips Jesus “of theology [and] doctrine,” critic and Baptist cleric Alisha Gordon writes, so the National Catholic Reporter can be expected to condemn this book, right? Not so: “[G]uiding readers toward a religious figure who offers consolation to the anxious, and pushes the angry toward compassion, can only be called a public service.” As the author has it, “the solutions for everything from bigotry and sexual assault to poverty and mass incarceration lie in the teachings of Jesus.”
“As a teacher of ethics and morality,” Kirkus Reviews finds, “Jesus is an unsurpassed example for the human race.” Publishers Weekly agrees: “Asking what rock we should tether ourselves to…, Krattenmaker makes a strong case for Jesus, not as a resurrected messiah or god, but as an ethical teacher and guide.”
Communications director at Yale Divinity, Krattenmaker is ”a gifted writer,” Veritas et Lux observes, “whose heart for people is clear throughout the book.” To be sure, he is an avowed secularist, but, “It seems the further away he got from religious structures, the closer he got to Jesus,” Gordon attests. “[B]y the time I got to the end…, I concluded that he was more ‘Christian’ than many of us.”
Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower: Finding Answers in Jesus for Those Who Don’t Believe
By Tom Krattenmaker
Convergent Books, 2016
