Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower
Finding Answers in Jesus for Those Who Don't Believe
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
An award-winning USA Today columnist makes the case for how a Jesus freed from religion and politics meets the need for meaning and purpose in secular America.
Tom Krattenmaker is part of a growing conversation centered at Yale University that acknowledges—and seeks to address—the abiding need for meaning and inspiration in post-religious America. What, they ask, gives a life meaning? What constitutes a life well led?
In Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower, Krattenmaker shares his surprising conclusion about where input and inspiration might best be found: in the figure of Jesus. And Jesus, not only as a good example and teacher, but Jesus as the primary guide for one's life.
Drawing on sociological research, personal experience, and insights from fifteen years studying and writing on religion in American public life, Krattenmaker shows that in Jesus, nonreligious people like himself can find unique and compelling wisdom on how to honor the humanity in ourselves and others, how to build more peaceful lives, how generosity can help people and communities create more abundance, how to break free from self-defeating behaviors, and how to tip the scales toward justice.
In a time when more people than ever are identifying as atheist or agnostic, Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower is a groundbreaking and compelling work that rediscovers Jesus--and our own best selves--for the world of today.
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Krattenmaker (Onward Christian Athletes) was raised Catholic; he later stopped believing in the supernatural aspects of Christianity but still admired Jesus greatly as a role model. Asking what rock we should tether ourselves to in life, Krattenmaker makes a strong case for Jesus, not as a resurrected messiah or god, but as an ethical teacher and guide. Humanists and atheists have much to learn from this sage, Krattenmaker argues, and he spends his book outlining the basics of Jesus's ethics. Most of this, with its emphasis on the loaves and the fishes (abundance), the Sermon on the Mount (radical nonviolence), and the good Samaritan (caring for others), will be familiar to anyone with an interest in or some exposure to Christianity, but for someone new to these stories or with a skeptical outlook, Krattenmaker's book fills a gap. Krattenmaker is strongest when he marshals facts and figures to explain problems, such as overcrowding within the U.S. prison system, weakest when he talks about himself, but overall he offers a reasoned guide that makes a 2,000-year-old story relevant to secularists today.