Christ Among the Partisans

On vacation last week, I read a slim little book called "What Jesus Meant" by Catholic intellectual Garry Wills. It's a highly analytical but plain-spoken reading of the New Testament's Gospels. Wills's intention is to recover the Jesus who is a radical, frightening preacher and to show that he is beyond political parties or agenda. The book is intellectually hefty but quite short. (I just love those attributes!)
Wills wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in April that highlights a lot of his book's ideas:

He was never that thing that all politicians wish to be esteemed — respectable. At various times in the Gospels, Jesus is called a devil, the devil's agent, irreligious, unclean, a mocker of Jewish law, a drunkard, a glutton, a promoter of immorality.

The institutional Jesus of the Republicans has no similarity to the Gospel figure. Neither will any institutional Jesus of the Democrats

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Read the whole op-ed here: