Christ Actually ─ Reimagining Faith in the Modern Age

An exploration of transcendent faith in modern timesfrom the author of theNew York Timesbestselling Constantine’s Sword

What can we believe aboutand how can we believe inJesus Christ in light of the Holocaust and other atrocities of the twentieth century and the drift from religion that followed? In this urgent and provocative work, award-winning author James Carroll traces centuries of religious history and theology to face this core challenge to modern faith and to rescue it for the secular age.

Far from another book about the historical Jesus,” Christ Actually takes the challenges of science and contemporary philosophy, of secularism, seriously. Carroll retrieves the power of Jesus both as an answer to humanity’s perennial longing for transcendence and as a figure of profound ordinarinesshis simple life, and his call to imitate him, all suggest an answer to the question What is the future of Jesus Christ?” This book points the way.

James Carroll is author of eleven novels and seven works of nonfiction. His memoir,An American Requiem, won the 1996 National Book Award in nonfiction. He is a columnist for theBoston Globe and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Suffolk University in Boston, where he lives with his wife, the novelist Alexandra Marshall.