The Taming of Jesus by Christianity

Book excerpt: In The Taming of Jesus by Christianity, Wayne Mahan peels back the layers of Christianity to provide his readers with a dramatic account of how the original radical teachings of Jesus were domesticated and transformed into a world-changing religion. Mahan's book is written for a modern public that has become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of formal, institutionalized religion. He demonstrates that Christianity has at its core Jesus' demand of love, embodied in the Sermon on the Mount, and that this demand was simply too radical to form a viable religion. Mahan walks the reader through the New Testament, showing how this radical demand of love stands at the center of the synoptic gospels, and how it is systematically transformed by Paul and the Gospel of John into a faith in Jesus as atoning sacrifice and God-Man that is formalized and institutionalized by the Council of Nicaea. In a surprising and compelling presentation, Mahan argues that this transformation of the Christian message was a necessary betrayal that allowed the original radical message of Jesus to be carried within a palatable host religion, rather than be rejected and abandoned two millennia ago. The Taming of Jesus combines a succinct survey of the New Testament with a pointed examination of the central ideas of the Christian faith