Jesus: Who the Hell Does He Think He Is?

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Mark Townsend, author of Jesus Through Pagan Eyes.

Though Jesus was often discussed by his contemporaries in a manner suggested by this post’s title, the above words do not in fact refer to Jesus, but to me.

“Oh, how arrogant!” you might now be thinking. Actually no, I’m merely paraphrasing the comments that have often been made behind my back by people (Christians) who simply can’t cope with the stuff I write. I’m a priest, you see, yet one who has had an almost constant battle with his own religion and the hierarchies within it. From teenage days when, as a young would-be-clergyman, my own parish Curate told me that I should “have a mill stone tied round my neck and be thrown into the river” to the more recent days of being put on what was nothing short of a heresy trial, I’ve always been seen as too liberal, and dangerously open minded.

But why the latest bout of back stabbing? Simple: because I spend far too much time with Pagans. In fact, not only do I spend far too much time with Pagans, I’ve now gone and done the unthinkable—asked them for their opinions on who the peace-loving dude we call Jesus really was. And worse still, published these opinions within a new book. Jesus Through Pagan Eyes is a book three years in the making; it is not only a Progressive Christian priest’s attempt to rescue the “divine baby” from the Church’s dirty bathwater, but is also an anthology of nearly thirty of the Pagan world’s most well known and well respected authors’ opinions and insights into who this controversial rabbi might really have been. Their words, in the form of both essays and interviews, are nothing short of shell shocking for both Christians and Pagans alike.

Our thanks to Mark for his guest post! For more from Mark Townsend, read his article “The Adventures of a Modern-Day Heretic and the Skyclad Christ.”