Pagels begins by reflecting on her own intense but brief evangelical experience, which sparked her investigation into Jesus’s enduring power. She explores modern conversions through Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann’s research on the Association of Vineyard Churches in Southern California. Luhrmann investigated how sensible people develop personal relationships with an invisible being. Vineyard Christians describe Jesus as an intimate friend who interacts with them directly. When the author asked Stanford psychiatrists if they consider such interior conversations delusional, most answered yes. However, Luhrmann’s work distinguishes religious experiences from mental illness by showing how Vineyard members learn practices—meditation, prayer, and chanting—that transform their minds and help them discern between their own thoughts and what they perceive as God’s voice. Franciscan monk Richard Rohr calls this a return to the heart. These practices can reshape perception of reality and aid recovery from addiction, abuse, and depression. Luhrmann concludes that through her research, she has come to know God and experienced unconditional love.

The author contrasts this with African Methodist Episcopal Christians in Arkansas, described by Professor James H. Cone. In response to racial violence like Emmett Till’s lynching, some Black Christians picture Jesus as a suffering figure who shares their pain. Jesus’s crucifixion is superimposed on lynchings of their own people, providing divine empathy, while his resurrection offers hope for ultimate justice as triumphant warrior and divine judge. Traditional Christian rituals and music, from early Aramaic and Hebrew chants through composers like Bach and Arvo Pärt, create a historical through-line of worship.

The Bicolano people of the Philippines, studied by anthropologist Fenella Cannell, focus worship on a life-sized crucified statue called the Amang Hinulid. Their main festival is Holy Week, when they perform care rituals for the statue, similar to tending the grave of a deceased relative. Anthropologist Vicente Rafael suggests that the attraction is Christianity’s democratized promise of a glorious afterlife for everyone. Aparecida Vilaça recounts how Paletó, an Amazonian Wari leader, returned to Christianity in old age hoping for resurrection. The Bicolano integrate Jesus’s Passion with ancient traditions, using his name and the cross to banish spirits and praising him as a healer.

Among the Piro people of Peru, the organization Wycliffe Bible Translators succeeded by learning their language and translating the Bible into their native tongue. Anthropologist Peter Gow explains that conversion elevated the Piro from debt slavery, as baptism conferred “cristiano” status, meaning human rather than the subhuman “indio.” This led to literacy, economic independence, and increased social power, with many Piro seeing Jesus’s promise of God’s kingdom beginning to manifest in their transformed lives. However, Pagels notes that it was the imperial mechanism of Christian evangelism, via Spanish colonization, that deemed the Piro subhuman in the first place.

In Madagascar, anthropologist Eva Keller found Adventist converts attracted to intellectual excitement through Bible study. Missionaries encourage intense scriptural investigation to find personal meaning, presenting Jesus as a divine teacher. For the Urapmin people of New Guinea, studied by Joel Robbins, Jesus teaches righteousness, helping navigate moral questions. A 1970s charismatic revival empowered many, especially women, to believe that they receive direct Holy Spirit inspiration.

The Dalit people of India, researched by Nathaniel Roberts, were traditionally shunned as “untouchables.” Christianity welcomes them into a global family, affirming their humanity. Roberts discovered the Bible functioning as revolutionary justice in their community, where believers shout Psalms as a rousing battle cry. These interpretations represent liberationist views countering colonialist agendas, echoing the tensions of the Piro peoples’ perspective on Christ.

The author shifts to artistic interpretations. Salvador Dalí’s 1951 painting Christ of Saint John of the Cross shows an unblemished Christ ascending, reflecting Dalí’s identification with the savior for whom both he and his deceased brother were named. Psychoanalyst C. G. Jung noted that many envision Christ as a symbol of the self. Jewish artist Marc Chagall’s White Crucifixion reclaims Jesus as Jewish, indicting Christian antisemitism by depicting him embodying Jewish suffering during the Nazi era. Welsh artist John Petts created a stained-glass window for Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church after a KKK bombing, depicting a crucified Black Jesus with Matthew 25:40, linking violence against the marginalized to Jesus.

Pagels also analyzes three films. Mark Dornford-May’s Son of Man sets the Jesus story in a fictional Africa with an all-Black cast exploring political resistance. Key scenes are recontextualized: The Annunciation occurs among slaughtered children, and baptism becomes Xhosa initiation. Jesus preaches nonviolent defiance, is betrayed, and is killed like anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko. His mother, Mary, digs up his body, publicly displays it on a cross, and leads defiant resistance by dancing despite armed soldiers. Resurrection appears as ordinary life returning without fear.

Helen Edmundson’s Mary Magdalene challenges stereotypes stemming from Pope Gregory I’s false 591 CE identification of Magdalene as a sex worker, officially retracted by Pope Paul VI in 1969 but still perpetuated. Edmundson portrays Magdalene as an independent spiritual seeker who rejects arranged marriage. After her family attempts exorcism, Jesus reassures her that there are no demons, and they connect over seeking God. Despite Peter’s hostility, she joins the disciples and later baptizes women. After the crucifixion, Magdalene sees the risen Jesus and tells the disciples that the kingdom is internal, growing through acts of love. In the film’s telling, Peter angrily rejects her message, formulating the doctrine that Jesus died to save the righteous from sin. Magdalene refuses silence, declaring that the kingdom grows like a seed. The film draws on non-canonical texts like the Gospel of Thomas and Gospel of Mary, sources rejected by orthodox authorities.

Martin Scorsese’s film The Last Temptation of Christ, based on Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel The Last Temptation of Christ, explores the battle between Jesus’s human and divine natures. Jesus engineers his own betrayal, seeing death as necessary sacrifice. On the cross, he experiences his last temptation: a vision of ordinary human life in which he marries Mary Magdalene and grows old. In this vision, he confronts Paul preaching resurrection and calls him a liar. Paul retorts that his version of Jesus is more powerful. As Jesus dies of old age in the vision, Judas calls him a traitor. Satan then appears, leaving the vision’s source ambiguous. Jesus begs God’s forgiveness, is transported back to the cross, and dies declaring the mission accomplished.

The author concludes by listing individuals exemplifying Jesus’s teachings: Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Millard and Linda Fuller, Mahatma Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, Pope Francis, and Reverend William Barber. These figures focus on justice, mercy, and love rather than divisive theology, moved by Isaiah’s call for good news to the poor and Amos’s demand that justice roll down like a river.

The author restates the central questions about the historical Jesus and Christianity’s origins. The gospels are not objective historical accounts but purpose-driven narratives written by later followers who never knew Jesus. Some details may have been created to address inconvenient facts, such as claims about virgin birth or bodily resurrection. As a historian, Pagels acknowledges difficulty separating invented episodes from those based on actual or visionary experiences, noting that some scenes must necessarily function as metaphor.

The four canonical gospels present different approaches that later church leaders streamlined  into a single narrative. Yet the spiritual power shining through these stories remains significant. Jesus’s radical interpretation of the Genesis creation story—that every human being has sacred value—still resonates. Unlike other moral teachers of the time, who often recommended helping only people of one’s own status, Jesus extended compassion to all in need, including enemies. This unprecedented reading of Genesis, and by extension the Old Testament, continues inspiring social and political life to this day.

The author identifies a recurring pattern in the gospels: Stories begin with suffering and shift suddenly into hope. Healing miracles transform illness into wholeness, Mary’s shocking pregnancy becomes a blessing, and crucifixion leads to resurrection. This pattern echoes Hebrew Scriptures—enslaved people freed, the young David felling the giant Goliath, the prophet Daniel miraculously spared by lions, Jonah being swallowed by and then emerging from the whale. The message is clear: God can make a way out of no way and transform suffering into joy. This simple element gives the gospel stories their enduring power, offering what people often need most: “an outburst of hope” (264).