Although we loathe admitting it, Christians have often, through crusade, conquest, and commerce, used the name and power of Christ to promote and justify political, economic, and even military gain.
Rieger's ambitious and faith-filled project chips away at the colonial legacy of Christology to find the authentic Christ---or rather the many authentic depictions of Christ in history and theology that survive our self-serving domestications. Against the seeming inevitability of globalized unfairness, Rieger holds up a "stumbling block" that confounds even empire.
Joerg Rieger is Professor of Systematic Theology at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. He is author of Remember the Poor: The Challenge to Theology in the Twenty-first Century and God and the Excluded: Visions and Blindspots in Contemporary Theology. He is also editor of Liberating the Future: God, Mammon, and Theology and Theology from the Belly of the Whale: A Frederick Herzog Reader.
