Saving Paradise How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire

One ofPublishers Weekly's Best Books of 2008During their first millennium, Christians filled their sanctuaries with images of Christ as a living presenceas a shepherd, teacher, healer, or an enthroned god. He is serene and surrounded by lush scenes, depictions of this world as paradise. Yet once he appeared as crucified, dying was virtually all Jesus seemed able to do, and paradise disappeared from the earth.Saving Paradiseturns a fascinating new lens on Christianity, from its first centuries to the present day, asking how its early vision of beauty evolved into a vision of torture, and what changes in society and theology marked that evolution. It also retrieves, for today, a life-affirming Christianity that the world sorely needs.

Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker are coauthors of Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us. Parker is president of and professor of theology at the Starr King School for the Ministry. Brock is director of Faith Voices for the Common Good and a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).