Telling Stories About Jesus: A Conversation with John Carroll - Keith Tester, 2010
Telling Stories About Jesus: A Conversation with John Carroll
Keith TesterFirst Published November 18, 2010 Research Article
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Article information Abstract
Since the 1980s the Australian sociologist John Carroll has been engaged in a unique project. Over the course of a number of books he has sought to investigate the fate of authority, values and vocation in the tradition of Western culture. His books are characterised by a deep knowledge of the Western tradition of high culture, especially its art and texts; they are marked by historical sweep and seriousness of purpose. For Carroll, culture is the retelling of archetypal stories which take us beyond the ego and towards the work of soul-building. In 2007 he published the book The Existential Jesuswhich seeks to tell of the meaning of Jesus for contemporar y culture. This conversation uses the publication of the Jesus book as an opportunity to ask Carroll to reflect on his work. Consequently the article is also an invitation for the wider academic community to begin to engage with Carroll’s profound and challenging inquiry into the state of Western culture.
Keywords Archetypes, being, Christianity, Humanism, Jesus, Mark’s Gospel, meaning, mythos
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