Michaela Kolowski

You know, how upsetting would it be for people if she wrote that kind of novel where she was really trying to reimagine Jesus

Jesus' life.

I mean, this is not Dan Brown territory, you know, where Jesus wanders off at the end and lives a ripe old age and is married.

You know, in Sue Monk Kidd's book, the story of Jesus ends as we know the story of Jesus to end with his crucifixion.

I found the period detail of it really captivating, but I also did find that sometimes it's a little heavy-handed and some of her dialogue was a bit flowery, perhaps, maybe a little bit melodramatic, perhaps.

I feel like it was sort of an idea that didn't quite sustain itself all the way through the novels.

Well, it's funny you say that.

There's a Washington Post review of the book which does describe it like that.

You know, he's not just the Messiah, he's Mr. Right.

You know, it's a little cruel.

I mean, I think some of Sue Monk Kidd's direction in the book reminded me a bit of the wonderful Reverend John Shelby Spong's book, which was Jesus for the Non-Religious.

And that was really about trying to reclaim the man in Jesus.

So I think Sue Monk Kidd both is maybe from a fiction perspective doesn't quite pull off what she sets out to and from a

religious perspective either couldn't quite complete it.

But I think she says herself, by introducing the idea of Anna, the idea that Jesus had a wife, if that were true, if that were something we had grown up with and we'd lived with for eons or for thousands of years, how differently might we conceive of the Western world?

How differently might we conceive of our relationship to the separation between spirit and body?

So if bodies are mostly identified with women, women are mostly identified by what their bodies can do, and bodies are sinful.

because spirit is something that's pure and not connected to the body, then maybe we would have seen things differently if this primary narrative had a woman in the midst of it.

And I think that there is something powerful in that.

And I understand from speaking with friends who are Christians that there's been a lot of debate backward and forward over many, many decades, over thousands of years, really, about the idea of how much –