The Outlaw Christ

This book is a response, in poetry, to the question Jesus asked: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ Jesus saw himself as outlaw, as one of “the lawless”.

Down the centuries, Christ and his rule of love have so often been misrepresented, ignored, or challenged in so many different ways, that he has been treated as outside the law, or the laws, of almost every age. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his great lectures in Germany after Hitler had set up the concentration camps and Goering instituted the Gestapo in March and April of 1933, said: “Christ goes through the ages, questioned anew, misunderstood anew, and again and again put to death.” This book questions the evolving views of who this Christ was and what he stood for, by examining the great poetry, during key changes in history, poems that focused on a personal response to Christ: poets like John Donne, George Herbert, and in Ireland poets like Patrick Kavanagh, Pádraig J. Daly and James Harpur."