A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age

Why have some Christians, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King Jr., been able to speak truth to power at great personal cost, while others readily capitulate to injustice? In this magnum opus, Christian ethicist Glen Stassen argues that such robust Christianity stems from believing in a "thicker" Jesus, who is Lord over the whole of life and not just one compartment of it. Belief in this thicker Jesus results in "incarnational discipleship" and can help Christians deal with the challenges of what Charles Taylor has identified as a secular age. Stassen elegantly weaves the characteristics of incarnational discipleship as correctives to secularism.

Glen H. Stassen is the Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. His book Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, with David Gushee, received Christianity Today's Award for Best Book of 2004 in Theology or Ethics. He is also the author of Living the Sermon on the Mount, Just Peacemaking, and other books.