Jesus + Religion

 In January of 2012, Jefferson Bethke debuted his YouTube video, “Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus,” a poetry recitation which sought to highlight the difference between the true ministry of Jesus Christ and so-called “false religion.” The video immediately went viral, amassing millions of views in less than a month. Jesus>Religion is the follow-up book, which further elucidates upon this central theme. I found this work fascinating because it provides the reader a window into attitudes on Christianity held by the twenty-something or “millennial” generation. Bethke speaks for this generation, while admitting that he is not a pastor or theologian, “just a messed-up twenty-three-year-old guy” . . . [who hopes that] “in sharing my story . . . it would somehow thread itself into yours, ultimately weaving us both closer to the ultimate story of God in heaven who pursues and loves people like us.”

In this partially autobiographical work, Bethke recalls his troubled upbringing and his struggles with the Christian life. The child of unwed parents, he was raised by his single mother, who, due to physical and mental heath problems was often unable to work and depended upon subsidized housing and welfare to make ends meet. In his junior year of high school, she confessed to Jefferson that she was gay and was abandoning the Christian faith because, according to Bethke, “the treatments of gays by conservative Christians finally got to her.” He also abandoned the faith, turning to what he refers to as the “cool” life of drinking and promiscuity. But he reveals that later in college (after being placed on academic probation, breaking up with a serious girlfriend, and being cut from the baseball team) he was led back to Christ and began devoting much of his time to theological study.