The atheist syndrome

Interestingly, the book does double duty for Funk. It provides him a venue to present his ideas while serving as a sort of autobiographical therapy in which he works out his disgust for orthodox Christians and their views. Apparently, Funk needed this rehabilitative journey because of his own fundamentalist childhood, from which he seeks to distance himself. As such, this book is must reading for anyone who wishes to understand the psychological and sociological drives that stand behind much of what is nowadays presented as the fruits of "objective" historical research by Funk and those of his ilk.

Twenty-seven years of university lecturing have taught me that when this sort of heavy-handedness occurs, what is probably driving the antievangelical scholar’s position is an attempt to work out unresolved conflict with a conservative, evangelical upbringing. The fact that Funk’s autobiographical journey is mentioned first in the book and fits this pattern, combined with the total absence of any attempt to interact with those intellectuals who have advanced substantial arguments for a conservative Christology, lead me to suspect that at the end of the day, Honest to Jesus does not represent an objective pursuit of historical truth. Rather, it is a left-wing piece of propaganda from a teenage evangelist turned adult, who is simply applying his kerygmatic zeal for a different message.

http://www.summit.org/resource/review/book_review/review.php?title=honest_to_jesus&book_author=Robert%20Funk&review_author=J.P.%20Morland