December 25 - A Christmas Day Exploration of the Historical Jesus and the Roots of Christian Anti-Semitism

Today on this Christmas holiday we explore the historical Jesus whose birth Christians around the world are celebrating. James Carroll, the Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University and a columnist for The Boston Globe joins us. He is a former priest who has been a civil rights worker, an anti-war activist, and a community organizer as well as a best-selling author whose books received the first Thomas Merton Award and include “An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that came Between Us”, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem: The Ancient City that Ignited the Modern World” and his New York Times bestseller “Constantine’s Sword” which provided the basis for an award-winning documentary. James Carroll’s new book just out, is “Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age” and we will look into the effects of Christian anti-Semitism on contemporary faith and examine the historical roots of prejudice that ultimately led to the Holocaust, along with its relationship with the religious violence dominating our current political climate, both in regards to the seemingly endless cycle of violence in the Middle East, as well as to the recent upswing of anti-Semitism occurring globally.