Peter Hooton’s gift to students of Bonhoeffer is a full-length programmatic consideration of Bonhoeffer’s notion of religionless Christianity. It’s programmatic not only because it is a book-length meditation on the topic but because Hooton considers the concept genealogically in relationship to Bonhoeffer’s oeuvre. He is committed to treating religionless Christianity as a “fully functional theology, rather than as fragment, or historical artifact.” ... A great strength of Hooton’s analysis is the way he shows connections from the beginning to the end of Bonhoeffer’s works.... By examining concepts introduced in his late prison letters and connecting the dots back throughout Bonhoeffer’s writings, Hooten demonstrates that they were not the late and suddenly clear thoughts of a theologian nearing his end but rather the culmination of much that had gone before. Tragically, Bonhoeffer did not have the opportunity to flesh them out with greater detail.

Christian Century

Peter Hooton’s excellent book constitutes a significant contribution to the growing corpus of Bonhoeffer scholarship. It forensically probes the central notion of “religionless Christianity”— forensic in the sense of leaving no stone unturned but also in its search for answers, especially to the big questions, ‘What is left once Christianity is unburdened by religion?’ ‘What is left for the believer?’ ‘What is left for the world come of age?’ Finding answers to these Bonhoeffer-implied questions seems more urgent today than ever. Peter Hooton’s work takes us just a little closer.

Terence Lovat, The University of Newcastle, emeritus

Bonhoeffer's plea for a 'religionless Christianity' continues to intrigue and puzzle generations of new readers. Peter Hooton argues eloquently and with academic rigor that Bonhoeffer's prison theology can only be truly understood as an aspect of his abiding and central conviction of Jesus Christ as the truth of both God and humanity.

Rev. Dr. Keith Clements

What we have in Hooton’s Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity in Its Christological Context is another helpful introduction to Bonhoeffer's theology. In emphasizing the relationship of his understanding of religion to his Christology, Hooton helps us understand how Bonhoeffer can be helpful to our current conversations about the role of Christianity in a contemporary world that is increasingly polarized.

Robert Cornwall, author of "Called to Bless: Finding Hope by Reclaiming Our Spiritual Roots"