The third quest for the historical Jesus has been marked not only by its methodological features within academic circles but also by a remarkable surge of interest among liberal and progressive Christians in popular texts outlining its key concepts and concerns. Many scholars central to the third quest, such as Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, have contributed to an ever-expanding corpus of popular and theological literature that draws on scholarship about the historical Jesus. Based upon ethnographic fieldwork, this paper considers the impact of historical Jesus scholarship on contemporary Christians. In so doing, it argues that this engagement proffers a textual ideology that builds upon traditional Protestant interactions with text by lending agency and authority to scholarly sources of biblical hermeneutics rather than the biblical text itself.