American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon

By Stephen Prothero

Book Overview

The Story of the Transformation of Jesus from Divinity to Celebrity The United States (it is often pointed out) is one of the most religious countries on earth, and most Americans belong to one Christian church or another. But as Stephen Prothero argues in American Jesus , many of the most interesting appraisals of Jesus have emerged outside the churches: in music, film, and popular culture; and among Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and people of no religion at all.Popular revisions of Jesus are nothing new: Thomas Jefferson famously took scissors to the New Testament to produce a Jesus he could call his own. In Prothero's incisive chronicle, the emergence of a cult of Jesus - as folk hero and commercial icon - is America's most distinctive contribution to Western religion. Prothero describes how Jesus was enlisted by abolitionists and Klansmen, by Teddy Roosevelt and Marcus Garvey. He explains how, in our own time, the proliferation of Jesus' image on Broadway stages and bumper stickers, on the cover of Time and on the Internet, in a Holy Land theme park and on a hot-air balloon, expresses the strange mix of the secular and the sacred in contemporary America. American Jesus is a lively and often witty work of history. As an account of the ways Americans have cast the carpenter from Nazareth in their own image, it is also an examination, through the looking glass, of the American character.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374178909
• ISBN13: 9780374178901
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 376 Pages
• Weight: 1.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

An Entertaining Discussion of how Americans have made Jesus into their image

This was a fascinating, well written book. Prothero discusses how Jesus has been co-opted and claimed by numerous groups in the United States. He discusses the Jesus Movement's Hippie Jesus, the Black Jesus, the Oriental Jesus, the evolving Jewish understanding of Jesus, and the Sweet Savior Jesus of the 19th century church hymns. Prothero also has a chapter about the movement in the early 20th century to make Jesus more muscular and masculine. He also has an informative discussion about the impact of the classic Sallmann painting "Head of Christ." I also enjoyed the chapter about the Elder Brother Mormon Jesus. I had no idea that there was such a difference of opinion about how to approach Jesus within Mormon circles. The only comment I have by way of criticism is that Prothero tends to be a bit sensationalistic in the way he writes. He speaks of the Second Person of the Trinity breaking free from the control of God the Father, as if there was a heavenly falling out between the two. He also makes unneccesarily sharp bifurcations between Calvinism and evangelicalism, apparently not realizing that many Calvinists were evangelicals (Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield). But this book is so well written and well researched in spite of its flaws, that I have no choice but to give it my highest recommendation. Again, it must be stressed that this is not a book about the biblical Jesus or the historical Jesus, but it is a look at the cultural American Jesus, and how He has been viewed by Americans.

An Enlightening Look at America's Image of Jesus

Jesus has effected and transformed America since its inception to our post-modern culture, and America has continually transformed its image of Jesus since the Puritans brought their image of a stern, authoritative God to its shores and Thomas Jefferson cut and pasted his own version of Jesus. This is the claim that historian Stephen Prothero explores in his remarkable new book American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon.Prothero, Chairman of the religious department at Boston University, takes an historian's approach to the dynamic relationship between Americans and Jesus during the past three centuries. Prothero writes, "Jesus may be `the same yesterday and today and forever' (Heb 13:8), but American depictions of him have varied widely from age to age and community to community."He takes the reader through the stages of Americans' transforming view of Jesus--not the "historical Jesus" or "living Christ" but the Jesus of American culture. Prothero offers an enlightening and encyclopedic tale of how Americans' image of Jesus has been effected by popular writings, artwork, preachers, church movements and even political figures. There is much fodder for Prothero to dissect as he notes the Library of Congress holds 17,000 books about Jesus, twice as much as the second most popular subject (Shakespeare).He artfully shows how generations of devoted Christians have emphasized different character attributes of Jesus such as his role as ultimate judge, his feminine, motherly qualities, his manliness, love or friendliness.Prothero focuses on several books and artworks of the 20th century that emphasized Jesus' manly qualities in response to the ubiquitous feminine likenesses of Jesus from the preceding century. These rugged representations of Jesus led to the view of him as a "man's man" who could excel in church, business and war. The popular cultural image of Jesus then evolved into the "hippie Jesus" of the Jesus freaks who took Jesus with them as they hitchhiked and sang across the country during the sixties and seventies. Prothero discusses how in the late seventies, Ralph Kozak's Jesus Laughing portrait spread the image of a joyful savior for the first time and opened the doors to a seeker-friendly church environment void of the gloom and doom messages of sin and hell.The history lesson illustrates that not just Christians have related to Jesus in America and influenced this cultural icon. Prothero closely examines the images of Jesus among Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and black leaders of the civil rights era. Prothero's writing reveals the tension among American Jewish leaders regarding Jesus' Jewish heritage and how Hindu leaders have reverenced Jesus over the last century.American Jesus also follows the history of the Mormon Church as it has progressed from the eastern shores through the Midwest and to Utah before expanding throughout the country. Prothero offers an educational assessment of how Mormon leaders have also transf

Fascinating trip through American history

In "American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon", Boston University historian Stephen Prothero examines how Jesus has moved from being a divine Savior to a folk icon. No matter what his or her religious inclination, or lack thereof, nearly everyone in America has embraced Jesus in one form or another. For some it is a religious understanding, for others a recognition of Him as the great teacher, for others a recognition of the political benefits of being associated with Jesus, and to still others He is the ultimate sales tool or the ultimate appeal to a higher authority in support of their particular beliefs.This is a fascinating trip through American history as Prothero discusses the progressive change of the American view of Jesus from the Puritanical lawgiver to a tender, caring and effeminate Jesus, to a strong, muscular Jesus and finally to our current state where images of Him are likely to appear on a refrigerator magnet, rock music poster, or a bumper sticker. During this trip he examines incident after incident of how this transformation slowly took place. In addition to discussing these various changes he explains how the various societal factors of the time influenced them. One of the most interesting points on the relationship of Americans with Jesus is that while His popularity as a celebrity or bumper sticker continues to grow, Bible study has continued to decline. What are the factors that have allowed the average person to so effectively separate Jesus from the religious trappings that have always been associated with Him in the past? How have these small changes allowed us to come to a point where He is truly a celebrity figure with only minimal traits of divinity? These are some of the questions that Stephen Prothero looks at and what makes "American Jesus" an interesting and highly recommended read.

Jesus has many faces

This book, which would seem to be the first definitive study of the unique ways in which the messiah Jesus of Nazareth has been transformed, reinterpreted and reinvented over the 2000 years since his birth. This is a penetrating and thought-provoking book replete with many little known facts and anecdotes. It holds the reader's attention in spite of, or perhaps because of, the author's ability to find the irony and/or subtle humor in the many ways that Jesus has, over the years, been transformed to suit the viewer's view of the world. Stephen Prothero, the author and head of the Department of Religion at Boston University, presents a fascinating insight into how the american public has, in the past, evaluated and utilized Jesus for its wide spectrum of purposes, and continues to do so to the present. A must read for the worshiper of Jesus, for the student of Jesus, for the history scholar, and for the common man.

Celebrity Jesus

I have to confess I'm a Jesus book junkie. Read dozens of books on the "real" or "historical" Jesus. But I've never seen one with this interesting angle: Jesus not as he really was but how he has been imagined over time by Americans. If you can just set aside for a while your OWN views, you can't help but get into Jesus the Black Moses, Jesus the feminist, Jesus the macho warrior, Jesus the Superstar. Amazing how inventive Americans have been from Thomas Jefferson forward when it comes to remaking this guy in their own image. And how effective this author is in setting it all down--without revealing HIS own views in the least. One of the best books I've read on religion in a LONG time.