Jesus in America: his changing image

The Gospel of John concludes by claiming that if all the things Jesus did were written down, "the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." Unfortunately, the writers of Christmas music seem determined to meet John's challenge. Anyone who's endured the Cajun polka version of "Away in the Manger" knows that the world itself could not - and should not - contain any more of these things.

Dec. 26th will silence the Christmas muzak for 11 months, but the more complex issues raised by this inescapable holy din extend beyond the commercialization of Christmas and point to what Stephen Prothero calls the universalization of Jesus. Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, has published an engaging book called "American Jesus" that documents how the Son of God became the nation's most ubiquitous and flexible celebrity.

While acknowledging the extraordinary religious diversity in the United States, Prothero reminds us that America now contains more Christians than any other nation in history. And despite periodic jeremiads about our hedonistic society, Americans are vastly more interested in Jesus than their Puritan forefathers, who were, as Prothero writes, "a God-fearing rather than Jesus-loving people." Indeed, what's even more striking today is the faith of non-Christians: Nearly half of them believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and rose from the dead.

But don't gloat, Prothero warns the pious. Jesus may rule the country, but the country rules Jesus right back. Members of every group - Protestants, Catholics, Pentecostals, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, gays, blacks, feminists, hippies, atheists, rappers - have felt either empowered or forced to define Jesus in their own image. "While Christian insiders have had the authority to dictate that others interpret Jesus, they have not had the authority to dictate how these others would do so."

In the first part of his book, Prothero traces that remarkable dynamic from the founding of the Republic to the present day. He begins with Thomas Jefferson's hands-on approach to the Bible. The author of the Declaration of Independence was also an aggressive editor of the New Testament. Disgusted with what he considered the miracles and dogma cluttering Jesus' wisdom, he took a razor and cut away about 90 percent of the text.

In this bold act of selection, Prothero sees a model for all future American redefinitions of Jesus. Indeed, the president's methods and results bear an uncanny resemblance to Robert Funk's Jesus Seminar. In 1993, this strangely eclectic group produced a color-coded New Testament that represented how members voted on the reliability of each verse. Like Jefferson, they dismissed anything that sounded physically unnatural or theological.

The meat of Prothero's study lies in showing how America moved between these two similar points from 1800 and 2000. In the marketplace of ideas that America created, he argues, preachers competed for parishioners as never before: Bible stories sold better than dogma, and a personal Savior was more cuddly than a sovereign God.

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