In Search of Jesus, Part 2

By Tom

2 Jun 2006

In his book, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, Stephen Prothero embarks on a quest for the cultural Jesus, “specifically…the American Jesus—Jesus as he has been interpreted and reinterpreted, construed and misconstrued, in the messy midrash of American culture.” Prothero’s search is an important one, because from the outset he’s honest enough to concede that “Jesus is not the exclusive property of Christians.” That’s an unsettling assertion, especially for evangelicals. But according to the polls Prothero cites, “Americans of all faiths view Jesus ‘overwhelmingly in a favorable light’ and that he has ‘a strong hold even on those with no religious training.’ ”

Americans, Christian or not, are obsessed with Jesus. In fact, more than two-thirds of us say we’ve made a “personal commitment to Jesus Christ,” and roughly three out of four admit to having “sensed his presence,” whatever that means. And just in case you still doubt our national obsession with Jesus, consider this: the “Library of Congress holds more books about Jesus (seventeen thousand or so) than about any other historical figure, roughly twice as many as the runner-up (Shakespeare).” For better or for worse, Jesus is famous. He even has his own look-alike action figure, a sure sign of his status as a pop-icon.

But what interests me most about Prothero’s work is not his claim that “Jesus is a fixture on the American landscape.” Few would be foolish enough to argue that point. Jesus is everywhere, on “billboards, bumper stickers, and even tattooed bodies.” Ironically, where he may be most unnoticed and unknowable is in the church. And this is where Prothero’s perspective challenges Christianity’s claim on Christ. Prothero argues that “Jesus became a major personality in the United States because of the ability of religious insiders to make him culturally inescapable.” However, the potential downside of our zeal to “know Christ and make him known,” particularly in evangelical circles, is that “no one group has an interpretive monopoly. Everyone is free to understand Jesus in his or her own way.” And as Prothero points out, “Americans have exercised that freedom with wild abandon.”

I guess what troubles me about Prothero’s assessment is my own complicity in the disentanglement of Christ from his church. The fact that Christian insiders like me have unknowingly encouraged “Americans of all religious persuasions (and none)” to “embrace whichever Jesus fulfilled their wishes” is certainly a cautionary tale. Thankfully, it’s not the end of the story. New chapters are still being written. My prayer is that each word will be shaped by an ecclesiology and Christology that are faithful to our resurrected Lord.

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  1. Comment by brett jordan

    8.40 am on 2 Jun 2006

    Strange, I had a messy midrash a few weeks ago, thankfully it has pretty much cleared up now. Good to know that I have at least one thing in common with American culture :-)

    And I don’t think that Americans have a monopoly on ‘making Jesus in their own image’… generation after generation of writers have tried to write ‘the real story’ of Jesus… in most of them, ‘Jesus’ ends up looking very much like the author… so you get the ‘liberal’ Jesus, the ‘rebel’ Jesus, the ‘pacifist’ Jesus…

    Getting to the (whisper the word) ‘authentic’ Jesus is a slippery task, especially as he has the tendency not to do things the way we expect, and in particular, seems to be willing to ‘condescend’ to quite amazing levels in his attempts to establlish a relationship with us.

  2. Comment by Tom

    1.51 pm on 2 Jun 2006

    Brett,

    Very good point indeed: “generation after generation of writers have tried to write ‘the real story’ of Jesus…in most of them ‘Jesus’ ends up looking very much like the author.” I suppose my only question would be: In what ways is Jesus diminished in the process?

    I very much agree with Francois Mauriac confession in his Life of Jesus: “No doubt a life of Jesus should be written on one’s knees, with a feeling of unworthiness great enough to make the pen drop from the hand. A sinner should blush for his temerity in undertaking such a work.”

  3. Comment by Tom

    1.53 pm on 2 Jun 2006

    Perhaps the words of Romano Guardini as quoted by Gary Wills in What Jesus Meant are even more pertinent to this discussion:

    …If we could get back to the “original,” that is, if we could work our way back to the picture of Christ as it existed before it had been turned over in the apostles’ minds or elaborated by their preaching, before it had been assimilated by the corporate life of the faithful, we could find a figure of Christ even more colossal and incomprehensible than any conveyed by even the most daring statements of St. Paul or St. John…The statements of the apostles are guides to him which never quite do justice to the fullness of his divine-human natures. The apostles never state more about the historical Jesus than he actually was; it is always less.

  4. Comment by dh

    3.00 pm on 2 Jun 2006

    “The apostles never state more about the historical Jesus than he actually was; it is always less.”

    and they referredto Him “as the Christ the Son of the Living God” or Thomas “My Lord and my God”. Even Paul states Him as being the fulness of the Godman. Christ always referred to Himself as God.

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