Personal Jesus
I listened to an interview this weekend on NPR with Stephen Prothero, the author of American Jesus: How the Son of God Became An Icon. In his book Prothero has traced the various incarnations of Jesus in the American imagination.

It strikes me as interesting that everyone wants to claim Jesus as their own, and as long as he looks like what we want we're okay with him. In the individualized religious culture of America, we have truly found our own "personal Jesus"...as many times he looks like our own reflection and supports whatever cause we choose. For Diests like Jefferson, Jesus was a strict rationalist moral philosopher. For Billy Sunday Jesus was a man's man and "scrapper" and not a feminized Saviour. For the Social Gospel advocates, Jesus might as well have been a worker in the inner city soup kitchens of Jerusalem...fighting against injustice. Everyone wants Jesus as long as he looks like them. I want Jesus as long as he looks and thinks something like myself.
posted by Jimmy at 10:00 PM | |