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Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession

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If you are interested in Jesus, whether or not you believe that he is the son of God, a great philosopher, or simply a cultural phenomenon, I highly recommend Richard Fox's JESUS IN AMERICA. This a wonderful book, one that compliments the reader's intelligence even as it generates its argument, subtly and brilliantly, through a straightforward structure and generous, accommodating style. It is a book that invites you to think deeply, without telling you what you ought to conclude.

Richard Fox, a professor of history at the University of Southern California, takes as his subject the multiple ecumenical and secular versions of Jesus-worship and Jesus-theorizing that have grown and prospered on America soil over the past four hundred years. His is the only existing history that does so. What distinguishes Fox's approach is his conviction that the history of Jesus is not simply a story of progress. It may be tempting to believe that suffering- servant-Jesus gave way to philosopher-Jesus who competed with and ceded the ground to a more muscular savior-Jesus and a sweet feminine-Jesus who has been co-opted by an advertiser's-dream-Jesus. But to streamline the Jesus story in such a manner is to misrepresent the complexity of the many incarnations of Jesus in America.

No matter how popular they may be at any given time, successive interpretations of Jesus do not necessarily oust previous ones. As far as Jesus is concerned, the past is never "over." The American landscape is crowded with multiple Jesuses who remain perpetually accessible, and crowded with individuals, believers and non-believers alike, who simultaneously avail themselves of every Jesus manifestation.

Instead of mastering the abundant historical material by submitting it to his own rigorous, discipline-bound interpretation, Fox leads the reader directly into the American past. Immersed in that distant and not-so-distant world, held in the presence of the lives and minds of those who came before, the reader is suspended in the text, listening as these predecessors contemplate, argue over, and promote their own versions of Jesus. The story that emerges is rich, multi-vocal, immediate, bristling with diversity and with controversy. His method allows us to appreciate the profusion of beliefs that has created both our religious and our secular heritage.

And what a vibrant heritage it is! We get to linger with Franciscan missionaries in seventeenth century New Mexico who, like early-day Mel Gibsons, find salvific force in the terrible punishment of Christ's body. We overhear the spiritual agony of Puritan Thomas Shepard as he struggles with the moral dilemma posed by familial love; is his love for his wife in competition with his love of Christ? We feel the lucid working of Ralph Waldo Emerson's mind as he demotes Jesus from divine status in order to use his teachings as philosophies. We mount a wooden cross in Norwood, Massachusetts in 1898 along with the photographer F. Holland Day in order to resurrect an aesthetic of suffering. We stride alongside the reformers Jane Addams and Dorothy Day, attend to the mesmerizing shows put on by preachers such as Aimee Semple McPherson and Billy Graham, listen to the eloquence of African-Americans: old Elizabeth, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr. Countless others animate the pages of this history. Filmmakers, academicians, politicians. The notes alone are worth reading. The superb images, both color and black and white, both leaven and illuminate the text.

Fox's authority lies in this generous approach. What emerges is at once startling and simple: to be an American is to live in relation to Jesus all the time, regardless of one's conscious belief. It's not simply that America's founding fathers were Christian and created a Christian country. America's "Jesus-ness" is subtler, more pervasive. The accessibility of the personhood of Jesus, in his role as eloquent speaker, dutiful son, original thinker, suffering victim, misunderstood leader, compassionate yet just individual, makes him a desirable candidate for appropriation in a nation that, at least theoretically, treasures tolerance and wishes to celebrate diversity and is always on the lookout for a spokesperson who can command an audience. Jesus may be worshipped only by devout Christians, but he is "used" by nearly everyone. And it is this through such common and familiar use that Jesus is constantly resurrected in American life.

This is particularly tricky common ground for Americans to occupy comfortably, because it is hard to recognize exactly where its "commonness" lies. When Americans all sit at the same table arguing, it is easy for them to overlook two encouraging facts; they are sitting together at a table; they are free to argue. Jesus, and the multiple values associated with him, socially, politically, and religiously, is often the topic of that table talk.

Through its patient examination of centuries of such talk, Fox's book allows us to experience a sense of unity that underlies American divisiveness, and to anguish over the divisiveness that obscures American unity. To have created a book that permits us to feel and to think, to contemplate and to conclude, without asserting his authorial right to supervise and instruct, constitutes Fox's striking intellectual, and spiritual, achievement. His willingness to resist the temptation to appropriate Jesus for the advancement of his own personal beliefs, or for the promotion of a trendy political or social argument, should help make this book a classic.

Straight to the point --- I really like this book, and for a lot of reasons. But I think I actually fell in love with it halfway through page 304, where Richard Wightman Fox quotes from a 1910 hymnal I had never heard of before: Manly Songs for Christian Men. How can you not love a book that opens your world to such a wonderful tidbit as that?

In fact, JESUS IN AMERICA is loaded with wonderful tidbits, and that may be a problem for some readers. It's hard to get a sense of unity out of all this. That didn't particularly bother me --- I can do without a full view of the forest as long as the trees are interesting --- but anyone who approaches this book with the expectation of getting a clear, overall perspective on the ever-evolving roles Jesus has played in the life of America, ever since the very first Christian landed on its shores, is likely to be disappointed.

Fox sees Jesus as the quintessential symbol of American society, but hardly a symbol that means the same thing to each person. "In all likelihood, Jesus is permanently layered into the American cultural soil. Yet his identity is elastic. There is no single Jesus, in America or anywhere else," he writes. What many American Christians --- and non-Christians --- may be surprised to learn is that so much of what we attribute to our contemporary view of Jesus actually has its roots in Puritan and colonial America. The Puritans, of course, saw the settling of the New World as a significant part of God's plan of redemption for humanity, but it was the renowned colonial preacher Jonathan Edwards who applied the "born-again" imagery to the mission of Christians in the colonies. America, he believed, utterly exemplified spiritual rebirth.

Readers may also be surprised to discover how often throughout U.S. history Jesus has been adopted as something of a mascot by partisans all along the political spectrum. The "Jesus is on our side" mentality, as it turns out, isn't just a conservative mentality; liberals have been equally guilty of claiming him to be among their celebrity supporters.

According to Fox, as early as the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Christianity was what kept the self-absorbed individuals of America together as a nation. As Fox writes, "Jesus is a transferable loyalty: people move around the social arena and take him along. People use him for psychological cushioning when they feel anxious or alone. They offer him as proof of respectability when they need a job, a spouse, or a reputation. And they sometimes take him as a personal moral challenge to give more to others and take less for themselves."

And here's a parting tidbit: The first feature-length film depicting the life of Christ, the violent and disturbing From the Manger to the Cross, was released in 1912, much to the dismay of one movie reviewer who considered the crucifixion scene "almost too ghastly in its strict realism." Lo and behold, Mel Gibson seems to have had an equally scorned predecessor.

Bottom line here is that with regard to wordsmithing and research, Fox does an excellent job; with regard to structure, not so much. But JESUS IN AMERICA is still worth reading. If nothing else, you may learn a new song to teach to your manly choir.

Richard Fox's book is not a Church History, a Christian History,

or even a religious history. What it is is an American History

analyzed through the lens of how people responded to the life,

example, and image of Jesus. It takes the reader through the

life of the early Catholic missionaries, then the Protestant Puritans, the American Revolution, the Revival Movements, World

War I and pacifism, to modern evangelicism. I believe that

every high school student should be required to read this book

in order to develop a more balanced view of the role of religion

in American culture and government.

Think about your earliest memories and images of Jesus. If you are a white, American Protestant, it is likely that you will recall a painting by Warner Sallman, The Head of Christ (1940)--Jesus with flowing blond hair and saccharine blue eyes. This painting has enjoyed some 500 million copies, and is a reminder that in America, but not only in America, the ideas and images about Jesus are extraordinarily malleable. There is clearly no interpretive monopoly upon Jesus; instead, at least to some extent, each believer and generation, across times and cultures, creates Jesus in its own image. That is what these two theological and cultural histories explore.

Of course, every sincere believer longs for the "real" Jesus, Jesus pure and pristine, original, "unbesmirched by tradition." But that is impossible. So, for example, Frederick Douglass excoriated a "slave holding, women-whipping" Christendom. Thomas Jefferson took scissors to all he did not like and ended up with Jesus as sage. George Bush claimed him as his most important political philosopher. And on it goes. These two books take us through the almost limitless images of Jesus we have created--in stage and theater, movies and song, portraits and theological texts, Jesus of the the intellectuals and Jesus of uneducated peasants, Jesus of the European colonizers and Jesus of the beleaguered slaves, and even Jesus of cultural kitsch. The elasticity of these images is disconcerting; we should be very wary about absolutizing the relative. Countee Cullen, author of the long narrative poem "The Black Christ" (1929), was at least aware of the dangers: "Lord, forgive me if my need/Sometimes shapes a human creed."

My first take on this book is that Wightman has been reading Jaroslav Pelikan's masterful and readable Jesus Through the Centuries. What he shares with Pelikan, however, is not so much a thesis as an angle of approach. When Wightman declares, late in the book, that he teaches a class on the subject, you realize that this book was probably pulled together from his class notes. Regardless, it will prove both enjoyable and intriguing to those interested in either the time period (pre-Colonial to the present) or the subject (cultural history).

Wightman almost never plays his hand as to his own viewpoints, but his enthusiasms are entirely evident. This is to the good, as they are the best parts of the book. All the better that his heroes are not an obvious mix. He obviously likes or is interested in Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards and Emerson. Being so partisan to them perhaps enables him to be more honest than many reviewers who lightly gloss over those they induct into the pantheon of American heroes. I found the parts about Emerson as a Unitarian to be the most gripping, and why in the millieu of Transcendentalism, Mormonism, Christian Science and New Thought, he among others rejected the creed of the Trinitarian churches (and why those churches didn't).

The other topic he is absolutely mad about is the trinity of liberal Protestant thinkers in the 'fifties: the brothers Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. Surprisingly, though, he spends no time on Tillich, whose The Courage to Be was a bestselling touchstone of 'fifties liberal Protestants, and all of his time on the Niebuhrs. At this point the book also bogs down, with all sorts of pyschological terminology introduced to take the place of the traditional language jettisoned in the 'fifties.

But Wightman, nearly alone of his ilk, is mostly fair to the various believers who at least make cameos in his book (except to Billy Graham who was disliked by the Niebuhrs). As he points out, when then governor George W. Bush named Jesus as his favorite philosopher, it may not be the choice of trendy thinkers, but it's what a lot of Americans would do.

This is also one of the few books to even consider the Catholic presence and viewpoint in relation to largely Protestant American history. The ideas and vocabulary of the misunderstood Puritans, no more than the lionized Transcendentalists meant different things then than they do now, as Ellwood Johnson points out in The Goodly Word, where he examines the seminal ideas of both the Puritans and their secular offspring rather more clearly than does Wightman. A subtle undertone in the book is taken from Charles Sheldon's 1896 novel, In His Steps, in which characters ask a question that would resonate a century later: "what would Jesus do?" That's a question liberal Protestants of the 'fifties would continue to ask long after they had ceased asking the questions posed by Protestants and Catholics in this book about who Jesus is.

Detailed, long lasting impressions are what you are left with after reading and hopefully chewing over key issues in this book. I love seeing Christ move across our country in bold and vivid color. This book gave me an appreciation for the Catholic church and insight into modern day Calvinism and more. Great read for the serious students of theology.

However, this book tends to manifest Christ in a way that takes Him out of your heart and places Him into your head. That was kind of a bummer to me. Good read but my money is on the bible.

"In all likelihood, Jesus is permanently layered into the American cultural soil. Yet his identity is elastic. There is no single Jesus, in America or anywhere else," he writes.

This isn't the best church history I've read. In fact it took me awhile to fall in love with it. His humility and lack of stuffinss kept me reading. But about a third of the way through he got me. It is an impressionist work , so I'll give it a similarly disjointed, impresisonistic review. Some random highlights for me:

p. 129: his take on Edwards joy in doing theology is better phrased than anything Marsden, Gerstner, I. Murray, Lee, McDermott or anybody else I've ever read on Edwards. Its only a few paragraphs but it lit me up for hours.

p. 263: His thing on Hodge on Bushnell has been said before in bits and pieces by others. But never so clearly and potently in such a short space. I finally get it. For years I hated Bushnell (for reducing the faith to a socializing process); then when I finally began to shake off my revivalism I started to think I shouldn't have been so harsh on him. Fox straightened me out in two paragraphs via Hodge.

p. 274: his sutble disdain for Henry Ward Beecher is wonderful.

p. 358 -- his thing on Niebuhr's appreciation for Edwards -- great.

p. 396 -- "evangelical Protestants like to ask 'What WOULD Jesus do?,' but many Catholics and non-evangelical Protestants prefer to ask "What DOES Jesus do?' "

p. 397 "Machen was naive, (Niebuhr) thought, to attack liberalism without also taking on the popular revivalists who did as much to undermine a proper respect for the supernatural as the liberals did. Revivalists too were reducing the Gospel to a self-help creed, an empowerment doctrine adorned in pious trappings...."

I could go on like this. This is a rather awful book if its the only American chucrh history you will read in a year or two. But read critically it has a few dozen moments that will make it wwll worth it.

Richard Wightman Fox's "Jesus in America" gives a more complete picture of Christianity as it has evolved over hundreds of years in America. While he seems to focus mostly on events from the seventeenth to the twentieth century he does cover topics as diverse as seventeenth-century martyrs, movies about Jesus and "the Da Vinci Code."

While it is true that you will learn more about Jesus from reading His words in the Bible, this book shows how a belief in Jesus influences people's ideas about slavery and war and how each generation attempts to mold the image of Jesus for their own purposes or causes.

This book takes forever to read but it is worth the effort. The only shocking thing in this book is probably the story of how Benjamin Franklin tried to change The Lord's Prayer. What audacity! It is also interesting to see how religious people continued to try to de-divinize Christ. After reading this book you are left with a feeling of love and respect for the greatest teacher of all time. For Christians this will deepen their respect for Christ the Savior and for unbelievers it shows Jesus' influence on American culture.

If you are interested in other items that I loved and reviewed, here are a few items you might enjoy:

7 Signs of Christ's Return

The End Times : In the Words of Jesus

What Jesus Demands from the World

The Gospel According to Jesus

Jesus

Jesus (2000)

No Wonder They Call Him the Savior: Chronicles of the Cross

Just Like Jesus

Jesus: An Intimate Portrait of the Man, His Land, and His People

What Christians Believe

~The Rebecca Review

This would have been a much better read if the author had focused in on the image of Jesus as presented in literature and on stage and screen in American culture. As it is, the early parts of the book pretty much drag along as we get the history of missions to the Native Americans, with all the ins and outs of Puritanism, and later liberal theology, Unitarianism, and the type of stuff that you can read in your typical church history textbook.

The parts I found interesting were the discussions of the controversies over 19th-century passion plays and early movie portrayals of the life of Christ. This makes it clear that the brouhaha over Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" is nothing new whatsoever. To get to this part of the book, you really have to slog through a lot. Still, I give it a marginal recommendation.