American Jesus

In American Jesus , Stephen Prothero traces a three-stage process that produced a uniquely American Jesus. First, Jesus was detached, through the awakenings of the nineteenth century, from the creedal and confessional Calvinism of Puritan America; then, scholars disentangled Jesus from the biblical witness, basing their faith supposedly on Jesus Himself, not on scripture or tradition; finally, Jesus was detached from Christianity itself, so that He could become all things to all Americans. Prothero summarizes: “In From Jesus to Christ (1988), Paula Fredriksen has destribed how the early Church transformed Jesus the man into the Christ of the creeds. In the United States, Americans reversed that process. As they made it possible to reject the Calvinist Christ, the creedal Christ, and the biblical Christ, Jesus became accessible to Americans who could not believe in predestination, the Trinity, or the inerrancy of the Bible. As they disentangled Jesus from Christianity itself, Jesus piety became possible even for non-Christians.” Through the course of his book, Prothero shows how conceptions of Jesus function as a “Rohrschach test” of American mores. He examines several American Jesus styles: the Enlightened sage of Jefferson and the Jesus seminar; the sweet Jesus of Victorian America and liberal Protestantism; the “manly redeemer” of various muscular Christian movements; the countercultural “Jesus Christ Superstar; the Mormon Christ, as well as the black, oriental, and Jewish Jesus. Thus, Prothero characterizes America as a “Jesus nation,” a description that captures both the profound and profoundly Christian religiosity of our nation, as well as the thoroughly heterodox character of that religiosity.