Your Own Personal Jesus

They say he's always been the reason for the season, but
Christmas notwithstanding, not much else about Jesus in America has
stayed the same, finds Stephen Prothero in
American Jesus.The American love affair with the
Prince of Peace is fascinating, and this intellectual history does it
full justice.

Our colonial predecessors, more concerned with cowering before God,
relegated Jesus to a secondary role. But by the 19th century,
evangelicals—boosted by the writings of Thomas
Jefferson—began to champion a direct connection to the doctrines of
Jesus. In the 20th century, Americans became more Jesus-loving than
God-fearing, and Jesus himself changed from a symbol of the Christian
church into an all-purpose spiritual figure. Kind, wise, tolerant and
attentive, the 21st-century Jesus is more like the perfect, chaste
boyfriend than a remote godhead. Now, two-thirds of us claim to have made
a "personal commitment to Jesus Christ." We listen to Amy
Grant, wear T-shirts that say, "Christ Cafe: Open 24 Hours,
Forgiveness Any Time" and ask "What Would Jesus
Do?"

We're all Jesus freaks now, Prothero argues. He includes
separate chapters on the hippie Jesus ("someone who would hold your
hand, wipe your brow and get you through a bad trip"), the black
Messiah, the Jewish Jesus ("He was of us; he is of us," reads
one 19th-century reform tract), Christ the Yogi and Jesus as bodhisattva.
Whether we are essentially secular or essentially religious, we are Jesus
Nation, he concludes. So even as we chastise ourselves for hitting the
malls in honor of this sage's birth, Prothero has a larger message
for us: It's OK to love Jesus and not be a Christian. "In a
country divided by race, ethnicity, gender, class and religion, Jesus
functions as common cultural coin."