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

by Richard Wightman Fox

Book Overview

Where else but America do people ask: What Would Jesus Do?
What Would Jesus Drive?
What Would Jesus Eat?

This book is for believers and non-believers alike. It is not a book about whether one should believe in Jesus, but about how Americans have believed in and portrayed him.--from the Introduction

Jesus in America is a comprehensive exploration of the vital role that the figure of Jesus has played throughout American history...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 006062874X
• ISBN13: 9780060628741
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Jesus' Influence on American Culture

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

the many faces of the savior

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."

Fascinating Overview of American History

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.

A Worthwhile Read From a Distinguished Historian

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. Botto

HOW JESUS LIVES IN AMERICA

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 t