Jesus Christ

The figure of Jesus Christ has been interpreted in a variety of ways in the widespread Christian congregations that exist throughout the world, with the figure of Jesus evolving in the interpretations that have been accorded to him by the worshipers and onlookers of Christianity and other Abrahamaic religions, from the early point in which Jesus Christ fulfilled a basic function as an activist and revolutionary in the colonial struggle of the Judean people against the Roman Empire, to latter-day interpretations of Jesus in a context widely divorced from the original, historical origins of the figure of Jesus as a spiritual leader. These varying interpretations that have been created and disseminated in regard to the figure of Jesus Christ have been found to take a particularly wide array of forms in the practice of American Christianity, in which it has been observed by various sociologists and scholars of the figure of Jesus that the practice of religion places a particularly strong emphasis on the Jesus Christ figure of the Holy Trinity, which as a whole receives less attention from popular religion and its echoes in popular culture. One influential study that has been cited in regard to the understanding of the place of Jesus Christ in contemporary American religion and culture is the recently published study “American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Incon,” by Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University, which received substantial degrees of attention from the country’s publishing world and from its corners given over to religious commentary in regards to how Prothero advanced an intriguing and well-argued argument as to the ways in which the figure of Jesus has functioned in American culture.

Prothero’s book argues that the most commonly advanced and held American interpretations of the existence of Jesus Christ can be traced back to the beliefs of Thomas Jefferson, who during his time in the office of the White House took up the exercise of editing out all of the sections of the New Testament dealing with Jesus that he did not feel were compatible with his philosophy of rationalism. When he had finished culling the material dealing with Jesus in the New Testament, he placed them together and had the results published as a text called “The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth,” which removed the emphasis placed by accepted Christian practice on the role of Jesus Christ in regard to the Trinity, and instead showed the figure of Jesus as a sage and a philosopher. As some critiques of Prothero’s “American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon” have pointed out, a large portion of the American portion continues to hold beliefs directly apposite to those held and disseminated by Thomas Jefferson, with the evangelical movement in American culture generally advancing a traditional interpretation of Christianity. Prothero’s book may be better understood, according to reviewers, as an explanation for why the fascination with Jesus cuts across social, political and even religious American borders.