Every American Christian attempting to examine his or her ideas about Jesus ought to read American Jesus. The author, Stephen Prothero, does not establish his own Christology (or so he says), but he seems to come from the  camp that sees Jesus as a myth; not a real human who lived here on earth for a few days. He asks : "How did the Son of God become a national icon beloved by Jerry Falwell and the Dalai Lama alike? How did the United States become a Jesus nation? These are the guiding questions of this book, which charts the development of the American Jesus from an abstract principle into a concrete person, and then into a personality, a celebrity, and finally an icon" (pg. 12).

So, in his opinion, Jesus, the American Jesus, started from an abstract principle. He shows how this principle progressed in American culture starting with a Thomas Jefferson-Jesus and ending with a Buddha-Jesus. And in this, the author would be correct in saying that Jesus is only a principle and never existed, because for many men who claim that they have Christian principles, Jesus isn’t real. And yet, as Mr. Prothero documents, our American nation, from sales to sanctions, is dominated by idealizations driven by dearly beloved icons of Jesus.

I totally agree with this concept. That’s why I like this book. It is not a Christian book, and yet it is a fairly presented history and social commentary on the Jesus of the common people. This Jesus is like a fast-foods Jesus, but in an attempt to cater to a larger consumer base, the American Jesus is a Jesus-the-way-you-want-it burger. Any Texan President or Zen Buddhist can feel at home at a MacJesus, because he can customize his order and continue to call himself a Christian. His Jesus can be ordered with or without ketchup. The Hindu/Adventist can get it without meat. So we have a nation of politicians, priests, practitioners and parishioners, all post-Christianity consumers, who can munch down on their favorite incarnation of Christ.

Mr. Prothero fails to distinguish between the Christ of the Bible and the Christ of the masses. Not that he has attempted to. His book is about a cultural Jesus, not a real Jesus. He says so. The Jesus he investigates is the Jesus who is an icon. Whether or not a real Jesus ever existed is of no account: It is the Jesus that Americans have fashioned from their imaginations that counts for the author. This is not his fault. The American Church, based on the American Jesus, has failed to portray the true Christ. Mr. Prothero, like the average aimless parishioner, has nothing left but to laugh sardonically along with the rest of the world. He closes: "What would Jesus make of all this? That is anybody’s guess. Might he be leaning back and laughing?" (pg. 303).

The value of American Jesus is that it shows, in a well-documented way, that our estimation of the United States of America as a Christian nation has some serious flaws. It traces how the questionable beliefs of our founding fathers have matured into a pluralistic Christendom with antichrist elements. As Christian as this nation appears to be, its Jesus is plural and merely a binding element for the American idealism of Freedom of Religion. Our American history books are being rewritten to eliminate the Protestant slant previously foisted off on unsuspecting schoolchildren. Now Jesus, more than Jefferson or Joseph Smith could have hoped for, is a mishmash of seminary and sorcery; a midrash of Jewish fables - all of which are for sale at the church of your choice.

American Jesus, pub. 2003 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Stephen Prothero is the chairman of the Department of Religion at Boston University.

- Chris Simonson

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