Jesus in America

January 19, 2004
Jesus has been an astonishingly mutable figure in American culture, lauded by presidents from Thomas Jefferson to George W. Bush, pressed into service by both abolitionists and slaveholders and marketed by Broadway producers and T-shirt makers. USC professor Fox undertakes the daunting task of telling a roughly chronological story of how Jesus—or the many versions of Jesus—has animated American life from the days of Cotton Mather to the days of Mel Gibson. Precisely because of Jesus' evergreen popularity, some readers may find Fox's book an inviting entrée to the personalities and controversies that have shaped Christianity in America. Fox's scholarship is dependable, and he does a fine job of distilling the essence of figures ranging from Jonathan Edwards to Aimee Semple McPherson. But Fox's net is so broadly cast that the book ends up contributing little to a story that has been exceedingly well told, and more persuasively interpreted, by historians like Mark Noll (America's God
). This book will undoubtedly be compared to, and confused with, Stephen Prothero's American Jesus
, but the text lacks Prothero's deftness with historical sources and his interpretive boldness—there is little here to challenge historians' conventional wisdom or mainstream readers' assumptions. Nor does Fox, unlike Prothero, give much attention to non-Christian encounters with Jesus. But Fox still does a very serviceable job of explaining why pollsters say Americans rank Jesus as the "thirteenth greatest American of all time." (Feb. 17)

Forecast:
With the release of Mel Gibson's movie
The Passion scheduled for Ash Wednesday (February 25), this book is poised to hit bookstores at a time when Jesus will be fodder for many a dinner conversation. First print run: 40,000.

Starred review from February 15, 2004
Two scholars of American religious culture-and former colleagues at Boston University-Fox and Stephen Prothero have long been interested in exploring the same topic. This current volume and Prothero's American Jesus are the very successful results of their co-inquiry and are harbingers of a new century of religious openness. They've been so successful that U.S. News & World Report reviewed their books, along with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, in the December 22, 2003, cover story. And with good reason. Fox's exciting book complements Prothero's by filling in the theological gap left by Prothero's more easily read discussion of popular art, music, literature, and film. Fox fleshes out questions Prothero's book may have raised in readers' minds, discussing topics ranging from the conversions of Native Americans by "highfalutin hairsplitting Puritans" to Mel Gibson's forthcoming controversial film The Passion of Christ. Fox, who has taught American intellectual and cultural history at Yale, Reed, Boston University, and the University of Southern California, has written a fresh history that will likely be influential for years to come. Highly recommended.-Gary P. Gillum, Brigham Young Univ., Provo, UT

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