I recently finished reading Stephen J. Nichols’ Jesus Made in America: A Cultural History from the Puritans to The Passion of the Christ (IVP 2008). When I first received this book, I was excited to read it. The concept intrigued me – an historical overview of how the cultural sensibilities of different eras in American history shaped our common conceptions of Jesus. This is a theme I’ve personally explored and one that I believe is little recognized by the church. We all to an extent create Jesus in our own image, and reading the history of that tendency in America captured my interest. What I discovered instead though was a book that although fascinating fell prey too often to the author’s personal biases.
In my reading of the book, I discovered early on a major theological difference with the author that effected my encounter with his theories. Nichols sets up the book with the assumption that there does exist one right way to think about Jesus. In a book about how our cultural background influences our perception of Jesus, I found this assumption to be a bit out of place. There was no acknowledgement that this “correct Christology” might have been influenced by cultural factors, just that it represents right belief that everything else must therefore be deviating from. So it is in light of this basic assumption that Nichols examines the history of Jesus in America. His Christology is the standard that he holds everyone else up to. Of course this results in those he examines being either completely right or completely wrong about Jesus. He goes to great lengths (stretching might better describe it) to prove that the Puritans held to this correct Christology, while others (The Passion of the Christ, Veggie Tales, and CCM for example) fail theologically. It’s a black and white world apparently for him when it comes to understanding Jesus.
This emphasis on correct Christology develops throughout the book. He dismisses many of the cultural portrayals of Jesus because they emphasise relationship or practice over doctrine. He asserts that correct Christology must always be primary for believers. While I respect the need to have a good theology, I question his hierarchical approach. I just can’t picture Jesus stopping himself in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, slapping his forehead, and saying “but what am I thinking! All this stuff I’m telling you to do is great, but what is really going to matter is that over the next few hundred years people are going to debate how best to talk about me, hold councils and votes as to who really is right, and kill those in the minority. Making sure you agree with what the right group says about me will be the primary part of your faith…” Maybe the Bible just forgot to record that part of the sermon.
I honestly agree with many of the critiques Nichols has of popular cultural conceptions of Jesus (I can’t stand Jesus is my boyfriend songs), I am just not as inclined as he is to dismiss them altogether. He assumes that any theory of Jesus is a complete reduction of Jesus to just that theory and so dismisses them as having no redeeming value whatsoever. In what reads as a litany of his personal pet peeves with Christianity, Nichols I believe confuses his personal dislikes with bad theology. His biases against certain groups (hippies, liberals, youth) are strongly displayed. Anything connected to such groups can hold no value for him. So while I don’t believe that Jesus can be reduced to just being a friend, or a revolutionary, or a moral leader I have no problem saying that Jesus does contain those aspects. To ignore those portrayals of Jesus is just as reductionistic and limiting as claiming any one of those encompass fully who Jesus is. And to do so because one is more comfortable with the Puritans than the Jesus People seems like just another case of creating Jesus in our own image in my opinion.
While I found Nichols’ thesis flawed and fairly biased, I do have to say that the cultural history presented in the book makes it well worth the read. The different eras’ portrayals of Jesus are accurate and are useful in helping one to understand what shaped the church today. Knowing that the church hasn’t existed in a vacuum, but has been influenced by culture could possible bring some needed humility to the church (I just wish Nichols had learned from his own writing). I particularly thought that the sections that dealt with faith and politics were the strongest in the book. In those sections Nichols’ historical analysis shines through his personal likes and dislikes and the reader is treated to a well developed perspective on both the Founding Fathers and the contemporary situation.
So I do recommend this book, but with a few cautions. Enjoy the cultural history, but be aware of the author’s presence shaping what you read and in many ways undermining his own thesis. Even so, I found it an enjoyable read.