American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon

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Summary: This lived up to the WALL STREET JOURNAL's hype
Review: read about this book in the wsj. very impressive, and highly recommended.

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Summary: Jesus For The Rest Of Us
Review: Smart, funny, irreverent. Finally a religion book that doesn't assume its readers are all religious!

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Summary: Jesus never existed
Review: This book might be an interesting read for sci-fi fans, but it's fatally flawed as history because Jesus never existed. As historians are making clear, there's no evidence for the historical Jesus outside the gospels, which are unreliable documents meant to convert people, not teach history. There's the further problem that there is no God, any more than there is an Easter bunny or Santa Claus, so there can't really be a son of God, can there? Christianity is a primitive and silly belief system, and it's really not worth reading about.

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Summary: Jesus has many faces
Review: This book, which would seem to be the first definitive study of the unique ways in which the messiah Jesus of Nazareth has been transformed, reinterpreted and reinvented over the 2000 years since his birth. This is a penetrating and thought-provoking book replete with many little known facts and anecdotes. It holds the reader's attention in spite of, or perhaps because of, the author's ability to find the irony and/or subtle humor in the many ways that Jesus has, over the years, been transformed to suit the viewer's view of the world. Stephen Prothero, the author and head of the Department of Religion at Boston University, presents a fascinating insight into how the american public has, in the past, evaluated and utilized Jesus for its wide spectrum of purposes, and continues to do so to the present. A must read for the worshiper of Jesus, for the student of Jesus, for the history scholar, and for the common man.

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Summary: Your Own Personal Jesus
Review: Whether you're a believing Christian or not, you probably have some idea in mind of what Jesus is/was like as a person. And since the USA is arguably the most Jesus-centric culture on earth, you might believe that those around you share that idea. But that may, apparently, be a mistake. As Prothero's engaging and far-reaching book explains, the American Jesus is able to conform to just about any perception one wants to have of him, depending on the national mood (or even one's individual mood). Is Jesus the compassionate, soft-spoken proponent of hearth and home and simple pleasures? Is he the manly firebrand who overturned the money-changers' tables? Is he the free-spirited, counter-cultural flower-child of 'Godspell'? The Elder Brother of the Mormons? An avatar of Vishnu? A Boddhisatva? Or was he fundamentally a Jewish teacher who should be studied in a Jewish context? In America, Jesus is all of these things at once, or some of them, or something else entirely. In America, everyone's entitled to a Jesus they can call their own, and this book shows how we came to that pass. I only wish the author had spent some time covering Islam, but the Muslim presence in this country has been of recent enough beginnings that there may not yet be an American twist on the Koranic Isa (Jesus). Still, I recommend the book to believers and non-believers alike.

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Summary: Jesus for the 21st Century
Review: Wow! Great subject, great read. I saw that Publisher's Weekly rated this a "Top Pick" for 2003, and it's one of the best books I've ever read on American religion. Sharp, witty, and exceptionally well-written. A search not for the Jesus of faith or of history but for the cultural Jesus. I especially liked the chapters on the "Black Moses" and the "Oriental Christ." Never knew the Dalai Lama called Jesus a bodhisattva!