American Jesus

1. American Jesus Civil Religion, Christianity, and America as Moral Exemplar 1700-1960

2. The Printing Press & the Bible • Return to the original languages • Luther – the Augustinian Monk – scrupulous • Luther – reader of Greek New Testament • Paul: Grace alone has saved you • Luther: Justification by faith, not works • The Bible in everyday language • Luther translates the bible into German • Rejection of the authority of Rome leads to sola scriptura • Everyone as a Bible reader and interpreter • Gutenberg – the Bible is cheaply and widely available in vernacular • Interest rises in the Jesus of the New Testament • Interest in the Jesus of History

3. Reformation Christology • Further development of: • Theology of the cross – Grace alone • Luther – Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. (Reacting to abuses within the Roman Catholic Church and his own struggles) • Calvin • Puritans and Anabaptists • Theology of the incarnation – God in the least • Luther – God as a tiny human baby (the wonder of God’s love to become as we are) • No dramatic new developments

4. Faith of Our Fathers: Reason and Deism • Reason • Newton (1642-1727) : The universe is governed by a set of simple and unchangeable laws • What can be proven is what is true • Reason trumps religious doctrine • French Enlightenment: Rousseau • Deism as Reason’s “Religion” • Belief in a “watchmaker” God • Impersonal creator of human being and natural law • Kant: Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

5. National Religiosity:Neither Singular nor Secular • Puritan Christian exclusivity • Fate of Anne Hutchinson; Roger Williams • Non-religious secularity • No apparent basis for system of law, ethics, duties • Civil Religion: America as “not…a Christian nation but a religious one imbued with…Christian principles….” (Nichols, p. 51, emphasis added)

6. Civil Religion • “Civil Religion”: “The existence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent , foresighted, and providential divinity; the afterlife; the happiness of the just; the punishment of the wicked,….[and belief in] the sanctity of the social contract.” -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau(1712-1778) Born in Geneva; philosopher of romanticism, French 18th c. Enlightenment • The role of “religion” in public life & the necessity of religious values • The “sanctification” of the founding fathers

7. Deists We’ve Known & Loved • Benjamin Franklin: • Virtue, not doctrine • Biography by Mason Locke Weems • Franklin “redeemed” as a true Christian” • Painting by Benjamin West • “Franklin, no longer mortal, was like Elijah translated by the hand of God.” (Edwin Gaustad, cited in Nichols, p. 48)

8. Deists We’ve Known & Loved • George Washington: • Biography by Weems • The ax and the cherry tree: “I cannot tell a lie.” • As Moses, “seeking the face of God” • As “eyes to the blind and feet to the lame, father to the poor…” • WWWD? • A guide for the role of religion the republic John James Barralet, "The Apotheosis [Divinization] of Washington" (1802-1816)”

9. The U. S. Capitol Dome • George Washington: • Fresco by Constantino Brumidi (1865) Washington, as a God, flanked by Liberty and Victory. Central circle: 13 Women representing 13 original colonies. Below Washington & Clockwise: War, Science, Marine, Commerce, Mechanics, and Agriculture

10. Detail of Brumidi ceiling, U. S. Capitol Dome Apotheosis of Washington, flanked by Liberty and Victory, seated above a rainbow

11. Deists We’ve Known & Loved • Thomas Jefferson: • The Jefferson Bible • A “text critical” project • Religion within the limits of reason: only events within the bounds of the laws of nature are included • Jesus as a great moral teacher

12. [Great Awakening (1730-1830)] • George Whitefield &Evangelicalism • Methodism’s Anglican roots • Methodism’s American roots (massive growth) • A reaction against deism • A new birth, in a class-bound system (Protestant Europe and British North America) • Enormously popular – spoke to 10’s of thousands at a time (Wikipedia, George Whitefield and Franklin) • The privileging of emotion over doctrine or intellect– a form of “faith, not works” • Necessity of the “personal experience of Christ” • Surprisingly, admired by and friend of Benjamin Franklin, as a fellow intellectual 1714-1770

13. [The Irony of Contemporary Civil Religion] • Deism (Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Paine, Adams) and Evangelicalism (Whitefield, Protestant revivalism) are opposing views of 18th century American religion • Deism: based in reason, not specifically Christian, freedom of religious practice, “deification” of civic virtues • Evangelicalism: based in emotion, exclusively Christian, , requires a particular Christian experience (“born again”) • Contemporary evangelicals (usually, conservative Protestant Christians) claim thesedeist founding fathers to support claims that the U.S. is a “Christian nation.”

14. 1800’s: Victorian America & the Civil War • The Battle over Slavery • Slavery: Divine Institution or Satanic Evil? • The Schism of American Protestantism (Meth: 1844) • The War: Claims to Divine Favor and Providence

15. Salvation through Martyrdom • Abraham Lincoln • A deist at war’s beginning: humans as cogs in the giant machine • Death of his son at age 11 • The human cost of the conflict • Lincoln rethinks God and the war • “God wills this contest” • The entire nation is punished for 250 years of enslavement • Northern clergy rethink Lincoln 1860 1865

16. Unknown, Apotheosis of Lincoln into the Arms of Washington, accompanied by Angels and Light Breaking through Clouds (1865) Apotheosis of Lincoln, 1865 or following

17. Salvation through Moral Exemplars • The Victorian “Cult of True Womanhood” • Aka, the “Cult of Domesticity” • 2nd half of the 19th century • Women as morally pure • Men as morally weaker • The home and church as refuge from corruption of the world beyond • Woman as the guardian of the home and keepers of moral standards

18. The Feminized Christ Henry Osawa Tanner, Christ and his Mother Studying the Scriptures, 1910)

19. Victorian Feminized Jesuses William Hunt, “Light of the World” (1853-4) William Blake, “Resurrection” (early 19th century)

20. Victorian Jesus: Songs and Hymns “Fairest Lord Jesus” Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of All Nature, O Thou of God, and man the son. Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor. Thou my soul’s glory, joy and crown. Fair are the meadows Fairer still the woodland, And all the streaming, starry host. Jesus shines fairer, Jesus shines brighter, Than all the angels heaven can boast. “In the Garden” I come to the garden alone While the dew is still on the roses. And the voice I hear, calling on my ear, The Son of God disposes. And he walk with me, And he talks with me. And he tells me I am his own. And the joy we share As we tarry there, None other has ever known.

21. More Victorian Jesuses Washington Alston “Christ Healing the Sick” (1813) LaFarge, Richard and Alice Baker window Christ and the Pilgrims (1896) Jesus and the Lost Sheep (c. 19th c)

22. 20th Century America • Jesus, the “Man’s Man” • Reaction against the “feminized Jesus” of the Victorian period • Machismo Influences • Teddy Roosevelt (Rough Riders, Spanish-American War) • America as hero and moral exemplar (two world wars) vs. fascism and communism Warner Sallman, “Head of Christ” (1941). Series begun as a charcoal Sketch in 1924. Intended to counteract feminized Christs of 19th c.

23. Jesus, the Hero English School, “Jesus Christ With Fishermen” (20th c.) Simon Dewey, “Jesus Leaving His Tomb after the Third Day” (20th c.) Greg Olson, Jesus with a Child (20th c.)

24. Jesus, the Hero Stephen Sawyer Macho Jesus (2011) “Jesus Christ, Superstar” Norman Jewison Universal Pictures (1973) Jesus Rescues the Lost Sheep (20th century)