{"product_id":"american-jesus-how-the-son-of-god-became-a-national-icon-9780374529567","title":"American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Story of the Transformation of Jesus from Divinity to Celebrity\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe United States (it is often pointed out) is one of the most religious countries on earth, and most Americans belong to one Christian church or another. But as Stephen Prothero argues in \u003ci\u003eAmerican Jesus\u003c\/i\u003e, many of the most interesting appraisals of Jesus have emerged outside the churches: in music, film, and popular culture; and among Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and people of no religion at all. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePopular revisions of Jesus are nothing new: Thomas Jefferson famously took scissors to the New Testament to produce a Jesus he could call his own. In Prothero's incisive chronicle, the emergence of a cult of Jesus--as folk hero and commercial icon--is America's most distinctive contribution to Western religion. Prothero describes how Jesus was enlisted by abolitionists and Klansmen, by Teddy Roosevelt and Marcus Garvey. He explains how, in our own time, the proliferation of Jesus' image on Broadway stages and bumper stickers, on the cover of Time and on the Internet, in a Holy Land theme park and on a hot-air balloon, expresses the strange mix of the secular and the sacred in contemporary America. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eAmerican Jesus\u003c\/i\u003e is a lively and often witty work of history. As an account of the ways Americans have cast the carpenter from Nazareth in their own image, it is also an examination, through the looking glass, of the American character.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eStephen Prothero\u003c\/b\u003e is the chairman of the Department of Religion at Boston University. He is the author of\u003ci\u003e The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ePurified by Fire: Cremation in American Culture\u003c\/i\u003e. He has written for \u003ci\u003eSalon \u003c\/i\u003eand other publications.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50565751275794,"sku":"9780374529567","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_654bc13b-4a1d-4181-a8b9-7481212f3e47.jpg?v=1731888120","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/american-jesus-how-the-son-of-god-became-a-national-icon-9780374529567","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}