Day 40. December 8, 2006
Movement 3. Jesus Christs
Lecture 18. Jesus in the Market Place (Part 3)
Despite sharp pricks from scandalous depictions, Jesus today too often seems mastered by modern consumer culture. In that culture Jesus becomes little more than a complex object of consumption for self-absorbed fans who live vicariously through his celebrity. In a culture apparently stripped of any capacity for reverence and awe by the relentless press of the marketplace, Jesus seems increasingly a creature of celebrity and its corrosive mix of adulation, credulity, and corruptibility. For example, Mel Gibson has used his celebrity to sell his controversial and violent The Passion of the Christ. Similarly, Anne Rice has turned her vampiric notoriety to publication of a three-part life of Jesus. Thus connected to celebrity, the image of Jesus becomes corruptible through any disrepute that falls on those who associate their own uncertain celebrity with him. The result may be a rising tide of agnosticism and unbelief in the American religious marketplace.