TRANSCRIPT OF LECTURE, DAY 1 DR. G. HOWARD MILLER "JESUS IN AMERICAN CULTURE" UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AUGUST 30, 2006 DR. MILLER: This is a relatively new course. I created this course in the fall of 2005. I received a grant -- a very munificent grant from the college's Tech Services to create a multimedia course -- audiovisual course -- on Jesus in American culture. The course grew out of my own interests. My name is by the way Howard Miller. I have been at UT for 35 years. I am from Graham, Texas. I have a degree in clarinet from North Texas State University up in Denton. Does that make you feel better about being in a history course, taught by someone who has a degree in clarinet? But I have a MA in history from North Texas. And I have a PhD actually from the University of Michigan. I have been here since 1971. My specialty is the history of American religion. About five years ago I began to be interested in Ben- Hur in American culture. How many of you have ever seen full-length the 1959 Ben-Hur? Very people have. Have you ever seen the silent one? Read the novel? Nah. Have you really read Ben-Hur? That's weird, Elizabeth. The woman who just spoke is Elizabeth Garver, who is our TA. Would you stand, please, Elizabeth? Elizabeth is a senior student in the University's History Department. She does modern European history. She is my TA because I asked for her. Ben-Hur in American Culture. So I began to teach courses in Ben-Hur in popular culture. That led to a course on the movies that had been made about Jesus. I called the course the Cinematic Lives of Jesus. And out of that then came a course on Jesus. Now, one of the reasons why I decided to teach the course when I did was that in 200- -- I don't remember which year -- relatively recent, 2003 -- there appeared not one -- almost simultaneously not one but two studies of Jesus in America. You could have your basic American Jesus or your basic Jesus in America. And I thought, God is telling me something. It's time to teach my Jesus course. I also am getting old. I'm about ready to retire. And I just teach courses now that I want to teach. So, they can't fire me. I've got tenure. And this is, I want to teach a course on Jesus. Jesus has become extraordinarily powerful in our culture, folks. Our President's favorite philosopher is Jesus. Last year this remarkable book came out. Has any of you ever read anything ever written by Anne Rice? Come on! Haven't you read a vampire book? That's interesting. She would not like that. Anne would not like that. Actually one of the reasons I think she started doing Jesus was that people were getting tired of vampires. Anyhow she had kind of a born-again, Catholic conversion experience. And out of that has come a new interest. And Anne Rice has published now the first of three volumes of a novel about the life of Jesus. It is grandly titled, Christ the Lord. And the first volume is even more grandly titled, Out of Egypt. This is a wonderful book. It really is. Read it. Forget the vampires. Read her on Jesus. It is a work of faith. She is going to demonstrate over the next five years that the Gospels are true accounts of the life of Jesus. It's got action [indiscernible] times all over. It's going to be a cultural event. How many of you have even heard of this book? That's interesting. Most people haven't. But guess what? How are people going to learn about this? Everybody. How are people going to learn about this? After the third volume is published, what will happen? Inevitably it will be made into a film. And then everyone will be talking about it. Oh, another conservative Catholic, as opposed to who? Who's the other one? Come on! Mel Gibson. Movie -- weird movie. Right? It's going to be another weird movie. Guess who she's cast in her mind as Jesus. Mel Gibson. You can go back to sleep. Poor Mel. How the mighty have fallen. Anyhow. Who would you cast as Jesus? Who said it? Do you know that? You would cast Johnny Depp. But guess who would, too? VOICE: She would. DR. MILLER: Yes. Actually think about it. Wouldn't that be wild? He gets through with Jack, and now he's going to be Jesus. He probably will actually. I think he'd be a good Jesus. Folks, think about it. Who would you cast as Jesus? Christian -- blah. Anyhow, we can play with that. And we're going to be watching lots of these movies about Jesus. But I digress. By the way, Anne Rice. I wrote an op-ed for the Austin paper in April/May of this year. And it grew out of the last lecture in our course, which is called grandly, Our Lord of the Marketplace, Jesus in Contemporary America Culture, Jesus Captured by the Marketplace. And I talked about Anne Rice's new book. And I said, it's a great book. Guess who the first fan letter I got was from. Anne Rice. Before it appeared in the paper even she wrote and responded to the electronic version. She must have some sort of gnome trolling the internet for any mention of her name. Do I make my point? Jesus is central in America culture now in a way that he has never been before. And that's why we're teaching this course. I'm not going to teach it again after this semester. So you've kind of had the last run of it. I think what I want to do now is in part help test our media stuff and see if I can make it happen. This is going to be an audiovisual course. Last summer I guess it was, 2005, the wonderful geniuses over in LAITS made a video for me. It's my course very quickly in pictures. It's Jesus in pictures. I show you this in part to demonstrate how wonderful my people over in LAITS are and in part to convey to you the wealth of images that the Christian Jesus, that the Christian son of God has generated through the ages, and how varied they are. I don't know how many hundreds of images there are in this. And it has music to it. The music in this is the last 90 seconds of a setting of the passion of Jesus according to the Gospel of St. John. And in it a baritone solo intones, Qui passus est pro nobis, miserere nobis: You who have suffered for us, have mercy upon on us. The conclusion of Arvo Pärt's Passio. (Music was played.)