Jesus, Images of

Images of Jesus have articulated changing, and often conflicting, ideas about Christianity and masculinity in the United States. Americans have imagined Jesus as a figure at once human and divine. Yet in depicting him as both a heroic warrior against evil and a compassionate friend, as both conqueror and sinless innocent, they have also imagined him as both masculine and feminine. This has created differing views of Jesus because of the traditional gender division in American society, with traditional masculine traits associated with men and feminine traits with women.

American images of Jesus come primarily from European antecedents. Traditional Catholic images, drawn from a lively tradition of European art, have tended to portray Jesus not as markedly masculine or feminine, but as a sufferer, as the son of Mary, as an innocent child, and, occasionally, as an active adult male. The most common images—those appearing in the fourteen stations of the Way of the Cross, the step-by-step process leading to Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection—portray Jesus' humanity through his pain, tears, and blood, but they do not emphasize masculine qualities over feminine ones. Only occasionally in the past did European and Euro-American Catholic artists portray such masculine images as an angry Jesus (e.g., arguing with Satan or driving merchants from the temple) or a working Jesus.

Most American Protestant groups, on the other hand, have associated iconography with idolatry, and they have therefore been slow to create visual images of Jesus. Leaders of the Protestant Reformation, especially John Calvin, believed churches should refrain from picturing God or Jesus, and most Puritan churches followed suit. But Puritans did depict Jesus in their poetry and sermons, portraying him as decidedly masculine—as the bridegroom of mankind, as a suitor and husband to Christians' souls, and as a stern and righteous savior. Believing that women inherited Eve's sin of disobedience and were more naturally immoral than men, Puritans saw emulation of a masculine Jesus as a key to a Christian social order.

In the nineteenth century a more Romantic version of Christianity produced what some scholars have called a “feminization” of American culture. This coincided with a flowering of apparently feminine physical images of Jesus that depicted him as a great friend to children and a lamb-like innocent with long hair and a flowing robe. Images typically identified Jesus as divine, symbolized by the light surrounding his head, while his direct gaze invited intimacy with Christian believers and characterized him as human. Such images conformed to Victorian ideals of affectionate domestic life, in which parents, especially mothers, offered religious lessons to innocent children. Exemplifying such images of Jesus were deathbed letters during the Civil War, in which soldiers imagined a smiling Jesus welcoming them into a heaven where their families would be reunited.

By the late nineteenth century a growing number of male church leaders—especially evangelical Protestants—began charging that such feminine images of Jesus alienated men from the church. They responded by attempting to masculinize both Jesus and Christian commitment. The Men and Religion Forward movement of 1911–12 wanted an active and vigorous Jesus to help mobilize humanity, both to build strong bodies and to create organizations capable of improving the world. Evangelists such as the former baseball player Billy Sunday offered images of Jesus as an athlete, a carpenter, and a leader of men. During the 1920s, as American notions of manliness became increasingly associated with business success, Bruce Barton's The Man Nobody Knows (1924) directly countered the image of Jesus as a self-sacrificing, effeminate kill-joy with images of Jesus as a strong and decisive executive, [Page 248]an outdoorsman, a sociable man, an energetic businessman and, above all, a king.

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