This new title — American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon — looks to be interesting. It’s an account of the many views humanity has had to Jesus, from superhuman to moral man, and how these perpectives have influenced culture.

From the excerpt of the book review by R. Scott Appleby in the New York Times:

As an author Mr. Prothero is nothing if not sly. Within his narrative, ostensibly a popular and often entertaining account of the rendering of Jesus in song, story and spirituality, he has embedded a fairly detailed history of American religion itself — one of the subtle achievements of “American Jesus.”

Equally subtle is his judgment that the persistence of Jesus’ presence in American culture, in whatever form, is proof that the United States is not a secularized nation. Yet Jesus’ success in insinuating himself into television, movies, popular song and the marketplace does not mean that he has transformed or even significantly influenced secular institutions and practices. Indeed, the influence has often worked in the opposite direction: American markets, politics and philosophy — not least, the perennial pull of pragmatism in all things — have pushed Christianity in the United States into forms and expressions unrecognizable to previous generations of Jesus’ followers.

More than one-third of “American Jesus” is devoted to the appropriation of Jesus by Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, the Dalai Lama and the Nation of Islam. In itself, this is fascinating and instructive material. For Prothero, the diffusion of Jesus into the thought worlds and sensibilities of non-Christian Americans constitutes the great triumph of the protean Jesus. Unfortunately, the celebration of Jesus’ ubiquity occasionally echoes a tired mantra: “Church bad, American individualism good. Religion bad, spirituality good. Christianity oppressive, other religions lighthearted.”

This is definitely going on the “to be read” list.