http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/ en Copyright 2007 Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:04:58 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Day 27. November 6, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 13. Panis Angelicus: Jesus and Nineteenth Century Catholicism Catholicism came to the Atlantic seaboard in the mid-17th century with English Catholics seeking refuge in Maryland. Given a small number of American Catholics and French Catholic support for the American Revolution, anti-Catholic discrimination in America remained relatively muted until poverty and famine in Ireland in the 1830s and 1840s sent a flood of Irish Catholics across the Atlantic. Large numbers of German Catholics began to arrive about the same time. Assimilation came slowly. Catholicism in Victorian American was characteristically urban, Irish, and poor. Like the denominational structures that divided Protestantism, Catholics were divided by ethnic and national groups. As American Catholicism grew, it spawned nativist critics. It also inspired many converts, partly because marriage required conversion. Also, Catholicism offered release from the demands of the religious marketplace and from the aesthetic barrenness of Protestantism, adding color, sound, and smells to the American religious experience. Moreover, the Catholic Jesus incarnated a special role for the western world illustrated both by Mary’s protection of Mexico and the western hemisphere and by the large population of patron saints that accompanied Catholic immigrants. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/13_panis_angelicus/day_27.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/13_panis_angelicus/day_27.html 13. Panis Angelicus Fri, 25 May 2007 23:04:30 +0000 Day 28. November 8, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 14. The Silent Cinematic Lives of Jesus (Part 1) In the late 19th century, Victorian Americans had discovered that Jesus could instruct and inspire through literature. As the 20th century dawned, Americans found that Jesus could perform in moving pictures too. Stage performances, pantomimes, dramatic readings, tableaux vivant, and stereopticon productions presaged the first moving picture experience encapsulated in the nickelodeon's inexpensive, crude, and brief performances. Early purveyors of nickelodeon entertainment quickly realized that stories about Jesus could expand the technology's appeal to more middle class audiences. Then Jesus jumped to the silver screen. A 1905 French import, The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, the first large-screen cinematic production, depicted in a series of tableaux vivant major episodes from Jesus' life. In 1913 Sidney Olcott sought historical authenticity in the first full-length cinematic life of Jesus, From the Manger to the Cross, some scenes of which he shot in the Holy Land. D. W. Griffith followed Birth of a Nation (1915) with a cinematic apology, Intolerance (1916), an anthology that included scenes from Jesus' life. Toward the end of the silent era in 1923, America first received Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (remade three decades later) complete with a 40 minute epilogue about a bad son, a good son, and the fallen woman the good son redeems through Bible reading. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/14_the_silent_cinematic_lives_of_jesus/day_28.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/14_the_silent_cinematic_lives_of_jesus/day_28.html 14. The Silent Cinematic Lives of Jesus Fri, 25 May 2007 23:05:04 +0000 Day 29. November 10, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 14. The Silent Cinematic Lives of Jesus (Part 2) Widely differing images of Jesus proliferated as the silent film era wound down. With the success of DeMille's silent 1923 The Ten Commandments, a new consortium, MGM, in 1924 optioned the rights to General Lew Wallace's Ben Hur for an astounding $600,000. The resulting film, though focused on Judah Ben Hur, included many vignettes featuring a hardly human, distant, and anonymous Jesus. Following the success of Ben Hur, DeMille filmed the iconic cinematic life of Jesus, The King of Kings, which proved to be the climax of silent film epics. DeMille's Jesus appears as miracle worker and healer. Unlike the Jesus of Ben Hur, the King of Kings Jesus proves approachable, human, and huggable, as scenes with children and first-ever cinematic close-ups of Jesus dramatize. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/14_the_silent_cinematic_lives_of_jesus/day_29.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/14_the_silent_cinematic_lives_of_jesus/day_29.html 14. The Silent Cinematic Lives of Jesus Fri, 25 May 2007 23:06:40 +0000 Day 30. November 13, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 14. The Silent Cinematic Lives of Jesus (Part 3) Lecture 15. Jesus in Depression and War, 1914-1945 (Part 1) DeMille's The King of Kings was an explicitly evangelical work which he sold with glamour and sex appeal. By the film’s release in 1927, Woodrow Wilson's political crusade to make the world safe for democracy had fallen flat and disillusionment and isolationist reaction had set in. The Great Depression and then the 'Good War' introduced to the 'Greatest Generation' the federal government as a great competitor to organized religion and welfare capitalism in the work of caring for people. Within American Christianity Jesus faced new competition from God the Book as the Fundamentalist Movement, in reaction to the Social Gospel and efforts to set the Bible in cultural context, recrafted the Bible as the paramount and inalterable object of belief. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/14_the_silent_cinematic_lives_of_jesus/day_30.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/14_the_silent_cinematic_lives_of_jesus/day_30.html 14. The Silent Cinematic Lives of Jesus 15. Jesus in Depression & War, 1914-1915 Fri, 25 May 2007 23:08:01 +0000 Day 31. November 15, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 15. Jesus in Depression and War, 1914-1945 (Part 2) The Fundamentalist Controversy during the 1920s pitted a liberal against a conservative Jesus. The liberal Jesus was the first Christian, a model of faith, Christian life, and selflessness. The conservative Jesus was not merely the first Christian, but God incarnate, the object of faith, the redemptor of sinful humanity. Some theologians such as the Niebuhr brothers, Reinhold and H. Richard, sought to bridge the gap, recognizing in Jesus perfect submission to God's will and redemption of both individual and social sin. In the popular mind, however, the Fundamentalist Controversy was and is linked with the facile theatrics of the Scopes Monkey Trial. As God the Book emerged in the Fundamentalist Movement to compete with Jesus, the Holiness or Charismatic Movement introduced other competitors: the Holy Spirit as a focus of Christian practice and - most vital to the success of this new movement - the worshipper as performer. The Charismatic Movement appealed particularly to lower classes, as exemplified at the Azusa Street Mission and Aimee Semple McPherson's Angelus Temple in the melting pot of early 20th century Los Angeles. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/15_jesus_in_depression_war_19141915/day_31.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/15_jesus_in_depression_war_19141915/day_31.html 15. Jesus in Depression & War, 1914-1915 Fri, 25 May 2007 23:09:09 +0000 Day 32. November 17, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 15. Jesus in Depression and War, 1914-1945 (Part 3) "Sister" Aimee Semple McPherson gave those on the urban frontier in 1920s Los Angeles an inviting home where they could feel good about themselves in the embrace of Jesus' love, availability, and sacrifice. But she, like other conservatives, rejected the liberal embrace of sources of earthly wisdom and revelation other than the Bible. One such source, the new discipline of psychology, made the Self both the object of knowledge and the seat of personality. This new emphasis on the centrally located individual focused on personality rather than character, on self-differentiation and self-fulfillment rather than self-control. Consumer culture found fertile ground in this psychology of the Self and, in this context, Jesus the Personality was born. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/15_jesus_in_depression_war_19141915/day_32.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/15_jesus_in_depression_war_19141915/day_32.html 15. Jesus in Depression & War, 1914-1915 Fri, 25 May 2007 23:09:40 +0000 Day 33. November 20, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 15. Jesus in Depression and War, 1914-1945 (Part 4) Lecture 16. Jesus in the Age of Conformity: The Fifties (Part 1) Increasingly in the 1920s and 1930s God and Jesus were commodified in American culture along with everything else. By the 1950s, belief itself had become the commodity without which American government and the American way of life could make no sense. Sensible belief was simply sincere, deeply felt, religious, and in conformity with the American Way of Life emphasizing domesticity, heterosexuality, individualism, manifest destiny, democracy, and especially capitalism. In this context, Billy Graham rose to prominence preaching a salvation as easy as accepting Jesus as one's personal savior. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/15_jesus_in_depression_war_19141915/day_33.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/15_jesus_in_depression_war_19141915/day_33.html 15. Jesus in Depression & War, 1914-1915 16. Jesus in the Age of Conformity Fri, 25 May 2007 23:10:13 +0000 Day 34. November 22, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 16. Jesus in the Age of Conformity: The Fifties (Part 2) Critics of Billy Graham, including conservative critics, lamented Graham's raw appeals to popular emotion, his application of peer pressure, his emphasis on Christian exclusivity, and his omission of public responsibility for sin. But the sentimentality Graham reflected dominated the religious marketplace. Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking turned religion to self-help. A spate of new films about the Bible and Jesus in the 1950s trumpeted American values, the personal impact of Jesus, and his commercial appeal. DeMille's remake of The Ten Commandments showed the triumph of liberty and democracy over tyranny. The Robe depicted the power of Jesus to transform individual lives. And a big-budget remake of Ben Hur proved a wild critical and commercial success. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/16_jesus_in_the_age_of_conformity/day_34.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/16_jesus_in_the_age_of_conformity/day_34.html 16. Jesus in the Age of Conformity Fri, 25 May 2007 23:10:49 +0000 Day 35. November 27, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 17. Jesus in the Age of Revolution: The Sixties (Part 1) The 1950s gave way to the turbulent 1960s as shockwaves from demographic and economic booms and political superpower status reverberated through American society. Kennedy's presidency and assassination, the Vietnam War, and the televised social soul searching that events of the decade provoked set the stage for Jesus' appearance in new roles in American public life. His most important roles involved support of the promise of equality in America first made in the Declaration of Independence and repeated in the 14th Amendment and elsewhere. In service of this promised equality the civil rights movement resurrected Moses-Jesus who had helped ameliorate slave culture a century before. Dr. Martin Luther King took Moses-Jesus to the streets in peaceful, persistent and fruitful protest of segregation and discrimination. Jesus would no longer be slave of the white man. Like all Americans he would be free at last - even free to be black. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/17_jesus_in_the_age_of_revolution/day_35.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/17_jesus_in_the_age_of_revolution/day_35.html 17. Jesus in the Age of Revolution Fri, 25 May 2007 23:11:46 +0000 Day 36. November 29, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 17. Jesus in the Age of Revolution: The Sixties (Part 2) Opening with MGM's Leo the Lion sitting in worshipful silence, clips from the 1959 remake of Ben Hur reveal an epic but reverential quest for peace of mind as the era of conformity ended. But as Ben Hur roared at the box-office, the beckoning promise of equality in American society unleashed the pent up aspirations of large segments of society previously silenced or unheard. America's epic struggle for racial equality was swiftly joined with battles for gender equality, women's rights, and sexual liberation. Jesus and religion played relatively minor roles in these revolutions. Similarly, in perhaps the most important demographic revolution of the 20th century, immigration reform in 1965 opened America to millions of newcomers from Asia and elsewhere with no prior connection to "The Book." ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/17_jesus_in_the_age_of_revolution/day_36.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/17_jesus_in_the_age_of_revolution/day_36.html 17. Jesus in the Age of Revolution Fri, 25 May 2007 23:12:25 +0000 Day 37. December 1, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 17. Jesus in the Age of Revolution: The Sixties (Part 3) The commercial success of Ben Hur in 1959 prompted a remake of DeMille's successful silent life of Jesus, The King of Kings (1927). The 1961 version retitled King of Kings portrayed Jesus as a 'rebel with a cause' - the healer, teacher, and servant of Luke's Gospel. But three hours of tepid inaction held together largely through the narrative agency of a secular yet world weary Roman centurion named Lucius flopped commercially. In 1965 another attempt to bring the life of Jesus to the big screen produced The Greatest Story Ever Told, a screenplay based on a 1949 novel of the same name. Though it featured a long list of celebrity actors - for example, John Wayne as the centurion at the foot of the cross - the lukewarm public reaction to this long and ponderous production helped cut short the full-length cinematic lives of Jesus since then. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/17_jesus_in_the_age_of_revolution/day_37.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/17_jesus_in_the_age_of_revolution/day_37.html 17. Jesus in the Age of Revolution Fri, 25 May 2007 23:13:10 +0000 Day 38. December 4, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 18. Jesus in the Market Place (Part 1) Preoccupation with the Self in the marketplace has become the hallmark of American consumer culture. The centrality of the consuming Self has infiltrated religion too, notably in the decline of religious denominations and the rise of an individualized spirituality of monadic mega-churches. Depictions of Jesus in the 1970s grew out of increasing cultural emphasis on individuality, self-actualization, and community. Several great musical productions reflect this milieu. Godspell (1973) featured an empty New York City as the central character through which danced Jesus the apocalyptic clown and his motley troupe of followers. Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) anticipated today's culture of celebrity sparked by sex and marred by violence. An essentially human and tragic Jesus appears as a celebrity seeking escape from his notoriety. His main message appears as the epitome of consumptive self-absorption: find your own salvation in the world. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/18_jesus_in_the_marketplace/day_38.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/18_jesus_in_the_marketplace/day_38.html 18. Jesus in the Marketplace Fri, 25 May 2007 23:14:09 +0000 Day 39. December 6, 2006 Movement 3. Jesus Christs Lecture 18. Jesus in the Market Place (Part 2) In 1973 Jesus Christ Superstar ended with a depiction of an empty cross and, like the 1959 Ben Hur, a lone shepherd. But the ending left viewers with an enigmatic question: Who and where is Jesus? Scandalous cinematic lives of Jesus later in the 1970s and 1980s delved further into these questions in new ways. In 1979 the British comedy troupe Monty Python satirized the entire tradition of cinematic lives of Jesus in the comedy The Life of Brian. A decade later in 1988, director Martin Scorsese provoked political passions about the Christ with his The Last Temptation of Christ in which Jesus the flawed human labors to the realization that he is God's incarnate Son. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/18_jesus_in_the_marketplace/day_39.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/18_jesus_in_the_marketplace/day_39.html 18. Jesus in the Marketplace Fri, 25 May 2007 23:14:57 +0000 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. ]]> http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/18_jesus_in_the_marketplace/day_40.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/18_jesus_in_the_marketplace/day_40.html 18. Jesus in the Marketplace Fri, 25 May 2007 23:16:10 +0000 http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/course_in_90_seconds.html http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/movabletype/blogs/jc/course_in_90_seconds.html Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:04:58 +0000