Warner Sallman's Picture of Jesus
Anderson, IN
This is the most famous picture of Jesus ever painted. According to warnersallman.com it has been reproduced over 500 million times. In terms of American visual piety, there is no more central religious image. Churches and Christian schools in America very often have, if no other picture, this painting hanging on the wall. At the seminary where I teach it hangs in nearly every classroom.
It is also a distinctly American image, picturing Jesus with dirty blond hair, white skin, and a rugged, Marlboro-man bone structure. Like many American icons, it sits at the intersection of important ideas and bad taste.
I highly recommend covering this American icon. For more, check out the book "Visual Piety" by David Morgan.
Philip
Comments [3]
Do you see how badly this episode is needed? See Arqplay's major subject-verb disagreement grammatical error and concomitant indication of racist and religious bigotry in thinking we must ignore or revise historical and present realities since, mistakenly thinking, only a non-white or no Jesus at all can be allowed? It is only Christianity which has given rise to constitutional government and religious freedoms at all. Don't be cowardly or ideologically blind, and help people like the commenter unable to get past race and sectarianism so she can love truth (even if not what she wants it to be) over comfortable PC propaganda.
How does a picture of a blond jesus reflects America as a multicultural country open to all religions and races?
Yeah, we can no longer ignore the vast majority of Americans throughout our time and space, land and history, anymore. Especially considering the evidence of the last election cycle, we ignore true believers at our peril. Obscurantism is no longer an excuse for countercultural revisionism. And the key to understanding the future lies in our previous (and current, for most Americans) iconography like this.
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