Guns, Thorns, and Zeal: Popular Depictions of a Kombative Christ

Abstract

What are the political, gender, and theological implications at stake when associating Jesus with modern combat and righteous violence? Jesus is rendered in combative form across media—i.e., live-action films and shorts, animated television, sketch comedy, graphic novels, and video games. This rendition occurs at a confluence of meaning, most immediately for the sake of generating comedy through juxtaposition (in this case, rendering the meek with a sword) and/or reaffirming Jesus’ prominent cultural value through an association with other popularly mediatized entities. Beyond these initial layers of significance, however, I argue that Jesus becomes associated with violence and brutality for the sake of de/legitimizing politically conservative ideologies with respect to Christianity and American exceptionalism, redeeming the crisis of “domesticated masculinity” and fortifying traditional masculine norms, and theologically reinstituting popular paradigms of low Christology. Ideological “manhood” remains traced to one’s ability to perform traditional gender roles (i.e., family provider, community protector, and father/procreator). To capture the discrepancy that Jesus of Nazareth, as presented in canonical gospels, largely concerns none of these roles, I analyze the hypermasculine Christ, and the various weapons he employs, as part of a popular genealogy of Western value systems and discourse. Though in this article I reference some examples of non-American media, I reserve my analysis and commentary for the stakes and implications of what it means for U.S. Americans to produce and consume such content. In short, I submit that popular America idolizes itself in the form—one amidst many—of a naïve, combative, and boorish Christ: an arrogant and, at times, narcissistic man with delusional views of the world made dangerous through invasive power and authority. Western entertainment has deemed the United States (through its fictional stand-ins) as morally failing yet still chosen. Within this logic, American Christians need not reform their ways as long as they cultivate evidence of their exceptionalism.

1. Introduction

The Kingstone Bible Trilogy is the most ambitious visual adaptation of its source material—over two thousand pages in length and over ten thousand art panels, compiled into a three-part graphic novel. Produced in central Florida, its art design is bold, colorful, and, while not violent, graphic. Consider its illustrations of Revelation 19:11–16 (Ayris et al. 2014). Divine Christ appears to John of Patmos in a vision, dressed in a robe of blinding light, his hair white, abs defined through shadow, and eyes glowing with fire (pp. 558, 575). Jesus’ elder design is conveyed as regal in nature and authority. He wears a golden crown and arms his angels before battle with a reaper scythe (pp. 636–37). “From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty” (pp. 662–63). The titles “King of Kings” and “Lord of Lords” are tattooed upon his muscular thigh. Such renderings of Jesus as a man empowered through physical violence can be explained in large part through the crisis of masculinity continually perceived by Protestant America. The popularity of “muscular Christianity” is multifaceted, promoting hero worship and militarism over meekness and pacifism as a means to “redeem” the disaffected and aggrieved masculine ideals of previous eras. Whether such images are made in earnest or comedic satire, for liberal or conservative audiences, this article examines the form and implications of “action hero” Jesus.

While “muscular Christianity” is typically analyzed as a blend of faith and sports (e.g., “Sportianity”), I follow Justine Greve (2014, p. 143) and approach this modern socio-religious movement as a broader cultural phenomenon. “The muscular male”, she writes, “is an embodiment of Christian virtue and of a strong, assertive, breadwinning masculine ideal to which evangelical men are encouraged to aspire”. Greve challenges us to recognize the ideological underpinnings that associate Jesus with violence and brutality. Socio-economic conditions problematize the sense of fulfillment traditionally afforded through popular political discussions on masculinity. “Manhood” remains traced to one’s ability to perform traditional gender roles such as a family provider, community protector, and father/procreator. Jesus of Nazareth, as presented in canonical gospels, largely concerns none of these roles. To capture this discrepancy, following Christopher Lane (2011), I employ Ludwig Feuerbach’s ([1841] 1989) work in this article to analyze the violent and aggressive Christ, including the weapons he carries, as part of a popular genealogy of Western value systems and discourse.

Though Feuerbach critiques the state of nineteenth century Christianity, his work requires reconsideration due to recent developments to the image of Jesus and the former argument that through religion, and in the divine, humanity exalts itself and its socio-political values. Feuerbach is a tool by which I seek to illuminate the political, gender, and theological implications of a hypermasculine Christ, a figure who derives self-worth, value, and even redemption from physical competition and violence. According to Feuerbach ([1841] 1989, p. xviii), “while reducing theology to anthropology, exalt[s] anthropology to theology, very much as Christianity, while lowering God into man, made man into God”. If “man” indeed exalts himself as divine (moreover, a violent divine), then ideological masculinity possesses a basis from which the gospel meekness of Jesus can be superseded. As the Kingstone Bible illustrates, social and religious prosperity seemingly will return in a form of masculine physique/agency. In a theological reinstitution of low Christology, action hero Jesus (and, in some cases, anti-hero Jesus) is more reflective of human society and is not elevated above it.1

Though in this article I reference some examples of non-American media, I reserve my analysis and commentary for the stakes and implications of what it means for U.S. Americans to produce and consume such content. As a dramatization of masculine crisis, this article engages Christ adhering to what is arguably America’s most politically sacred affordance: the right to bear arms. As Reverend Oliver explains to his church why he marches to war in the film The Patriot, “A shepherd must tend his flock, and, at times, fight off the wolves”. Elsewhere (Chavez 2023, pp. 72–74), I coined the term kosmic kombat to refer to the cumulative Christian tradition that concerns renewed religious struggle: “a longstanding, divinely-oriented yet anthropocentric conflict waged between two oppositional forces (benevolent and malevolent)”. Traditions of myth and practice—e.g., exorcism ministries, demon/monk desert battles, devil/saint contract disputes, and witch hunts—popularly sensationalize Christian ideology through kombat renewals, franchising religious narratives with the insistence that an apocalyptic opposition will rise again (cf., Keddie 2020, pp. 242, 264). “Evil” and “villainy” are powerful discursive tools used to legitimize Christian identity through narratives of obstruction and persecution. The neologism I propose to designate this cultural paradigm discursively injects the Greek kosmos (celestial order and ultimate level of concern) into the combat tradition fueled by strict senses of dualism (Chavez 2023, pp. 73–74). For the rest of this article, the reader should note that kombat and kosmos are tied in signification—each providing orientation and scope to the other.

Should Christians even engage in physical combat, and, if so, how? The “muscular Christian” thesis posits “that through improvement to the physical body, one improves the spiritual self; that through physical activity, one embodies religious virtues and ideals of godly manhood” (Greve 2014, p. 143). For this article, I expand “muscular Christianity” to include more than the simple worship of masculine physique and athleticism. “For evangelical Christians, the image of a manly Jesus who did not ‘tap out’ (or quit) has theological and ideological meaning in and of itself”, Greve writes. In the images and narratives that I analyze, Christ is rendered as kombative: a perpetrator of righteous violence with implications of how Christians view their righteous path to God. Such renderings are neither historically accurate nor solemn/serious in tone.2 This latter quality, thus, obscures the issues of creative intent and the motivation for producing such a subculture of Jesus.

The construction of Kombat Jesus in live-action films and shorts, animated television, sketch comedy, graphic novels, and video games remains a consequence of presentism—how modern values reshape our depictions and interpretations of the past (see Wineburg 1999). Jesus is rendered in kombat form at a confluence of meaning, namely, for the sake of generating comedy through juxtaposition (in this case, rendering the meek with a sword) and/or reaffirming Jesus’ prominent cultural value through an association with other popularly mediatized entities. The term “muscular Christianity” itself originates, in comedic exaggeration, from a joke by writer T.C. Sandars in his 1857 review of a novel by Charles Kingley, mocking the latter’s “enthusiastic celebration of vigorous physical recreation” (McLeod 2017, p. 195). Though “muscular Christianity” has since been appropriated in earnest by conservative American Protestants, it remains predominantly in use as a critical heuristic (Manseau 2021; Miller 2012; Carey 2011; Jarvie and Simon 2006), as demonstrated in the sections that follow. Jesus is additionally rendered as kombative for the sake of de/legitimizing politically conservative ideologies with respect to Christianity and American exceptionalism, redeeming the crisis of “domesticated masculinity” and fortifying traditional masculine norms, and theologically reinstituting popular paradigms of low Christology, exploring whether Jesus reflects the human nature and social tendencies of his followers.

To illustrate these points, I analyze segments and episodes from mainstream comedy series, mixed with more marginal media projects reflective of lower budgets. Given the range of my data selection, this article highlights the concept of “media flow” (e.g., transmedia and intermedia connections between art, animation, television, film, and streaming) as an occasion to examine the various distribution levels that present Kombat Jesus before its popular audience. To be clear, I present such data within a functionalist approach to social commentary and ideology. Kombat Jesus enters our zeitgeist regardless of political leanings and ideological stances, as U.S. audiences consume even international presentations of such material likely for the same sake of humor. Given the “misattribution theory” of comedy, which holds that an individual is “unable to tell exactly which elements of a humorous stimulus condition evoke how much of his or her reaction of pleasure” (Zillmann and Bryant 1979, p. 149), I have chosen to sideline intent as a dominant concern for this article. Comedy cannot be restricted to the intentions of its creators, nor pigeonholed in its affective meaning. Audiences may find multiple elements of the following material humorous—yet, they are likely unable to discern exactly which element most contributes to their humor response. I, thus, survey this material in its capacity to impact a popular audience of consumers at various levels.

2. Crossing the Line

Jesus’ image and story saturate our popular mediascape. His mediatized form, manipulated in the public domain, emerges decentralized in its production and dissemination. Although the visuals and narratives selected for this article deliberately deviate from the historicity and/or descriptive accuracy of their source material, they remain reflective, nonetheless, of our cultural climate and its recapitulation of biblical and post-biblical lore and themes. What is there to learn from such popular reconfigurations of the “Son of Man” (cf., Mark 13:24–27; Daniel 7:13–14)?

Consider the launch trailer for the independent Taiwanese video game Fight of Gods (PQube 2017), wherein the fighting character Jesus is designed with a bare-chested muscular physique and separate thorns woven into a crown, waistband, and ankle bands (cf., Mark 15:17). “The gods are at war”, the promotion caption reads. “[But] who will lead us to enlightenment?” Much of the game’s fighting roster is listed in a preview of the gameplay (e.g., Odin, Athena, Anubis, and Amaterasu), itself a cultural statement on the state of religious pluralism within the marketplace of ideas.3 Religionists may “choose their character” out of the many options available, however they wish. Luckily for players of Fight of Gods, “one final challenger arises”, as the trailer reveals the sun ascending over a cross on a hill. Video game Jesus enters the fray crucified, breaking loose through strength and dismantling the lateral board of the cross in the process. This iteration of Kombat Jesus punches his opponents with blocks of wood still nailed to his fists.

The YouTube comments on this trailer (PQube 2017) supply multiple puns in the form of action one-liners and/or promotional taglines, demonstrating a cultural space in which viewers may contribute to and heighten the game’s comedic function. @Sprousey97 wrote the following in 2017: “Jesus is back, and he’s not cruci-fuckin around”. @nyzmikey adds, “Jesus isn’t a guy you’d want to cross”. @hjames78 noted, in 2019, that “First [Jesus] died for my sins and now he fights for them”, while @quintopia asked the following in 2018: “Why was [the game] not called ‘Moral Combat’?” Given the political backlash of Fight of Gods, which was banned in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore,4 other viewers defend the game’s controversial content. As @marche800 wrote in 2017, “Man you guys are getting really pissed off about a game that really shouldn’t be taken seriously. I’m a believer too but I’m to [sic.] busy dying of laughter to care about how any potential controversy”. These comments reveal the comedic dynamics of the game’s content, its promotion and marketing, and the consumer’s agency to interact with and participate in both.

For similar comedic depictions of a violent Christ, consider also the fake movie trailers from Family Guy and Saturday Night Live as well as a YouTube comedy short from Slick Gigolo. In the former, in the 2005 episode “North by North Quahog”, Peter and Lois discover Mel Gibson’s secret screening room, with a film projector loaded with “The Passion of the Christ 2: Crucify This”. The parody fuses Gibson’s religious piety with his previous roles as an action-comedy star. Jesus, an ectomorph in a loincloth, drives a red sports car (with a “WWID” license plate and “Jesus Fish” decal) accompanied by comedian Chris Tucker. The duo later escapes an exploding building, merging visuals from Rush Hour and Lethal Weapon 3. Jesus also fires two guns whilst jumping through the air. “This July, let he who is without sin kick the first ass”, says the trailer narrator (cf., John 8:7).

In a pre-taped segment from Saturday Night Live, host Christoph Waltz stars as Jesus H. Christ in the “ultimate historical revenge fantasy” film, pseudo-directed by Quentin Tarantino. This fake trailer, “Djesus Uncrossed” (Saturday Night Live 2013), marks the completion of Tarantino’s cinematic folk series of heroes avenging communities for which Tarantino does not directly represent: women against men in Death Proof and partially Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and 2, Jews against Nazis in Inglourious Basterds, and Black slaves against White slave owners in Django Unchained. In the trailer, Jesus wears a four-layer crown of thorns and carries a large cross on his back as if it were a spare firearm. He attacks Roman centurions with a katana and blasts Judas Iscariot with a shotgun. As the trailer narrates, “Critics are calling it ‘a less violent Passion of the Christ’”.5

Lastly, “Jesus Christ: Violent Communion” (Slick Gigolo 2010) is presented as a mockumentary program based on the archeological discovery of a “new document”, “The Gospel of Douglass”, wherein a crucified Christ pulls his palms through the nails of the cross, dismounts, and kills Roman soldiers with swords and throwing Stars of David. Jesus pulls his cross from the ground and throws it to impale three centurions at once—a “triple-cross”, he quips. Jesus also kills his enemies with the “force choke” and “force lightning” techniques from Star Wars and The Return of the Jedi. Though he emerges victorious against the Romans (and Satan), with the help of two angels armed with assault rifles, the narrator states that Jesus dies off-screen from an aneurysm—a likely reference to the premature death of martial arts actor Bruce Lee.

In all four examples, comedy is achieved through ahistorical imagination, with the reinvention of Jesus’ signature iconography and placement within a “distorted incongruous depiction of reality” (Zillmann and Bryant 1979, p. 151). As J.Z. Smith (1978, p. 300) teaches us, incongruity sparks an occasion for contemplation: “There is delight and there is play in both the fit and the incongruity of the fit between an element in the myth and this or that segment of the world or of experience which is encountered. It is this oscillation between ‘fit’ and ‘no fit’ which gives rise to thought”. Though most of the male characters in the Fight of Gods roster are exaggerated in muscular tone, a hypermasculine caricature of Jesus features distinct implications given, first, the periodic violence perpetrated by Western imperial (Christian) regimes and, second, discursive and historical associations that link Jesus to docility (see Nietzsche 1989, p. 45). Following the air of the “Djesus” parody, conservative pundit Sean Hannity hosted a segment titled “Crossing the Line: SNL Skit Depicts Jesus as a Murderous Maniac”. Hannity and radio commentator Todd Starnes deemed the satire as “offensive” and evidence of Christian persecution in mainstream media. “Jesus wants to be your lord and savior”, Starnes defended. “He doesn’t want to blow you to kingdom come”.

Unlike other renderings, “Violent Communion” and “Djesus Uncrossed” satirically identify Christ as a symbolic extension of the post-Holocaust Jewish revenge films released then and thereafter (Magilow 2012)—e.g., Defiance, X-Men: First Class, and Plan A. Both examples mock the intense emotions and cinematic arousal generated within Tarantinoesque action sequences—the vicarious, cathartic violence put on display with the pleasures culturally generated in seeing villainous characters get punished and heroic figures rewarded (see Bartsch and Mares 2014). The two set a trend for the rest of this article: because meaning is associated with Jesus Christ, there must also be meaning associated with his violence.

For the Jesus of South Park, in the 1998 episode “Damien”, to step into a boxing ring with Satan and sell it on pay per view, similar to the sensationalized church promotions of Aimee Semple McPherson in 1921 (Sutton 2007, p. 16), illustrates how intertwined Christianity becomes with media due to the hyperactive evangelizing spirit of the religion. Amidst the digital age, cultural authenticity becomes contingent upon its acknowledgement by and dissemination through popular media. Religion becomes further decentralized in this process of mediatization, and, thus, dependent on media convention, consumption, and reproduction. The live-action cult film Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter includes Batman-like scene transitions: a cross appearing over a rapidly spinning background along with a “Jesus!” mimic of the 1960s iconic stinger. In the graphic novel Jesus Christ: In the Name of the Gun (Peterson et al. [2008] 2023), God is illustrated as the floating head of Marlon Brando, a reference to the actor’s portrayal of Jor-El in Superman. The action-hero rendition of Jesus acts to reaffirm his prominent cultural value, achieved through an association with popular culture itself.

3. “The Rough-Hewn Edges”

What are some of the political implications of associating Jesus with modern kombat? Though less common, Jesus is occasionally rendered as a proponent of righteous violence for the sake of legitimizing the tenets of political conservatism, such as American exceptionalism, Christian nationalism, and ideological masculinity. As Christian radio host Paul Coughlin, author of No More Christian Nice Guy, said in an interview (Jarvie and Simon 2006), “The idea of Jesus as meek and mild is as fictitious as anything in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code” Roland Martinson, professor of ministry at Luther Seminary, adds:

[Jesus has] been domesticated. He’s portrayed now as gentle, loving, kind, rather than as a full-bodied person who kicked over tables in the temple, spent 40 days in the wilderness wrestling with his identity and with God, hung out with the guys in the street. The rough-hewn edges and courage…got lopped off.

Jesus remains a recognizable brand for which to signal and/or mobilize politically conservative causes in the United States. Recall the campaign of Trumpist Republican candidate Kandiss Taylor and the slogan marking her platform for the 2022 Georgia gubernatorial election: “Jesus. Guns. Babies” (Berlatsky 2022). To be clear, although Republican gun-toting Jesus exists in principle (see Keddie 2020, pp. 232–33; Stolick 2021, p. 131), he rarely manifests visually in mainstream conservative propaganda, as the Hannity outrage over “Djesus Uncrossed” demonstrates. More often than not, Kombat Jesus is presented as a criticism of said political positions, a de-legitimization of conservative Christian values—which the current section examines.

Tony Keddie (2020, p. 76) writes that the Republican-imagined Jesus was born as a savior for small government capitalism and its values of hyper-individualism. The conservative platform of the modern Republican party, first mobilized in opposition to “New Deal” policies of the 1930s, arguably centers on the resistance to “big government” and regulations for the creation of wealth (ibid., p. 26). Also in the 1930s, the center of America’s imagined cultural identity was further reified as “Christian plain-folk”, “an all-encompassing worldview that gave white southerners especially a sense of guardianship over their society” (Dochuk 2011). Following World War II, amidst Cold-War-era tensions, the United States became rebranded as hyper-capitalist, democratic, and Christian in opposition to newly rising Communist regimes across the world (Griswold 2021; Balbier 2017). Evangelicals such as Billy Graham bolstered politics as a Christian frontier in the 1950s and thereafter, emboldening national sports culture (Ladd and Mathisen 1999) and the worship of military civic duty (Wacker 2014, p. 239; Karlin and Friend 2018) in the process. Jerry Falwell, in the mid-1970s, effectively mobilized conservative Christians into a dominant political base for the decades to come, sensationalizing issues of abortion and homosexuality as moral rhetorics for which to buttress Republican support (Harding 2000, pp. 17–18). At the same time, the National Rifle Association (NRA), capitalizing on rising conflations between American nationalism and Christian conservatism, reshaped Second Amendment discourses using religious-themed language to elevate conservative political positions to the status of “articles of faith” (Dawson 2019). “Proposing limits on what kinds of guns [American Christians] should buy—or how, when, where and why they can carry them—is akin to proposing limits on who they are and what they should revere”, Manseau (2022) writes.

The mythic Republican Jesus, an opponent of “taxation, welfare programs, universal health care, abortion, gun control, immigration, and climate change” (Keddie 2020, p. 26), stands in stark contrast to the “social gospel” of popular Christianity, a “heterogeneous movement [that] pursue[s] political action to help the poor and combat other social crises” (Keddie 2020, pp. 81–82; Evans 2017). Within this conservative mindset, Jesus’ spectacular conflict with the Romans is read as a resistance against the evils of a tyrannical government. As Andrew Whitehead told The New Yorker in an interview, “Violence has always been a part of Christian nationalism. It’s just that the nature of the enemy has changed” (Griswold 2021). These enemies would include communists, Jews, Muslims, and would-be tyrannical leaders conspiring with the deep state, among others. For the nation-state to stay exceptional, anti-American forces (foreign enemies and fascist/socialist domestic regimes) must be physically thwarted in a war “where God and firepower make all the difference” (Manseau 2022). “A shepherd has got to protect his flock”, as the film Krampus paraphrases the quote from The Patriot.

As Jesus is rendered in earnest by conservative Christians into a proponent of armed conflict, he is satirized thereafter into an active perpetrator of violence. Consider the satirical sitcom Family Guy, the 2001 episode “And the Wiener is…”. Peter becomes jealous when he discovers that his teenage son is better endowed and joins a gun club to overcompensate. When his wife Lois speaks out against the danger of firearms, the couple is shown a gun safety video by a proud member of the “National Gun Association”, a fictional counterpart to the NRA. While the video parodies many of the NRA’s slogans, mascots, and promotional strategies, most relevant to the current discussion is their appeal to religious tradition: “Guns are good. In fact, did you know that Jesus and Moses used guns to conquer the Romans?” From this gag, humor is then derived from various historical inaccuracies; visual juxtapositions of biblical heroes with assault rifles, with a disclaimer at the bottom that reads “dramatization”; and the general ridicule of gun-worshipping Christians. As a further insight, note that Jesus and Moses do not require miraculous superpowers nor any divine assistance to defeat human wickedness. The evils of this world will be thwarted by the inventions of humankind—in this case, the power of a gun and all its righteousness. By this logic, it is only through the myth of the “good guy with a gun” (see Manseau 2022) that the “meek shall inherit the earth”.

The premise of this single gag is expanded in the animated sitcom Paradise PD. In the 2021 episode “Trigger Warnings”, local law enforcement officers take a tour of NRA headquarters after observing numerous self-inflicted gun casualties within their community. The official building is shaped like an AK-47. In addition to a mascot, the child-friendly office features a play area with a ball pit full of pistols (with a dead child buried beneath its layers). Former NRA President Charlton Heston’s preserved corpse is featured on display, a rifle in his hand with an invitation akin to The Sword in the Stone: “Pry this gun from my cold dead hands and win a Republican Senate seat”. The NRA’s “Guns Make a Better World” informational video imagines a world where Jesus had guns. “Messiah-nara, bitches”, he says before descending from the cross. The nails in his palms transform into Uzi machine guns as he breaks loose from the lateral board (as he does in his Fight of Gods stage entrance). “Hard rock action music” accompanies Jesus’ spray of bullets to the left and right, as the Messiah becomes covered in the blood of his enemies. Two scantily clad women wearing head scarves approach Jesus and begin kissing as in a 1970s exploitation film. “Oh my dad!”, Jesus yells in orgasm. As some of the officers turn away from the video in judgment, the chief commands the following: “Have some respect. Jesus is comin’”.6

A fulcrum upon which these political satires rest is the performativity of gender. As Henry Giroux (2001, p. 19) writes, “Male violence offers men a performative basis on which to construct masculine identity”. Ideological masculine performance occurs at the expense of “weaker” men and women, which Monique Wittig ([1981] 1992, p. 15) teaches are “only an imaginary formation” and “the product of a social relationship”. In a time of imperial decline, nationalists turn to ideological masculinity for symbols of strength and pathways by which social prosperity can manifest again (see Greve 2014, pp. 154–55). Comedy programs such as Family Guy and Paradise PD jeer such performative gestures as penis insecurity, a mockery of hypermasculinity’s own toxic logic. As we will see in the next section, the performance of gender remains crucial to this discussion even as political sensibilities vary. For these reasons, I present liberal and conservative depictions of Jesus alongside one another.

Theologically, we must also consider the ways in which Jesus Christ is rendered into a culturally idealized nature of humanity. “Religion, at least the Christian”, Feuerbach ([1841] 1989, p. 14) writes, “is the relation of man to himself, or more correctly to his own nature…”. Feuerbach identifies “man” as the “mystery of religion”: that which alienates but also that which is alienated. The (patriarchal) collective religious subject “projects his being into objectivity, and then again makes himself an object to this projected image of himself thus converted into a subject” (pp. 29–30). Due to the exalted status of the divine, humanity is vilified and scorned as wicked or lesser—damned, sinful, and in need of grace. The media examples presented in this article playfully lampoon the traditional classification of Jesus as “fully human”, “fully divine”, and, therefore, innately superior in morals. Any human (or “manly”) characteristics grafted onto Christ bring with them a theological statement on the nature and value of humanity (and, in this case, masculinity).

Within satire, such as “Jesus Christ: Violent Communion” and “Djesus Uncrossed”, Christ is portrayed as a persecuted minority who physically resists capital punishment and/or returns with weapons to enact vengeance. In other instances, new sinful characters are added to the gospel narrative to assist Jesus through violence, mainly through killing Judas Iscariot, as in the 1996 Mad TV comedy sketch “The Greatest Action Story Ever Told” and the popular novel Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (Moore 2002). The former, a parody of The Greatest Story Ever Told and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, follows the T-800 cybernetic organism as he travels back in time to protect Jesus from crucifixion. Rather than the Messiah fleeing the scene of his enemies (Matthew 4:12, 12:14–15, 14:10–13; Luke 4:29–30; John 8:59), Jesus is saved by the Terminator’s shotgun blasts, killing Roman centurions armed with spears and nets. The sunglasses-wearing machine, programmed for violence, must then be taught, first, that killing is “not nice” and against “one of God’s commandments” and, second, that Jesus must die “for the sins of mankind”. The comedic climax occurs during the Last Supper, as the Terminator and Jesus exchange turns killing and resurrecting Judas.

Similarly, the latter example of print media invents a thirteenth apostle named Biff, a companion of Jesus since childhood. Biff, like the Terminator, is positioned as a comedy foil for Jesus’ calm temperament. As Feuerbach ([1841] 1989, p. 14) writes, “the divine being is nothing else than the human being, or, rather, the human nature purified, freed from the limits of the individual man, made objective…”. Author Christopher Moore invents a history where Jesus travels to India and China during the biblical lost years, between ages twelve (Luke 2:41–43) and thirty (Mark 1:9). There, Jesus is forever changed by the religious and philosophical tenets of Chan Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, adopting martial arts and magical practice in consequence. Biff, meanwhile, despite his proximity to the Lord, remains crass, sexualized, and brutish. The end of the novel reveals that Biff chases the traitor Judas to a cliff and hangs him from a cypress tree with the sash from his tunic. Thereafter, Biff steps off the same cliff to his death, entering heaven nonetheless (Moore 2002, pp. 434–35).

Together, the Terminator and Biff represent America’s unrefined vision of itself. “Forgive him, Father. He’s a robot from the future”, Jesus laments (cf., Luke 23:34). The two, though boorish, are presented as well-meaning simpletons that, as with select renditions of Jesus—e.g., being initially fooled by Satan in The Last Temptation of Christ (Kazantzakis [1955] 1960) and overwhelmed with healing requests (“Make Us Well”) in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)—maintain “grace in their failings”, to quote the Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron. As Neil Forsyth (1989, p. 7) writes of the crucifixion, “the most mysterious episode of the Christian story”, the character of Jesus “oddly combines both defeat and victory”. I argue that contemporary U.S. Christians envision a similar future for themselves. Unlike the Mad TV sketch and Lamb novel, however, Jesus’ “purity” and extinguished humanity are challenged and reconfigured in the proceeding examples. The “rough-hewn edges” are reinstituted in a modern form of Christology masquerading as popular entertainment. Jesus himself is rendered as naïve, kombative, boorish, and the like—and, for some, a theological acceptance of Western moral failings.

4. “Grace in His Failings”

Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter is a Canadian horror comedy/musical with homages to the campy, exploitation cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, mixed with notable biblical allusions and progressive political commentaries. The film’s doomsday prophet narrator justifies the inclusion of Jesus in modern day Ottawa, Ontario, with a reading of Matthew 28:20: “And behold, I am with you of the days until the completion of the age”. Such a contemporary setting problematizes the audience’s recognition of Jesus on screen, the cognitive dissonance created through seeing Christ in new form and performing new actions. The film seeks to overcome the dissonance of modern Jesus with multiple biblically remnant visuals and allusions.

Jesus is introduced, baptizing at a beach (cf., Mark 1:5), assaulted by day-walking vampires who recognize the Son of God, as the Gerasene demons did (Mark 5:7), to seemingly interrupt his quiet ministry. A local priest enlists Jesus to investigate the recent vampire attacks and slew of missing parishioners brought about in their wake. Christ, the priest explains, is the only one from which the “truth cannot be hidden” (cf., Luke 8:17). “I cannot rush to battlement before the foundations [of the kingdom] are laid or else the walls will surely collapse”, Jesus responds. He illustrates this sentiment by gesturing to a collection of sand castles on the shore, an echo of the model of the Jerusalem city in Ezekiel 4:1–8 and Jesus’ writing in the sand in John 8:6. As with the trend of the Lord’s reluctant prophets in the Hebrew Bible, Jesus is eventually persuaded to act for the sake of his community.

Though Jesus’ appearance changes throughout the film, this process occurs in layers. In the opening acts, he first cuts his hair, receives tattoos and piercings, but maintains his Jedi-looking prayer robes as dress (cf., Mark 5:27–28). Early in the film, the filmmakers also recreate select Jesus miracles in Ottawa, such as healing the lame (Matthew 15:30), raising the dead (Mark 5:41), and multiplying food or drinks (Mark 8:1–9), along with a display of the crucifixion wounds (John 20:27). In the final battle, Jesus, wearing new clothes, is tied to multiple vehicles threatening to tear him apart, a trope borrowed from The Hitcher. Jesus is eventually freed but with bungee cords still wrapped around his wrists as he fights, preserving the visual association of Jesus with captivity. Other notable allusions are presented in the dialogue, such as a priest comparing women among vampires to “sheep among wolves” (Matthew 10:16); Mary Magnum calling Jesus “rabbi” (Mark 9:5); Jesus’ quip that he understands the vampires’ typical weakness to light (cf., John 8:12); God appearing to Jesus in his ice cream (cf., Exodus 3:2), saying “I have not forsaken you” (Psalm 22:1; Mark 15:34); and Mother Mary appearing through a light-up figurine of herself to assure Jesus that the “[meek will] inherit the earth” (Psalm 37:11; Matthew 5:5).

Just as The Last Temptation of Christ recasts the story of Jesus into the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32), Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter inserts Jesus and modern times into the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). Jesus, following his defeat by vampire leaders Johnny Golgotha and Maxine Shreck, collapses through the streets of Ottawa in need of physical assistance. A bloody Jesus, unrecognized given his modern appearance (cf., John 20:14–15), is ignored by a Catholic bishop and police officer, left for dead until he is assisted by a Spanish-speaking “transvestite” (as titled in the credits). “You’re a stranger to me but no stranger that I am”, she says. “It is strange what you see when you look through stranger’s eyes”. Later, the woman explains that she recognized Jesus through the detection of a hidden aura, sensing that Jesus possesses “something too queer to show but too real to hide”. Throughout the film, Jesus is presented as a pure figure whose trusting nature and polite pleasantries pose decisive liabilities in the modern world. For a social outcast, heavily marginalized by Jesus’ later followers, to mirror the humanity of Jesus presents a clear political statement, the type of which is common to exploitation genres.7

I approach Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter as a discursive vehicle for cultural pride, empowerment, and political activism. As Benshoff (2000, p. 32) writes,

I suggest that queers (broadly defined as anyone who rejects the essential superiority of a straight white male identity) are drawn to [an exploitative] genre because of its many intriguing “not normal” representations. This would suggest that the horror film functions hegemonically, in effect enabling socially oppressed people to contribute to their own oppression by consenting to the manufacture of their own identities as monstrous Others.

Though Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter is not horrific in earnest, its status as a comedy equally functions hegemonically, in effect with socially oppressed people contributing to the manufacture of their own identities as, let us say, “humorous Others”. The film sensationalizes women’s bodies in campy terror and eroticism. It also exploits their political identities for comedic effect.

The primary demographic that the vampires seize are the “ladies of Sappho”, lesbians for which the Catholic Church is unwilling to act or pursue leads. “I fear my parish is being consumed, body and soul”, says the local priest. The film uses vampirism to symbolize the declining retention rates of Christian churches across North America. The filmmakers playfully accredit “disappearances” within the congregation to the supernatural predation of the faithful, a congregation that recently boosted in membership through the progressive message of the “social gospel”. Along these lines, Jesus also battles a gang of atheists, those unreceptive to his city entrance—the number of which is comically exaggerated. Upon their defeat, one atheist exclaims “I don’t believe it!” In the final battle, Jesus asks a traitorous priest why the vampires target gay women. “They’re deviant”, he responds, “[and] no one will miss them”. “There’s nothing deviant about love”, Jesus retorts.

As with many of the previous examples, I argue that Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, regardless of the creators’ intentions, legitimizes the popular value associated with traditional masculinity and righteous violence through the use of its titular icon. The film presents a “savior” for which to redeem the crisis of aggrieved masculine ideals. Jesus’ initial defeat by the vampires occurs when he is aided in battle by Mary Magnum. Both are physically bested, with the latter transformed into a vampire herself. God advises Jesus to “seek out the sage of the wrestling ring”: the now-retired-but-still-formidable masked Mexican wrestler El Santo, himself an icon in “Mexploitation” cinema, especially that of the 1960s (see Greene 2015, pp. 50–102). Because Jesus’ appearance is not exaggerated in terms of masculine physique, the film increases his masculine currency through associations with strongman wrestling, martial arts, motorcycle stunts, and other action-movie tropes. Jesus’ success in battle comes primarily through expending masculine energy through physicality, mixed with tactical vampire-hunting techniques. Together, Jesus and Santo stake vampire club attendees in the hearts with wooden drum sticks, hair pins, chair legs, toothpicks, crutches, pool sticks, and plunder sticks. In the same scene, Jesus converts beer into holy water and prepares himself beforehand with holy garlic breath. Similarly, in the final junkyard fight, Jesus uses two windshield wipers to form a cross, a reference to the conclusion of Horror of Dracula.

The association of Jesus with death and return possesses notable ideological implications, namely, for the ideal of masculine dominance and its capacity for redemption. American Christianity evokes a religious history of prosperity, decline, and revival, a mytheme projected onto ideological masculinity and its lamentations of modern “domesticated” men. Even the emaciated, brutalized corpse of Christ will return with chiseled abs and a sword, according to the Kingstone Bible. In Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, the vampires eventually stake Jesus in the heart. Though the fiends have evolved to endure direct sunlight, they are no match for the inner light that emits from Jesus’ chest wound. Vampire leader Johnny Golgotha disintegrates within the Jesus chest beam and returns as dust to the ground (Genesis 3:19), freeing those transformed through his attacks (such as Mary Magnum and her lover Maxine Shreck). Jesus, again, obtains victory in defeat. The film, while not politically conservative, adorns masculine entertainment just the same, while even incorporating said worship into a theological statement on the redemptive nature of masculine aggression.

In contrast, and perhaps at the opposite side of the political spectrum, Jesus Christ: In the Name of the Gun from Eric Peterson et al. inflates Jesus’ masculine currency through anti-hero character tropes such as cursing, smoking, an asocial demeanor, and homophobia. Jesus possesses a lean physique and occasionally speaks with action-movie one-liners (e.g., “Blood of the Lamb, motherfucker”). Reflective of religious disenchantment in the West and “death of God” cultural movements, Jesus feels detached from both his father and humanity. The graphic novel opens with meteors colliding into the New York City skyline (cf., Exodus 9:24; Revelation 6:13). “My father needs to learn how to communicate”, Jesus says to himself.

Just as The Last Temptation of Christ (Kazantzakis [1955] 1960, p. 81) portrays Jesus plagued by dreams difficult to interpret, this Jesus dreams of an eschaton, the exact hour of which he does not know (Mark 13:32). This version of Jesus engages a low Christological formation (as with others discussed in the next section), de-emphasizing traditional elements of Jesus’ divinity such as his pre-existence (John 1:1–3), status as the divine incarnation (John 10:30), and intimate relationship with the Father (John 1:18). Jesus exists as a man born on Earth who died and was later sent to heaven. In the afterlife, unlike his father, Jesus remains unable to see the full “detailed picture” of things. He becomes relegated to the role of divine spectator as he awaits Armageddon and while the Lord’s angels manage heaven in the Father’s absence.

Since his death, Jesus has grown especially disgruntled by the devotees that kill in his name, his father’s general policy of non-intervention. Jesus resents that the Lord God seemingly allowed various atrocities to occur throughout human history—e.g., “Pol Pot, the Plague, two World Wars, [and the] Holocaust”. “Everything happens for a reason”, Jesus is assured, which prompts in him an echo of the resentment labored by Voltaire in Candide (1759). As Roger Pearson ([1990] 2006) observes, Candide’s teacher Pangloss “parrots” the words of Gottfried Leibniz (Pearson [1990] 2006, p. xix) in the construction of a sacred canopy that renders the world as something safe and knowable (cf., Berger 1969)—in this case, affirming God’s immediate presence in the world despite its apparent imperfections.8 Candide, like Jesus in Petersen’s graphic novel, is assured that he lives in “the best of all possible worlds” (Voltaire [1759] 2006, p. 14), that “everything in this world is for the best” (p. 9). In the face of hardships, Candide, the fictional philosopher, ultimately rejects the theology of his mentor and concludes, instead, that we each “must cultivate our garden” in the world we are given (p. 88). Peterson’s fictional Jesus Christ decides the same, but “in the name of the gun”.

Jesus laments that he and his father’s previous collaboration failed to save humanity. While God never wishes to “control the destiny of the world”, Jesus disobeys the Father and his angelic representatives and returns to Earth to make a difference. He decides most immediately to travel to Russia in 1910 in an effort to stop Adolf Hitler in Germany. Implicitly, his initial heavenly transportation follows the rules of The Terminator, in that time travel is single-use and one-directional. To overcome the dissonance of seeing Jesus in the twentieth century, the comic artists illustrate a recreation of Jesus’ main narrative elements within his reincarnated form. Russian Jesus is born of another virgin (Luke 1:34); placed in a manger in infancy (Luke 2:16); learns the craft of carpentry (Mark 6:3); and is recognized as the Messiah, first, by a marginalized prophet (John 1:24–31) and, second, by a dove descending from the clouds, marking the commencement of his mission (Mark 1:10).

As an adult, Jesus walks to Poland in 1939. A German soldier breaks off from his party to relieve his bladder at a nearby bridge and riverwalk. The soldier hears the faint sounds of feet as if they were splashing on puddles. He turns in amazement to see Jesus running towards him on the riverbed (cf., Mark 6:48–49). Capitalizing on enemy stupor, Jesus runs up the water in the soldier’s urine stream, reaching the height of the bridge to somersault kick the soldier in the face, visually akin to Guile’s Flash Kick in Street Fighter II. Thereafter, Jesus assaults more soldiers, takes their weapons, and advances behind enemy lines.

As Jesus holds a sniper rifle with the intention of assassinating Hitler, an angel of the Lord appears to Jesus and asks, “What are you doing?” “Being a light to the nations”, he responds (Isaiah 42:6). Before Jesus pulls the trigger, however, a masked assassin, later revealed as Ernest Hemingway, shoots Hitler first. Hemingway, who historically accompanied Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris, explains to Jesus that the two will meet each other later in time, with Hemingway assisting Jesus’ mission to “put the fear of the Lord in their hearts” (cf., Proverbs 8:13). Angels deploy their forces in an attempt to stop Jesus’ interference with history. They are largely unsuccessful once Jesus acquires a universal time-traveling bracelet designed in the future by Albert Einstein. Jesus thereafter halts the Spanish Inquisition, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and other historical events. Einstein, in support of Jesus’ brutality, dubs the Messiah the new “angel of death”. God, meanwhile, saddened by Jesus’ disobedience, tells his angels that it is still not time for the Father to intervene on Earth.

Despite Jesus’ successful rogue operations, his nightmares of the future persist. He questions the ultimate impact his actions bring upon the earth, just as he did with his initial sacrifice via crucifixion. In this way, Jesus Christ: In the Name of the Gun theologically grapples with the theodicies similar to Ecclesiastes, as amplified through the social and ideological crises induced by America’s imperial decline. The graphic novel associates power with historical consequence, something the biblical “Teacher” (Qoheleth) challenges with the precept that nothing lasts. “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:11). In the final acts of the graphic novel, Jesus is captured and tortured in hell (cf., Matthew 12:40), as told through references and quips imitative of First Blood and Die Hard. Jesus tells Satan that he wishes to make hell irrelevant, discouraging sin through violent deterrents experienced in life. Jesus’ crusade against history illuminates his toxic masculine critique of humanity: people seem to kill the wrong people. As written in Ecclesiastes 7:15, “In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: the righteous perishing in their righteousness, and the wicked living long in their wickedness”. As such, Jesus’ fantastical solution to this dilemma is to bring people punishment, not at the end of time but at any moment in time.

God and Satan are unified in their criticism of Jesus’ latest actions of intimidation. Ruling by fear and authority ultimately teaches humanity nothing. It robs individuals of free will through forced choice, they assert. Satan, illustrated like the Mouth of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition), brags to Jesus that “the shepherd’s flock is now small” (cf., Zechariah 13:7). Satan allows Jesus to escape his torture and gain access to a hellish visionary cuirass. “Ask and I shall show”, the armor speaks (cf., Matthew 7:7–8). Jesus asks to see his father at the time of the crucifixion, in shock of learning of a covenant formed between God and Satan. God explains that the age of gods and demigods will soon end, just as Elves and others depart from Middle Earth as a signal of human reign in The Lord of the Rings. Humans must “reach their own path to salvation”, God says. But for this, they need to know temptation. God strikes a pact with the Devil to no longer physically intervene on either side, similar to their agreement exposited in the film Constantine.

God appears in hell to console Jesus, explaining that humankind (including the Son of God) needs to sin in order to learn from its mistakes. Jesus’ interference with history compromises the covenant with Satan, to which Armageddon must commence so as to disallow the “Devil’s recourse”. Despite his “muscles and grit”, Jesus ultimately destroys faith, says God. “[Now] they only respect strength”. The original mission of Jesus was to provide a path to salvation but only for those who wish to be saved. The second coming of Jesus (throughout all space and time) now blurs the line between righteous and self-aggrandizing violence, perhaps an ironic commentary on the United States’ occupation of and interference in the Middle East and the continued militarization of law enforcement in America. Jesus now has a mission of his own initiative: “I will help the lawless fear the strength of Good”. He refuses to give up fighting, even if Satan should take control of the Earth. “There must always be a Devil”, Jesus accepts. “[But] I didn’t raise my son to be the next Lucifer”, God retorts. Jesus assures his father that he needs more time, delaying the final stage of the eschaton, so that he, Hemingway, and Einstein (representative, it seems, of military strength, artistic expression, and scientific advancement) can make a difference for humanity. God reluctantly agrees, as Jesus vows to stay on Earth with those left behind. Like Candide, he “must cultivate [his] garden”.9

Though it remains unclear how much of Jesus Christ: In the Name of the Gun is satire, the graphic novel presents its hero, representative of American foreign policy, as reckless yet exceptional—with “grace in his failings”. In a self-fulling prophecy of nationalism, as long as America remains mighty and capable, then it is righteous. In the Name of the Gun seemingly parallels the satirical puppet characters of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Team America: World Police: both are the “products of a perpetual terror war and they will not be swayed from their goals to make the world safe from terrorism”, to apply the analysis of Luke Howie (2011, p. 166). “But, in the ‘War on Terror’ that [Parker and Stone] seek to parody, no one ever said the world would be safe from the USA”. Similarly, in Peterson’s graphic novel, no one is safe from the newly incarnated Christ. As James Gow (2006) writes of Team America, Parker and Stone “balance a presentation of US clumsiness, cultural insensitivity and destructiveness with an interpretation of America’s sense of responsibility and good intentions in approaching the world” (Gow 2006, p. 564). Jesus Christ: In the Name of the Gun likewise renders its protagonist with the potential to cause more damage than he prevents. The graphic novel reveals how formative Bush-era politics were to the American psyche, just as John Winthrop’s “beaconism” (Templer 2006, p. 361) and Theodore Roosevelt’s expansion of manifest destiny (Griswold 2021; Ricard 2006) were previously: “arrogant, narcissistic men with delusional views of the world” (Willems 2017) made dangerous through invasive power and authority.

Together, Vampire Hunter and In the Name of the Gun sensationalize Jesus’ physical agency with a preservation of the character’s mythological paradox: victory in defeat. The implication is that traditional gender norms will be restored “When the Man Comes Around”, to quote the 2002 Johnny Cash song. Within “muscular Christianity”, as nineteenth-century proponents, such as Thomas Hughes, write, physicality and manliness are used in morally uplifting ways “for the protection of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes” (Ladd and Mathisen 1999, p. 15). In Vampire Hunter and In the Name of the Gun, though politically varied, Jesus emerges as “distinctly manly and virile” (Pierce 1912, p. 1). Whether imagined to defend the progressive “social gospel” or exercise the pre-emptive military actions of the Bush doctrine, Jesus emerges as a symbol of masculine ideation. Popular culture is a battlefield (Hall [1981] 2006, p. 482), and Jesus enters the fray with the cultural currency required to anoint various political causes and ideologies with meaning and legitimacy.

It cannot be ignored when Kombat Jesus elicits graphic violence for the sake of self-aggrandizement. Jesus’ emotional temperament, pacifism, and removal of self are seemingly more “super”-human than any of his other strengths or abilities. Kombat Jesus does not just fight; he, at times, fails. In Fist of Jesus, a 2012 Spanish horror-comedy short film, Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus accidently sparks a zombie outbreak, as the latter returns ravenous and infectious. Jesus is initially presented as cowardly and humiliated in his failure; he lets out a high-pitch scream in shock at what his powers bring forth. Judas Iscariot hangs himself in fear before the zombies discover his hiding spot. Sorrowful, Jesus successfully resurrects Judas without converting the disciple into a zombie. Elated, Jesus announces to his heavenly father, “I did it! I brought him back to human life!” Judas again asphyxiates, as he still hangs from the tree amidst Jesus’ self-rejoice. Jesus displaces the body and successfully resurrects Judas once more. Presumably at the hill of Golgotha, Jesus, armed with a single fish (which he multiplies, elongates, and transforms), faces the approaching zombie horde in battle. He and Judas splatter the monsters with the bill of a swordfish, the chomps of a piranha, and the spine of a large tuna—the latter of which emits sounds like a hedge trimmer. Jesus was, thus, introduced as civil and elitist but untested.10 Violence offers dynamism to his character. “This type of hypermasculine transformation is a super-trope in storytelling”, to apply the analysis of Jonathan McIntosh (2022). Jesus seemingly “learn[s] to temper his sensitivity with an unhealthy dose of aggression”, a “finally-grew-a-spine moment” that culminates with the Messiah swinging a weaponized fish spine in battle. “This is how popular culture reinforces the myth that the correct way to be a man is to be aggressive, intimidating, and, most importantly, to dominate others”, McIntosh argues.11 It is in this way that masculinity becomes “hyper”-activated to a fault, turning “toxic” in its social implications. American neo-nationalists look to symbols of political, military, and cultural dominance as a means to endure the changing conditions of American exceptionalism.

5. Message…Not the Messenger

The Jesus of South Park, David Feltmate (2017, p. 122) observes, is “always depicted…as a scrawny man” for which the modern world shows little respect. “[Jesus] struggles to deal with his legacy. He wants to be loved and adored, but is a frail, weak man who is mostly ignored”. Jesus remains inhibited by both “physical and emotional frailty”, a lamentation of Western masculine culture’s residual self-image. I argue that within this animated comedy series is a theological reinstitution of low Christology: South Park Jesus is more reflective of human society rather than elevated above it.

In the 2002 episode “Red Sleigh Down”, most immediately a parody of Black Hawk Down, the kids convince Santa to deliver gifts to the people of Baghdad, Iraq. Once Santa’s sleigh is shot down, the boys enlist Jesus to rescue him. “Jesus can save anybody”, they realize (cf., Acts 16:31). Whereas Santa’s North Pole base maintains a clear division from society, illustrated like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, Jesus lives among the people. When he is not hosting the public-access television series “Jesus and Pals”, as introduced in the episode “Damien”, he holds church services across the world. That no one finds this odd in the satirical world of South Park is a statement in and of itself. Jesus’ path to salvation is purely elective. There is no need to proselytize, as the message is already spread. Jesus remains on Earth for any who passively watch television or directly seek him.

Once Jesus learns of Santa’s capture, he opens a church cabinet full of weapons. “We need a little Christmas miracle [so] lock and load”, he says. This Jesus, unlike his depiction in Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, is not above modern-day chicanery. He initially surrenders to Iraqi insurgents with cryptic sayings. “Look upon me and know me”, he tells them (cf., Psalm 139:1). “My children, you should know something: I’m packing”. Jesus immediately kills one man with a spring-loaded knife in his robe sleeve, shooting the other with a silenced pistol. He storms the room where Santa is tortured, killing its occupants with an assault rifle. He heals Santa’s broken legs and leads him to safety with the children. Before their completed escape, Jesus is shot from behind by an enemy guard. “Santa, don’t let them take away our Christmas spirit”, he says, dying. Jesus’ halo vanishes from atop his head, as he becomes just a corpse. Though they leave his body behind, Santa returns to America to inform the people that Jesus “gave his life to save” him, a cyclic renewal of Jesus’ sacrifice and the varied meanings associated with it. “I declare that every year on Christmas day we should remember Jesus for what he did and thank him for it”, Santa decrees. In a form of channeled retaliation, Santa launches missiles of Christmas festivity onto the Iraqis, swapping their weapons with Christmas icons and assimilating their streets with colorful decorations.

Within the South Park mythos, following his sacrifice at Christmas, Jesus stayed dead for a number of seasons before his second resurrection in the 2007 episode “Fantastic Easter Special”. When young Stan questions the symbolic association of celebrating Jesus with chocolate eggs and a bunny rabbit, his father, in a parody of The Da Vinci Code, reveals crucial information about Jesus and the early Christian community that the Catholic Church still guards as a secret today: St. Peter (Rabbit) was actually a bunny and true successor to Christ due to his inability to speak. Guardians are assigned to protect the Grand Hare, Peter’s living descendent, so that the Church may never destroy the truth. As one guardian explains,

Jesus knew no one man could speak for everyone in a religion. Men can be intolerant; rabbits are pure. But the Catholic Church buried the truth, put a man in charge, and the Hare Club For Men has been decorating eggs ever since to keep [this secret alive].

Meanwhile, Bill Donohue, outspoken President of the U.S. Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, leads a coup against Pope Benedict XVI and assumes the office of papacy in an aggressive campaign to destroy the Grand Hare.

The boys call on Jesus for support, acknowledging that one man can only die so much. “I know that every time you appear we end up killing you somehow”, Stan apologizes in prayer. Donohue and others are then shocked at Jesus’ arrival. “I have the power of resurrection, or have you forgotten?” Jesus says. Irate, Donohue captures Jesus and the young Jewish boy Kyle and sentences them for execution. Imprisoned far from the site where the Grand Hare is to be executed, Jesus explains to Kyle that he is especially powerful when newly resurrected. Should Jesus die again, he could miraculously reappear in St. Peter’s Square in time to stop Donohue. Jesus hands Kyle a prison shank and orders that the boy kill him, satirically replicating the anti-Semitic sentiment that “Jews killed Jesus” (cf., Matthew 27:24–25).

Jesus once again resurrects at Easter, another instance of cyclic renewal to his mythology. He emerges in radiant light in the crowd before Donohue. “One man cannot be the voice of the Church”, Jesus preaches. “Enough of this blasphemy!” Donohue yells. “I’m the pope now. That means I am the voice of God!” “Not anymore”, Jesus retorts. “I’m removing you from your position”. Jesus draws from his robe a five-bladed throwing star, modeled after the Glaive in Krull. He hurls it at Donohue in an arc, splitting his body at the waist. As the weapon returns, Jesus catches it behind his back, strikes a pose, and puts on a pair of sunglasses in reference to the vampire-killing protagonist of Blade. The Grand Hare assumes its rightful place as pope, never instructing people on “how to run their lives”, “just as Jesus intended”.

These initial episodes illustrate the creative tension regarding the public spaces in which Jesus directly participates. In the 2001 episode “Super Best Friends”, for instance, Jesus competes in a magic contest against David Blaine. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone seem to acknowledge that all of the twenty-first world knows the story of Jesus and its ties to salvation in the next life. South Park Jesus, thus, interferes only in religious-oriented spaces or those functionally similar in meaning—i.e., Satan’s return to Earth, Santa’s capture in the Middle East, conspiracies within the Catholic Church, and the performance of stage magic and/or televangelism. Along these lines, Parker and Stone, in alignment with classic phenomenologist and historian religious studies scholars, use Jesus to proclaim a socio-cultural reality for “imaginary” entities. As Mircea Eliade ([1957] 1987, p. 63) posits, “where the sacred manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence”. “God is real since he produces real effects”, writes William James ([1902] 1982, p. 517). “The Devil is a real phenomenon; therefore, the Devil is real”, adds Jeffrey Burton Russell (1977, p. 43).

In “Imaginationland: Episode III” (2007), Jesus is a member of the ruling body of Imaginationland, the Council of Nine, which includes other fictional Christ-like figures such as Aslan the Lion from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Gandalf the Grey from The Lord of the Rings, along with other popular culture heroes such as Wonder Woman and Popeye. The world of Imaginationland consists of all fictional constructs from literature, fairy tales, media entertainment, and mythology—a commentary on modern America’s worship of popular culture. Islamic terrorists gain access to the land following America’s increased sense of paranoia. “Terrorists have attacked our imagination and now our imaginations are running wild”, one government official states. The fictional Islamists strategically destroy the great wall barrier that separates peaceful imagined states from nightmares. A great war ensues, in which Jesus utilizes a sword in kombat, a parody of both Revelation 19:11–16 and The Return of the King.

Outside Imaginationland, governments and the public argue over the protected status of imaginary figures in regards to the casualties of war. “The Pentagon claims that because imaginary things are not real, the military doesn’t need Senate approval to nuke them”, one television anchor states. The prevailing resolution, as articulated by the boys, is that fictional characters should be recognized in their nonfictional effects. As Cartman argues,

[M]aybe they’re all part of the same thing. Santa and Jesus and hell and leprechauns. Maybe they’re all real in the same way.

Kyle likewise adds that “whether Jesus is real or not, he’s had a bigger impact on the world than any of us have. And the same can be said of Bugs Bunny and Superman and Harry Potter”. The American government, thus, orders a ceasefire, allowing an innocent child named Butters to lead the pure imagination alliance in victory over evil imaginary forces. Butters wields materials into imagined existence in crucial assistance for the Council of Nine. “More spinach for Popeye!”, he shouts. “Imagine an m-60 for Jesus!”

As Feltmate (2017, p. 66) writes, “For South Park, the social reality of religious figures and ideals is more important than their empirical validity”. South Park Jesus at once represents the slender form of aggrieved masculine ideals and the redemptive meaning associated with weapons and violence, secular standards which relegate religious content to its culturally designated place in society, and intense market competition amidst an oversaturation of content creation. The final cultural space that South Park Jesus occupies, significant to this article, is that of a hero fallen in the public eye. In the 2012 episode “A Scause for Applause”, Jesus’ reputation is tarnished in a parody of the Lance Armstrong doping scandal of the late 2000s. Parker and Stone use Jesus as a cultural signifier of American hero worship, the ire that modern athletes receive due to “ever-greater commercialization, the role of television [and now social media], increasingly large amounts of money available to star players, and press reporting of all aspects of these platers’ lives” (McLeod 2017, p. 206).

As one South Park public official states,

These latest tests are once again confirming that the performance enhancing drug HGH was in the body of Christ at the time of crucifixion. Jesus did not suffer for our sins. He was, in fact, very high.

Though Jesus repeatedly denies the reports that illegal compounds and painkillers were found on the Shroud of Turin, his supporters, feeling betrayed, publicly remove their WWJD bracelets from their wrists. Jesus’ many accomplishments, then and since, are removed from official record books. Pope Benedict XVI issues a statement of condemnation: “We cannot tolerate any deity who used illegal substances to perform miracles”.

In the episode, Jesus perpetually struggles with accountability, shifting his anger towards the mass rhetoric machine that reduces religious affirmations, emotional sentiments, and political statements into wristband slogans. This Dr. Seuss-like discourse machine, he criticizes, produces marketable yet vapid sayings. Jesus’ name and image become a brand out of laziness, demonstrating the public’s inability to understand the message of his teachings. No longer concerned with being a public icon, Jesus takes HGH yet again and hulks out into a taller, hyper-muscular, deep-voiced, violent, aggressive version of himself. “Vengeance is mine”, he yells, as he tracks down and destroys the mass rhetoric-bracelet machine and kills its creator.

Jesus is “redeemed” through reckless, self-aggrandizing violence, akin to his In the Name of the Gun character. Parker and Stone and Peterson et al. render their respective versions of Jesus as intimately human and, therefore, flawed, a reflection of how pockets of modern Western society view the West as a whole. The Jesus of Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter skateboards, eats at Hooters for comradery, and displays sexual desire at the film’s conclusion. The Jesus of South Park, a marginal television personality, grows disenchanted with the reverence and scrutiny placed upon modern public figures. He asserts that the mass rhetoric machine “turned my message away from the teachings it hid and made it about me and the things that I did”. Parker and Stone create a parody in which even Jesus fails to live up to the standards of cancel culture, being beyond reproach. Such sentiments, importantly, echo the lyrics of “Heaven on their Minds” from Jesus Christ Superstar, where Judas laments the divine status and superstardom of Jesus:

Jesus! You’ve started to believe the things they say of you. You really do believe this talk of God is true. And all the good you’ve done will soon get swept away. You’ve begun to matter more than the things you say.

(Webber and Rice [1970] 1973, pp. 3–12)

The fallen South Park Jesus also echoes the concluding sermon of Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. As Jesus says in the film,

I don’t want you to accept anything just because I say it. [I]f you choose Christianity, don’t follow me. Follow my teachings. It’s the message that’s important, not the messenger.

Such iterations of the Jesus character and story register the public’s social anxieties surrounding fame and the parasocial relationships that develop within popular fandom. The discursive focus shifts from Jesus’ teachings to an oversaturation of his brand and image—which remain popularly malleable—amidst such intense degrees of religious sectarianism.

6. Conclusions

This survey of a hypermasculine Christ, though encompassing multiple marginal examples of popular media, reveals much about the dominant zeitgeist and its presentation of the Jesus figure. For instance, the biblical elements most commonly replicated into popular entertainment with respect to a mediatized Jesus include gospel quotations, narrative episodes, and iconography. Mainstream Jesus renditions—namely, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Passion of the Christ—should also be recognized at this point as deuterocanonical within the popular imagination of contemporary Christians, available to inform their understandings and conceptualizations of Jesus beyond the text-centric paradigm of traditional Protestantism. This is not to say, however, that scripture and its interpretation no longer dominate Christian discourse today.

In 2024, Dan Delzell, a contributor for the Christian Post, a “pan-denominational Christian media source”, published an op-ed rebuking comments made by Pope Francis, at an interfaith gathering in Singapore, that although “there’s only one God…they are different paths [to God] (Ayers 2024)”. Delzell (2024) asserts that Francis, known for making provocative statements in the past, has fully shifted his papacy to proclaim “a different gospel”, in reference to Galatians 1:6. “Not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ” (Galatians 1:7). Delzell writes,

If Francis is correct, then Jesus was wrong when He stated, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me” (John 14:6). I hope you realize that Jesus was not wrong about anything He ever said. The false doctrine which Francis proclaimed has been around for centuries. But it cannot possibly be true. Jesus did not die on the cross to merely provide “one more way” of getting to God. He died for our sins because it was the only way we could be reconciled to our Father in Heaven.

Delzell’s op-ed reveals how conservative Christians denote an exclusivity with respect to God’s salvation, attainable through conversion and the evangelism of Jesus’ name. Yung Suk Kim (2014) laments that this “common (mis)understanding about the Fourth Gospel, and John 14:6 in particular” is used to oppose religious pluralism with both “arrogance [and] an absolute claim about the truth” (pp. 69–70). “[W]hat really matters”, Kim affirms, “is not Jesus’ name but his works for God”.

The “I am” statements of John’s gospel and their accompanying allegorical lessons are certainly presented as definitive and sectarian—e.g., “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). As Kim (2014, p. 70) writes, “[M]any modern Christians read the Fourth Gospel as a story of triumph and take it with them as a spiritual weapon by which they go out to conquer other non-Christians or other cultures”.12 The basis of this traditional reading of John, the “exclusive high Christology”, Kim explains, concerns the “double marginality” experienced by the hypothetical Johannine Christian community of the late first century—that is, “separation from the synagogue and suppression under Roman control”. Kim seeks to intervene, however, with an interpretation that extends beyond this particular historical context of marginalized early Christians, beyond the resulting mentality of “us-only survival or growth”.

The story of John’s gospel is “not a story of triumph”, Kim (2014, p. 70) writes, “like an imperial narrative made out of violent, victorious war in which others are defeated” but rather an invitation for all “to join with Jesus to do the work of God”. Kim continues,

I have lamented the exclusive high Christology not simply because other people or religions are subjugated or subordinated in the name of Jesus or the Logos but because the center or power of the Fourth Gospel has not been realized. The exclusive high Christology rejects local cultures, religions as shown in colonial history. Musa Dube is right when she problematizes from a postcolonial perspective John’s colonial conception of the otherworldly top-down Logos. As the history of interpretation has shown, the imperial, colonial tendency goes side by side with exclusive Christology. Similarly, eternal life in the Fourth Gospel becomes a means to subjugate other people and religions. The central mode of imperialism or colonialism is based on the superiority of colonizers. Likewise, the Logos also becomes a weapon that rejects all other forms of values, religions, and cultures. Even when Jesus’ flesh is emphasized, it is only in the context of his vicarious atonement without consideration of Jesus’ ethical life. […] This way of reading actually prevents readers from imitating Jesus as an ethical model. To put it differently, Christians should consider the ethical implication of Jesus’ flesh embodiment of the Logos, which should include the very human response of embodying a Christ-like life of forgiveness and self-giving love for others. If Jesus died for us, we also have to die for others because his death is the result of his bold living for God. The implication is that we also need to bear our cross to follow him. In other words, death itself is not the goal of his life.

(pp. 70–71)

Kim grapples with popular Christian understandings that pigeonhole “being Christ-like” into dying through sacrifice and/or in righteousness. I have argued that many of the examples included in this article constitute a popular theological reformation of low Christology, seeking for Jesus to reflect the human nature and social tendencies of his followers, becoming less divine in the process. Many of the characteristics observed by Kim of the “exclusive high Christology” nevertheless persist within this popular subculture of Jesus.

The kombative Christ reflects the cultural climate of the West, its politics, and comedic sensibilities, having been molded by centuries of imperialist and colonialist regimes of Christian thought. It is ironic to find that this popular Jesus, belonging to a culturally emergent, low Christology, made to mirror the naïve, boorish, and carnal tendencies of humanity, reflects still the dominant mindsets established by regimes of high Christology with respect to “chosen” supremacy and otherwise human degeneracy. The “colonial conception of the otherworldly top-down Logos” persists in popular media, especially in the case of Jesus Christ: In the Name of the Gun. Even when “Jesus’ flesh is emphasized” in “consideration of [his] ethical life…of forgiveness and self-giving love for others”, as in South Park and Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, death remains the “result of his bold living for God”, a troubling residual currency that provides ideological masculinity a basis upon which to supersede biblical meekness. The work of God and/or Jesus now pertains to an “imperial narrative made out of violent, victorious war in which others are defeated” due to the religious exclusivity and superiority afforded from paradigms of rigid sectarianism and high Christology.

Conservative Christians possess a complex engagement with the pacifist teachings of Jesus. As Matt Stolick (2021, p. 137) writes, “Jesus Christ radically teaches persons to respond to offenses, dare I say violence, with blessings and love, so utterly counter to the idea of self-defense, let alone arming oneself with killing machines to respond to offenses”. Moreover, “consider how Jesus commissioned the twelve according to Matthew 10:9–10: ‘Take no gold, or silver, or a staff…’—and no swords” (p. 138). I expect that many conservative Christians in America may very well see the second coming of Christ as many Second Temple Jews saw the second coming of David, as espoused in the apocryphal Psalms of Solomon (ca., first century BCE). This messianic king, who need not be superhuman, though he is free from sin, is so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of holiness as to be invincible in action and perfect in judgment (R. B. Wright 1985, p. 645). As Psalm of Solomon 17:21–22 prays,

See, Lord, and raise up for them their king, the son of David, to rule over your servant Israel in the time known to you, O God. Undergird him with the strength to destroy the unrighteous rulers, to purge Jerusalem from gentiles who trample her to destruction.

(p. 667)

Americans seem to yearn for a wartime savior more than a suffering servant (Isaiah 53). The 2nd Amendment Shirt Company paraphrases Luke 22:36 on one of its products: “And Jesus said, If you don’t have an AR-15 sell your coat and buy one” (Jesus Said 2019). To be clear, gun rights’ advocacy is not an intrinsic feature of every brand of evangelicalism (Manseau 2022), yet Protestantism remains a major predictor of gun ownership in North America due to its support of classical liberalism, or libertarianism (Stolick 2021, p. 138; Keddie 2020, pp. 75–76). Though America’s fixation on guns is unyielding, as Manseau (2022) writes, “it is possible that the less one sees oneself as an itinerant loner in a hostile world, like the armed preacher in a silent western, the less one is likely to look to guns as a source of salvation”.

To be clear, it is also a mistake to assume that political leftists do not adhere and respond to traditional ideations of masculinity. In late January 2012, images of children armed with what looked like assaulted weapons sparked debate in Venezuela over then-President Hugo Chávez’s support of armed militias in the country (Ramsey 2012). Behind the children, staged by the militant left-wing group “La Piedrita”, the self-appointed “guardians [of] Chávez’s socialist project”, was a mural depicting Jesus wearing a crown of thorns and holding a Kalashnikov (Minaya and Vyas 2012; Wallis 2012). By August of the same year, the mural was redesigned with Jesus holding a large blue copy of Venezuela’s constitution (Wallis 2012). Within the same low-income neighborhoods of Caracas, “shock troops of the president’s self-styled revolution” adorned similar murals dedicated to “Bolivar, a masked Palestinian fighter”; Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi; Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara; Columbian rebel leader Raul Reyes; Mexican rebel “Subcomandante Marcos”; and others. So too in the media examples selected for this article is Jesus imbibed with exaggerated “male” energy in the form of an idealized physique, kombat weapons, normative masculine activities, and/or rebellious behaviors.

Elsewhere in popular fiction, Judas Iscariot is provided character development for his opposition to Jesus, as explained through a political alignment with the “Zealots”: armed rebels and/or rogue assassins, set in military opposition to Roman oppression. The recast of Judas as a Zealot, a complication to the traitor’s villainy, occurs in The Last Temptation of Christ (Kazantzakis [1955] 1960, p. 155), Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff (Moore 2002, p. 370), and the stage play The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Guirgis 2006, p. 72). Additionally, Barabbas’ position as an insurrectionist, following Mark 15:7, is vilified in The Last Temptation of Christ (Kazantzakis [1955] 1960, p. 169) though later ennobled in the film The Book of Clarence. Reza Aslan famously recasts Jesus in the same vein for his 2012 speculative historical account Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Stuart Kelly (2013) writes the following in his review of Aslan’s work:

Aslan contends that an illiterate “day laborer” called Jesus was part of an insurrectionary tradition in Israel, and the story of this Che Guevara of the early Middle East was co-opted by the dastardly Saul of Tarsus, aka Saint Paul, who defanged the zealot and turned him into an apolitical metaphysician. Frankly, parts of it are closer to Jesus Christ Superstar than any serious undertaking.

This popular rendition of Kombat Jesus, rendered more zealot than pacifist, seems better suited for modern Christians. Players of the 2014 South Park: The Stick of Truth role-playing video game can summon Jesus using a rosary for quick assistance in kombat “to purge enemies of their sins with a hail of holy gunfire, dealing Kosher damage!”13 In the game’s animation, Jesus descends from the clouds with an assault rifle and falls into an attack stance. Before his departure, he assumes the action pose from the episode “Fantastic Easter Special” and draws sunglasses to his face. Proponents of either side of the political spectrum may welcome this revised warrior messiah who, “during the run-up to the First Jewish Revolt, [would seemingly serve alongside] anti-Roman Jewish rebels known as the Sicarii (Dagger-Wielders) carry[ing] daggers in Jerusalem during festivals and murder[ing] their pro-Roman enemies, including certain Jewish leaders”. (Keddie 2020, p. 221)

The “nature” of the divine character, thus, becomes the means by which the collective religious subject, as molded by those with the means to create and influence official and/or popular discourse, reifies socio-religious norms into an exalted otherworldly figure—a strategy of moral sensationalism. “The personality of God is nothing else than the projected personality of man”, Feuerbach ([1841] 1989, p. 226) writes. Within Christianity, this “extramundane being” became “freed from all worldly ties and entanglements, transporting itself above the world, and positing itself in this condition as a real objective being” (p. 66). But what happens to the dismissed portions of humanity above which Jesus was previously elevated?

“What was at first religion”, Feuerbach ([1841] 1989) argues, “becomes at a later period idolatry; man is seen to have adored his own nature” (p. 13). I submit that popular America idolizes itself in the form—one amidst many—of a kombative Christ. To see it all at once, I present the following character profile synthesizing many of the elements previously discussed. The character of Kombat Jesus, forever cemented as male, was originally “an illiterate ‘day laborer’…part of an insurrectionary tradition in Israel” who “used illegal substances to perform miracles”. He “struggles” in the shadow of his “legacy” due to “physical and emotional frailty”, a recent “domestication” of his image and movement. He must now fight and/or die again in order to not be “ignored”. He comes to reject the foreign policy of non-intervention and cultural optimism that “everything in this world is for the best”. He chooses to “cultivate [his] garden” in the world he is given, “tend[ing] his flock, and, at times, fight[ing] off the wolves”. “He came from heaven, two stakes in his hand, to smote the vampires and free the land”. Today, he walks as “an itinerant loner in a hostile world…look[ing] to guns as a source of salvation”. As a “good guy with a gun” and the new “angel of death”, he “purge[s] enemies of their sins with a hail of holy gunfire”. He will “not ‘tap out’ (or quit)” and remains revered despite his “clumsiness, cultural insensitivity, and destructiveness”.

Of course, while Kombat Jesus remains historically impossible and anachronistic, he is “real” as a phenomenon, “real” due to his social effects and the ideologies he represents. Within religion, one may study the “solemn unveiling of a man’s hidden treasures, the revelation of his intimate thoughts, the open confession of his love-secrets”, Feuerbach ([1841] 1989, pp. 12–13) writes. Western entertainment has deemed the United States (through its fictional stand-ins) as morally failing yet still chosen. American Christians need not reform their ways, as long as they cultivate evidence of their exceptionalism.

To overcome the cognitive dissonance of witnessing such a kombative Christ, media content creators present a replication of myth to substantiate an essential core to the character and/or story. His birth, occupation, established appearance, sayings, miracles, death, descent into hell, and resurrection—even the story’s politically damaging elements such as Jewish deicide—are reiterated as sufficient markers of Jesus’ signification. His death and return, especially for writers like Paul, mark the birth of Christianity proper (e.g., Romans 1:1–4). To replicate these sacred events in ritual or narrative form reignites their ontological nature and validity. As Eliade ([1949] 2005, p. 34) writes, “an object or an act becomes real only insofar as it imitates or repeats an archetype”. One of the ways in which South Park and other media generate meaning is through the repetition of an “exemplary model”—that is, meaning is siphoned from the original. In Christianity, with its finitude and eschaton, Eliade sees the “final abandonment of the paradise of archetypes and repetition” (p. 162), the end of the “periodic regeneration of time” (p. 142). The creation and proliferation of Kombat Jesus demonstrates otherwise. As Dennis O’Neil (1994, p. 343) writes of the Batman: “Because he’s inhabited that vast, unbounded mirror world known as Popular Culture, where realities shift from day to day and change is the only constant, the [Dark Knight] has had to remake himself every decade or so or risk almost certain extinction”. Jesus, likewise, must die and be born again.