Jesus Christ Superstar: The Groovy Anti-Imperialist Jesus Movie
Good Friday
We’re here. We made it. Good Friday. The eighth and final Jesus movie of this Lenten cinema series. It’s also my favorite one. I have loved this movie from the first time I saw it. I love its soundtrack. I probably have most of the songs memorized. I saw it live at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle. Jesus Christ Superstar. One of the most iconic musicals ever created. Especially after last week’s horror show of a film, this one was a real treat to wrap things up.
It took me a while to settle on the subtitle for this film. The other seven came easily, but not this one. At first it was The Hippie Rock Opera Jesus Movie. Jesus Christ Superstar, having been released in 1973, is chock full of hippies. I then moved on to The Groovy Jesus Movie. Accurate. It’s definitely a groovy addition to the pantheon of Jesus movies. There are a lot of groovy things in this adaptation: hair, clothes, makeup, costumes. And especially the music. But there was something else missing. It’s more than just a groovy movie. It’s also very anti. Anti-war. Anti-colonial. Anti-occupation. Anti-imperialist. It presents an ancient story told through the lens of 1970s grooviness — hippies and rock music — that would have been very much a political statement against the status quo in 1973. That era was the height of the backlash to the Vietnam War in the United States. Jesus Christ Superstar made an ancient story relevant to a younger audience in a language they spoke.
After finishing up my second stay in South Korea in early 2014, I decided to go backpacking alone for six months around the Middle East and Europe. I first headed to Istanbul for three weeks followed by just over a month in Israel and Palestine. I wrote about some of my experiences working in a small hostel in Old City Nazareth in the second instalment of this series, The Savior: The Palestinian Jesus Movie. Since I was living right in the historical center of the city, I was very close to its main Catholic and Orthodox churches. The Basilica of the Annunciation is allegedly built over the ancient house where Maryam lived and is just a short walk from what is known as Mary’s Well. All around the interior walls of the church were pieces of artwork depicting Mary and Jesus. This isn’t all that unique for a Catholic church, but it was who had created them and how they were shown that was interesting. Each piece had been made by an artist from a particular country and the subjects were depicted as if they too were from that country and culture. The stylistic choices, the physical appearance of Jesus and Mary, their clothing, the written languages used, all of these were specific to China or Guatemala or Ukraine or Malta or dozens of other countries. It was like seeing the same story in a new way, through someone else’s eyes. Someone who is very different and has a distinct background, language, and culture from my own.
Just as seeing something familiar in a different way can bring a new perspective, reading can do the same thing. A while back, I bought a somewhat unusual new translation of the New Testament. First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament. The wording, the names, the culture, and certain aspects of the story have been translated and adapted in a way that incorporates and celebrates facets of Native American and First Nations history and culture into this universal story. Each person is given a more appropriate Native name with their English names in parentheses. Mary is referred to as Bitter Tears. Jesus is Creator Sets Free. It’s a new way to read an old story. Not changing the meaning, but making it more accessible to a wider audience. Incorporating universal themes, philosophies, truths, religions, and myths into a woven tapestry of human threads from many corners of the world.
Jesus Christ Superstar does this too. The movie was filmed in Israel and Occupied Palestine amongst actual ancient ruins, some from the very era that the movie depicts. But the film doesn’t rely on historical accuracy. Judas is chased by a line of army tanks and falls to the ground under the roar of modern fighter jets. Jesus and his crew are portrayed as rock stars, hippies, and groupies hanging out and (sometimes) causing trouble. Every one of them is a hippie — from hair to clothing to makeup — which in the early 1970s was still very countercultural and even somewhat shocking for mainstream America. The story is also told from the perspective of Judas (which is almost never done) with him narrating the final weeks of both his and Jesus’ lives. He pleads with Jesus to rein in his followers, noting that “you’ve begun to matter more than the things you say.” Judas is worried that Rome, the occupying power, will view them as a threat and put an end to their movement. “Every word you say today gets twisted round some other way.” It’s a mixture of ancient and modern. Modern hippies with their disco and rock music performing an ancient story amongst the ruins of an ancient imperial power while standing in the colonial outpost of a modern imperial power.
It can sometimes be helpful to see things in new, better, and more innovative ways so we can step outside the old way of thinking and get a different perspective. This is the essence of the Greek word metanoia (μετάνοια) which Christianity has traditionally translated (poorly) as repentance or conversion. It’s rather a reorientation, changing your mind and transforming the way you see and experience things. A new worldview. A new vision. Most of us in evangelical spaces probably associate the English word REPENT! with angry, Bible-thumping preachers yelling at their congregations, attempting to induce a sense of guilt and shame into them. This isn’t metanoia. This is abuse.
All throughout this series, I have been able to find resources — books, movie clips, artwork — that somehow complement the film I’ve picked for that week. As an evangelical, I probably would have thought that this was some kind of divine intervention. Maybe it is. But more likely it’s just my neurodivergent brain making unusual connections. As I was prepping for Jesus Christ Superstar, I started reading the book Burying White Privilege: Resurrecting a Badass Christianity by Miguel A. De La Torre. It contextualizes what I’ve been feeling for years. Originally during my first travel and study abroad experiences in my teens and early 20s, but coming on more strongly after I definitively left the US in 2010 and especially since the rise of MAGA and its intertwining with White Christianity in general and American evangelicalism in particular. The West is stuck in this White Christianity with its reverence for White Jesus and love of White privilege. This books is a condemnation, a denunciation really, of the way Christianity is largely practiced and presented in the West, but especially in the United States.
This is the kind of Christianity I grew up around. I was completely indoctrinated into it. Not so much by my family but rather by my church youth group. This was where the extremism — End Times hysteria, purity culture, witnessing, emotional manipulation, etc. — was being planted in the hearts and minds of impressionable kids and teens. Pushed by a fear of “eternal conscious torment” in Hell to trauma bond with a sadistic vision of God. From the emotionally manipulative tactics of worship music to the subtle guilt trips for not being a good enough Christian to the body-shaming of girls and young women, this approach to practicing Christianity was hugely detrimental to the developing psyches of America’s youth.
There was no true community “because white, evangelical Christianity reduces faith to the individual who depends on a personal relationship with Christ, the communal aspects and responsibilities of the gospel can be disregarded and discarded.” (Burying White Privilege, p. 8) It was all about the individual. Toxic individualism. Jesus is my personal savior. Heavy emphasis on the personal. Even though no such language is ever used in the New Testament nor in Christian writings until the rise of the West following the Middle Ages. Capitalism, colonization, and individualism have ruled most of Christianity ever since. To its detriment.
White churchgoers have historically been, and continue to be, the greatest existential hazard for humanity, especially for the dispossessed and disinherited. Since the foundation of the republic, white Christians have reigned supreme in North America by using invasion, genocide, and slavery as instruments of political control. (Burying White Privilege, p.12)
While Very Patriotic Americans® praise the United States for being the land of the free, the home of the brave, the shining city on a hill and so on, the view from the real world does not reflect this undeserved praise. The nation was founded on land theft, genocide, slavery, and various versions of segregation and apartheid. While the country has fixed a lot of these problems through amendments, legislation, and the long road of cultural change, it has never actually repented for these crimes against humanity. There have been no formal apologies to the Native American nations, no reparations to the descendants of enslaved people, nothing to make up for the crimes committed against BIPOC, women, disabled people, LGBTQIA+ or any other marginalized group that has been abused, killed, or murdered at the hands of the American empire. And that is only within the borders of the United States. There is so much more ugliness that has been done all over the world from Vietnam to Japan to Chile to Libya to Palestine.
Evangelicals like to claim that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. Literally, this is not true. It’s merely David Barton’s grandiose fan fiction. But in a metaphorical sense, they might be onto something. In White Christianity, all you have to do is believe to be saved. Nothing else matters. You can go on stealing and raping and murdering, but it’s all okay! You’ve got that Get Out of Hell Free card in your back pocket, ready to claim the blood of Jesus at a moment’s notice. De La Torre argues that “one can continue engaging in everything Jesus preached against as long as one decides to give oneself over to Jesus in some theoretical or partial sense that does not necessarily entail following or even intending to follow his own teachings and example.” (Burying White Privilege, p. 25)
Which is how we get to the grotesque infomercial that dropped this week of Trump hawking his very own $60 version of the Bible. If you want to read the Bible, you can get one for free on Amazon for your Kindle or any e-reader app. You can check one out from your local library. You can even get a physical Bible for way less than $60. If you hang out in a public place long enough, especially near a school, Gideons International might just hand you one for free. (This is how I got about 10 Gideon Bibles in junior high.) But coming back to Trump, I remember back in youth group how the more virulently anti-Catholic pastors and adult leaders would rail against the Catholic Church for adding books to the Bible. I later learned that in reality, Martin Luther had removed them during the Protestant Reformation. But now? Trump’s God Bless the USA Bible adds in the text of the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance, and other purely American documents to ancient Hebrew and Greek religious literature. Like I said before, grotesque. And what’s more, during Holy Week.
What is this if not imperial Christianity? It is the religion of empire. Starting with Emperor Constantine in the fourth century CE and then continuing on down through the last two millennia of colonizing powers — Rome, Byzantium, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, England, and now the United States — the Christian religion has been corrupted by power. Whereas the original story is anti-imperial.
The Jesus narratives, at their core, are anti-colonial literature about a native resident displaced by the invading imperial power. The Gospel narratives depict a careful dance between Rome, the coloniser, and Jesus, the colonised. (Burying White Privilege, p. 7)
It has become so clearly evident during these past six months of unfolding genocide in Gaza. The shocking corruption and ongoing disintegration of an empire. Not just the American empire, but possibly the entire order that the Western world has built. Hell, throw capitalism into the mix too. It might all be on its way out. The whole economic, political, religious, and social realities we have taken for granted could completely collapse in order to make way for something new. And hopefully something better. The best scenario would be the rise of the Global South, the formerly colonized, to help and heal the world that the Global North has destroyed and manipulated for its own benefit. Centuries of stealing resources, land theft, kidnappings, slavery, rape, murder, war, genocide, and exploitation. The Western world is crumbling under the weight of its own hubris and myth of exceptionalism, largely due to the hyper-individualistic White Christianity that has been its bedrock for centuries. How did we get it so mixed up?
There’s a musical number in Jesus Christ Superstar between Jesus’ arrest in Gethsemane and the entire judicial process ending in his crucifixion. It’s sung by Peter and Mary Magdalene, asking where everything went wrong. Where did they mess up? How can it be fixed? Can we start over? In the film, they’re singing about the original Jesus movement in the first century CE. But Western Christianity — the most dominant modern form of the Jesus movement — needs to ask itself these hard questions too. Something has gone wrong. Organized Christianity in the West — not all of it, but A LOT of it — has hugely contributed to the destabilization we can see and experience all over the world. We need to repent — in the original sense of the word — of what we’ve been doing wrong for centuries. Change our minds. Develop a new worldview. A new relationship with one another. A new paradigm. Metanoia first. But then could we start again, please?
