by Matt on April 5, 2021

I don’t have a lot of time to devote to this today but would love to collaborate with anyone interested and willing to do more research. We could make it an article (although many have been written–we could do so with a socialist feminist lens, perhaps?) or a podcast episode.

Anyway, there’s a ton of scholarship and general cultural examples for the thesis that Jesus is a sexualized superhero. This doesn’t bear on Jesus’s historical authenticity. I agree with Reza Aslan that a Judaean nationalist, mystic, and orator called Jesus existed–and had a brother named James who was later made the Bishop of Jerusalem. A google search on erotic Jesus bears much fruit, from “deification through corporeal perfection, artistic vogue, as well as humanization through sexualization” to “Mary [Magdalene]’s passionate and erotic love for Christ . . . an immensely popular topos . . .”

And on and on–there are countless analyses of this, and there’s even a Voxplanation.

Also check out (and then google) God’s Vagina.

I find all these arguments cohere with my own aesthetic, spiritual and theoretical engagement with Christ as a figure. Also Christian pop is extremely erotic.

I’ve had this discussion with lots of friends over the years and I expect to keep having it. If anyone wants to devote something longer that would be a nice project to engage.

Meanwhile, you can support the media and education work of our commune, which also supports research and analysis like this, designed to democratize religion and all other aspects of life.