A New Low

The West seems determined to deconstruct as much of its Christian past as thoroughly and as quickly as its can.  Witness the provocatively lewd nature of Gay Pride parades (I will spare you the slides); witness the left’s enthusiastic embrace of transgenderism. And now (drum roll, please) witness the latest reprise of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s 1970 concept album Jesus Christ Superstar.

       When it first appeared in 1970 it was controversial enough, since it presented Jesus Christ as an over-hyped superstar, not a divine Saviour, a mere man caught up in unexpected popularity that tragically ended his (lower case ‘h’) life. 

For the non-historians among you, this was during the Jesus People movement when Jesus People (Google it) were in everyone’s faces and were famously on the cover of Time magazine.  Jesus Christ Superstar not only capitalized on this cultural trend, it was also intended as a counterblast to it.  I know; I was there.  I joined the Jesus People in handing out tracts (forgive me, Lord) to those listening to the rock concert.

Now the rock musical is back, but with a difference.  The original rock musical was tame: a white male Jesus with long hair and the traditional long white robe singing along with other white males and a (presumably straight) Mary Magdalene plaintively singing “I don’t know how to love him”.  Now the new Jesus is… different.

It is not just the expected racial or gender switch that gave you forgettable remake of Ghostbusters, with women playing the roles formerly played by men.  It is not even the inane ideological switcheroo of re-imagining Snow White as a crusading Marxist she-boss who doesn’t need a man.  Nope.

Introducing Cynthia Erivo, a bald, black bi-sexual, (see inset above), ostensibly Catholic.  Erivo explained that she doesn’t let “narrow thinking” from Christians determine how she defines faith.  Said Catholic Erivo, “As time changes we are also meant to change.”  Where’s Pope Leo XIV when you need him?  (We learn too that Erivo is planning on playing Dracula soon.  Of course.  ‘Cause nothing says, “Fifteenth century Romanian Count” like a bald black woman.)

The change was clearly meant as a deliberate slap at traditional Christianity, an attempt to provoke and enrage by placing a bi-sexual in the role of Jesus to further challenge the Church’s traditional teaching about gender.  The blackness (and the baldness—she couldn’t find a wig?) were just the delicious cream on top, a further inversion of the Christ figure and an attack on the Church’s tradition. 

(And just for the record: blind casting notwithstanding, Jesus was a Jewish male who, so far as we know, had hair.  You can’t make Him a black African or a blond Scandinavian or a female, just as you can’t make Mary Magdalene a guy or—come to that—someone playing St. Moses the Black a young Chinese girl.  It’s called “history”.)

A number of Christians have denounced the thing as blasphemous.  It is, of course, but that’s the point.  Or, if “blasphemy” is considered too strong a word, how about “deliberately and provocatively challenging to sensitivities”? 

Let’s transpose it into another setting, challenging another set of sensitivities.  How about Muslim sensitivities?  Suppose we produce a rock musical with Muhammad as a man who never really received any messages from God played by a blond lesbian in a bikini.  Wouldn’t the Islamic community at large conclude that it was meant primarily as an attack upon what was most sacred to them in their faith?

Or take Dr. Martin Luther King.  How about a rock musical portraying him as a drug addict and played by Korean girl?  Would not the black community conclude we were being intentionally derogatory to Dr. King and making a statement about Dr. King’s values and the value of the Civil Rights Movement he led? 

The point is this:  the new Jesus Christ Superstar is being reprised in this way as part of a concerted attack upon the Christian West. In this it differs from its 1970 original.

The 1970 musical album made a splash not just by riding the coat-tails of the Jesus People, but also because it was just a bit daring.  Some Christians, like the Sunday School teacher of an Anglican church I was attending then, used it in her Sunday School class because she though it was a way to interest the young people in the story of Jesus. 

Okay, the original was a bit outré but was not intended as an attack on the Christians.  After all, Rice and Webber weren’t saying anything weirder than some liberal theologians were saying at the time.  They were just using rock music to say it.  The whole thing blew over soon enough and then came such enduring cultural epics as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  (Note: this is sarcasm.)

So, given the ho-hum quality of the original, why drag it up fifty-five years later from its deep and hoary cultural grave?—precisely because it can be a vehicle for cultural attack, for inverting and subverting Christian values and making another aggressive hit in the ongoing culture war centered on gender. 

Indeed, Jesus Christ Superstar, the text of which makes contradiction of the Gospel version its central concern, was the perfect instrument.  Godspell from the same era (yes, Google it too if you don’t know it) would not have worked half so well, given its largely appreciative take on Jesus.

So, what should be our response to this?  Not actual violence, certainly.  But verbal protest for sure.  The intended blasphemy, however hotly it may be denied by Erivo and company, should be identified and called out.  One thing is certain:  to do nothing is to ask for more of the same.

And let’s be clear:  the blasphemy will not end with Jesus Christ Superstar.  I have already seen on Facebook a T-shirt image of a woman dressed as a nun on all fours using a crucifix…how to say this… “untraditionally”.  And that’s not the worst.  I refrain from giving other examples or even giving the links to them; Ephesians 5:12 and all that.  What is indisputably clear about the T-shirts is that these things were intended to be as blasphemous as possible.  Note again please: these things are available now on T-shirts. One asks:  where in 2025 would you wear such a thing?  To a showing of Jesus Christ Superstar?  To its cultural sequel?  Stay tuned.  It is true that the Erivo remake is a new low.  But we have not hit bottom yet.