Popular Culture Jesus in Martial Arts

I’m going to consider this my May video series. However, for obvious reasons, I’m not putting these videos in my sidebar stream.

There’s a very good chance I’ll offend traditional martial artists or serious Christians with this post. That is not my intent. Since stumbling upon Kung-fu Jesus a while back I’ve not been able to get the idea out of my head. Perusing videos for May I’ve found other versions of combat action Jesus and I’m really trying to make sense of it.

In more than a few academic disciplines this phenomena is already being studied. For example, if you spend some to browsing the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (just click on articles) you’ll see that specialists are studying all aspects of religion and popular culture.

Popular culture is an often-overlooked part of the fundamental religious “quest” and the cultural understanding of “what religion is” in that like “high” art, the popular arts and media not only explicitly portray religion and religious ideas, but also serve the “religious” purpose of conveying meaning in the people and values it represents.

One aspect of this which is related to Christianity is the depiction of Jesus’s face. In fact most cultures re-create the image of Jesus to fit with their own racial identity. Here’s a few examples:

American Jesus by Clifford Davis (available in this book). There’s also Black Jesus and even Hispanic Jesus:

The simple fact of the matter is we really don’t have an authentic image of Jesus. However, most experts will agree that being a Jew from the Middle East, Jesus probably looked something like this. In fact, Jesus continues to make appearances.

Mr Cartwright “got goosepimples” when he noticed what seemed to be the face of Jesus at the top of his bottle of Bulmer’s.

It would also seem that Jesus has extensively studied the martial arts:

• Ninja Jesus
• Karate Jesus
• Professional Wrestler Jesus
• Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter
• Jesus & the Terminator

Less I offend my Jewish audience we also have Jews who practice an ancient Yemenite martial art. Although I question if this martial art was handed down for centuries you have to admit his technique is not bad.

Finally I’ll close this post with my favorite, Kung Fu Jesus:

Jesus has perfected his own Kung Fu techniqe known as “Swing Lo”…

~BCP