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One of the book's most compelling chapters traces how Jesus movies reveal more about their era than about Jesus. Nichols does not even spare Mel Gibson from critique for his film The Passion of the Christ. Gibson borrows from extrabiblical sources to portray Jesus' upbringing where the Gospels are silent. The flashbacks help Gibson illustrate the agony Mary endured while watching her son die. Nichols is especially disturbed by Gibson's decision to dwell on Jesus' flogging. The Gospel writers, by contrast, conspicuously chose not to share many details about Jesus' crucifixion. Yet Nichols does not argue that Gibson exaggerated the torture. And Nichols fails to observe that there was little need to explain crucifixion to churches in the Roman Empire that understood the process all too well. Compare this situation to our own day, where the central Christian symbol has surrendered its irony to mass-produced necklaces.

Nichols rightly observes that we cannot expect Jesus films to tell us all we need to know about the Savior. The genre is fraught with so many problems, Nichols argues, that movies with messianic themes such as The Matrix can more effectively trace the arc of redemption. Even so, we should not expect too much from any movie.

"The Passion can portray the violence of the crucifixion, but it can't portray the break in the eternal fellowship of the Trinity, the break in the divine union between the Father and the Son as the Son bore the wrath of God for the sin of humanity," Nichols writes. "It's not Gibson's fault. No director can pull it off."

Nichols should be commended for venturing into mass-market evangelicalism, territory where few theologians dare tread. Indeed, the growing divide between evangelical scholars and laypeople contributes to the problem Nichols laments. If evangelicals are learning the meaning of Christmas from VeggieTales, then maybe our theologians should take a break from the latest academic volume and scout the competition. Like Nichols, they might be shocked by what they find. They may even agree with Nichols that the series' emphasis on imitation over incarnation resembles old-school liberalism more than the gospel.

While often humorous, Nichols can't completely avoid snobbery toward these popular expressions. And his impossibly broad vision for the book leaves some gaps. He writes about the "frontier Jesus" of Western expansion in the 19th century, but he does not document this observation.

Nevertheless, Nichols has written a much-needed companion to recent surveys such as Stephen Prothero's American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. As an evangelical scholar, Nichols suggests how to resist the temptation to cast Jesus in our own image. Rather than beginning with our experience, falling back on tradition, and only then turning to Scripture, we should reverse the order.

Readers who do not share Nichols's particular views can still appreciate his loyalty to a theological confession that exalts the God become man, Jesus Christ. They will agonize with Nichols that evangelicals don't seem to get the joke about the infamous "buddy Christ" figurine. They just might lose control when they read about Golgotha Fun Park.

"How ironic it would be if American evangelicalism reduces its message to such a saccharin-sweet package, not to keep up with religious pluralism or because of some philosophical or theological shift but merely because it falls victim to its own commercial success," Nichols muses.

Focused for so long on the enemy outside, evangelicals may now face a far more dangerous foe: themselves.

Collin Hansen is a CT editor at large and author of Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists.

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September (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52