kahawa 's review for:

The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America by Paul Harvey, Edward J. Blum

3.0

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This was really interesting, but also somewhat boring and repetitive. I also found the writing to be a bit random and all over the place. It was hard to track where he was going. He also cherry picked examples that he felt captured a whole unproven zeitgeist, at one point even quoting a random 2 year old who recognised Jesus' picture, as if this clearly demonstrated that that whole generation had been influenced by images of Christ. You'd get the impression after reading this book that no one in America's history ever seriously considered that the 'real' Jesus was a middle eastern Jew, but that might not have suited the author's narrative. Overall though it was a fascinating look at how the 'idea' of Jesus and his 'usefulness' in fuelling certain movements were more important to many people than understanding who the real, historical Jesus actually was.