The Brief History of the Jesus(es) | Weronika Peek

They were unhinged, but compassionate; ruthless, though forgiving; they were valiant leaders ready for anything – and, supposedly, they were all Jesus.

The story of impersonating Jesus is almost as old as Jesus himself. In fact, there were claims about Jesus himself being a copycat and the Biblical version of events simply having recycled the stories from different theologies. After all, Dionysus, Osiris, or Mithras share some of Christ’s most prominent features, such as being born of a virgin or reborn later on. However, each of their stories misses the essence of why Christ has gained such a notable place in the Western culture. His story isn’t so much about death and resurrection. Most of all, it tells us about a man with incomparable leadership skills, uniting people by the sheer power of charisma – and some miracles, of course.

This feature of inexplicable power remains the same in all portrayals of Jesus and is especially visible in pop culture. There are two common ways to frame it. One can be seen with characters such as Neo in The Matrix, whose sole responsibility is to save the world or bring salvation upon the people, even though they may be quite sceptical about why they have to bear such a responsibility in the first place. On the other hand, we have a more “typical” image of a fearless leader who fully understands the necessity of his sacrifice. Think Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia, who not only sacrificed himself for a traitor, but also came back to life to put an end to all evil. Of course, this way of portraying Jesus seems much more majestic and powerful, as it is not flawed with human imperfections, but it also makes Jesus seem less relatable. Every good role model should have a degree of attainability – and when it comes to the role model for all mankind, it is especially important.

This is why most of the religions created by Christ’s impersonators tried to balance between the two. They would include the elements of divine authority, while maintaining that they are able to understand humans so well because they themselves are also human. Usually, their backstory would include a long period of an ignorant, human life, and a sudden moment of awakening which propelled them to become known in the world in order to save it.

Technically, there was some ground to believe Jesus would eventually come back. Relying on the assumption Jesus was both fully God and fully a man, we could believe he had a human soul. Some impostors, such as Carl Browne, used that fact in their argumentation, claiming Jesus’s soul was reincarnated into them. Others, such as the infamous Shoko Asahara, the founder of Aum Shinrikyo, took a step further and claimed they are not only the incarnation of Jesus, but also Buddha and Shiva. Some others did not base their teachings on reincarnation – they would simply say they are the Second Coming of Christ. However, the implausibility of those stories did not matter for Jesuses’ supporters. What mattered was the gravitas and the charisma of the claimants. Let’s look at a few silhouettes of different Jesuses.

Ann Lee

The history of that extraordinary woman started in Manchester, 1736. Ann Lee came from a Quaker background and became known by sharing her visions and messages that were (supposedly) granted by God himself. Her beliefs were strongly shaped by Shakers: the “shaking Quakers” or the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. It was a group led by Jane and James Wardley, who believed the second coming of Christ was nigh. What is more, since Jesus’s first form was male, the second one would logically be female.

The Shakers’ meetings were very dramatic: the members would cry, shake, dance, confess their sins, and even sing in tongues. Ann, being spiritually gifted to an unprecedented degree, made a great impression on the congregation and was soon chosen by Quakers as Mother in Spiritual Things.

Sadly, other aspects of Ann’s life weren’t especially happy. She’d felt great repulsion to sex from a very young age, which is why she’d always opposed the idea of marriage and bearing children. Nevertheless, her father forced her to marry his apprentice, Abraham Standerin. The couple had four children who all died in infancy, which made Ann even more disconnected from family life.

However, a great change was about to happen. In 1770 she received a vision saying it was the sex between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that doomed humanity and that Ann truly was the second coming of Christ. The leader knew she had to act quickly.

Soon Ann decided to flee Great Britain for good. Her preachings needed to reach more people and the Shakers needed a peaceful place to live, without being persecuted by the British police. Her direction was the United States. She took along a small, trusted group of Shakers and her husband, and arrived in New York in 1774, where she established a community in Niskayuna.

The community lived according to the rules of celibacy and equality between men and women. Once there, Ann set out on a four-year missionary tour to spread the word. Unfortunately, her career was cut short by a severe illness. She died in 1784 at the age of 48.

Even though she managed to establish a legacy that would be carried for many more decades, the existence of Shakers nowadays is almost imperceivable: by now, only one village in Maine stayed true to the Shakers’ beliefs. However, Mother Ann Lee remains a cult persona, remembered to this day as the first ever female Jesus.

Marshall Applewhite

History remembers Marshall Applewhite as a delusional fanatic who led 39 Heaven’s Gate followers to a mass suicide, making them believe they would get elevated to a higher plane of existence by extraterrestrials. Still, the story of Applewhite is much more than that.

Though Marshall Applewhite was born a good 200 years after Ann Lee, a part of their spiritual persona stemmed from the same idea: rejecting sexuality. There is some evidence stating that the infamous Heaven’s Gate leader could have been homosexual. In the past he had lost his job at the University of Alabama after engaging in an affair with a male student. As Applewhite grew up in a strictly conservative community, at some point he began to completely shun his homosexuality. Many years later he would require the same from his followers, with several members (including Applewhite himself) going as far as opting for surgical castration. In the 1970s, though, the repression of this part of his identity led him to emotional turmoil alone.

A change came in 1972 when Applewhite met Bonnie Nettles, who became a crucial figure in his life. The twogrew close after it came out they were both interested in the topics of theosophy, eschatology, and Christology. Though Nettles and Applewhite were never a couple, they started living together and teaching people on their new-found ideas. Shortly after their meeting, Applewhite had a vision stating he was the one who would take the role of Jesus in the modern times.

In 1974 Applewhite was arrested for not returning a rented car. Six months in jail made him rethink his beliefs. One of his conclusions was that it was the extraterrestrials who could possibly save humanity and elevate it to a higher plane of existence – the Next Level. He believed Jesus himself was an extraterrestrial who tried to ascend humanity to the Next Level and failed, since humans were not ready for such aleap. According to Applewhite, such an ascension would take place every two millenia, with the next event coming somewhere in the 1990s – and Applewhite being the one to orchestrate it.

Once out of jail, Applewhite reunited with Nettles and began recruiting followers. The main idea of their cult, Heaven’s Gate, was that extraterrestrials visited Earth in the past and would eventually come back to pick up a selected, enlightened group. This Next Level ascension, as Applewhite stated, would come in 1997 with the Hale-Bopp comet. He also allegedly found a way to complete the ascension, which would entail leaving behind everything human, including human bodies. That was when he started contemplating suicide.

On March 19th 1997, the group recorded their final statements to the world. Their deaths followed, from March 22nd to March 26th, with Marshall Applewhite being the last person to go. In his final message he stated that his group did “in all honesty, hate this world”.

Vissarion

One of the most modern “Jesuses” was born in Siberia. Vissarion explained he was sent as a Second Coming of Christ specifically to Russia, as the psychological mindset of the society and geophysical conditions made it easier for him to spread the word. As Vissarion established his church in 1991, just before the collapse of the USSR, the fluctuations in the country encouraged people to look for alternative religious systems.

According to the Jesus of Siberia, he is both the form of a higher, god-like consciousness, as well as the lower, human consciousness. In other words, he arrived at Earth in human “make-up” to explain to people what they need to do in order to achieve salvation.

One of his visions assured him of his Christhood and revealed that his followers should completely abandon meat, tobacco, alcohol, and money. Consequently, in 1994 Vissarion established a communityrun by these principles, called The City of the Sun. The settlement, located in the Taiga, was completely eco-friendly. Its energy was powered by windmills and solar panels, and all of the houses were made of wood. For many years, it seemed the promised utopia to some – until Vissarion was arrested in 2020.

The events surrounding Vissarion’s imprisonment remain unclear. Rumour has it that the local businesses or the Russian Orthodox Church went into conflict with The City of the Sun’s leader. However, the official version provided by Russia’s Investigative Committee states he caused “grievous bodily harm to two or more persons” and used manipulative psychological techniques to inflict harm. Perhaps none of the Jesuses are what they seem. “If you’d come today, you would have reached a whole nation, Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication” says Judas to Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar. It’s easy to believe he’s right: maybe Jesus had simply appeared at the wrong time? Maybe the society nowadays would have understood him better and embraced his teachings? However, that seems like quite a naive statement. Humanity hasn’t changed at all. We’re still gullible creatures, ready to believe in any form of salvation that would give our lives some meaning.

The tragedy of the Heaven’s Gate followers provides an interesting case. The supposed Messiahs of this world are often expected to be crazy, but harmless. Applewhite, on the other hand, was a man with a twisted mindset who had been given a platform to spread his beliefs. However, none of the Jesuses described would’ve made any mark in history had it not been for the supporters who were ready to follow them into the fire. Though the success of “Jesuses” such as Applewhite, Lee or Vissarion is attributed to their charisma, it is as much the work of people who want to believe that “the time has come”. In the end, only human fallibility is to be blamed.

And here we are: the time goes by, it’s 2021 already, and the Second Coming is either nowhere to be seen or present everywhere at once. New Jesuses pop up everyday, luring us by stories of extraterrestrials, reincarnation, veganism, and salvation. Can we believe any of them? And would we believe Jesus if he really appeared among them?

Weronika Peek

Cover illustration: Katarzyna Kocur