Unmasking the Sacred: The Cynthia Erivo Jesus Controversy and the Limits of Reimagining
Written By EEW Magazine Online Editorial Staff
Cynthia Erivo will play the role of Jesus Christ in Hollywood Bowl’s 2025 run of Jesus Christ Superstar. (Credit: Heather Gershonowitz)
**Editor’s Note
In an era when faith is too often dismissed as anti-intellectual or passive, EEW Magazine is proud to publish this bold, reasoned reflection on the Cynthia Erivo casting controversy. We invite readers of every background to wrestle deeply with the questions posed—not just about art or Christianity, but about the very nature of respect, truth, and what we hold sacred in a changing world.
It’s not every day the casting of a musical compels a nation to stare itself in the mirror. Cynthia Erivo, a queer Black British actress and LGBTQ advocate, is set to play Jesus Christ in the Hollywood Bowl’s 2025 run of Jesus Christ Superstar.
For some, this is a triumph, a shattering of glass ceilings, a celebration of representation. For others, it’s a trespass, a violation of sacred boundaries. Indifference is not an option.
This is not just about theater. This is about the DNA of Christianity, the intellectual integrity of faith, and the uneasy contract between the artistic and the holy.
“To erase the historical specificity of Jesus is to erase the very claim that has scandalized and transformed the world: that God entered history, not as a generic symbol, but as a particular man.”
More than any celebrity scandal or political soundbite, this moment forces the question: What is non-negotiable in a pluralistic society? What does it mean to treat the sacred as sacred—not as raw material for cultural remix?
THE REALITY OF JESUS: NOT MYTH, BUT HISTORY
Let’s begin with the facts. Jesus of Nazareth was not a fictional archetype. Roman historian Tacitus, Jewish historian Josephus, and others documented him as a real man, executed by Roman authorities. His maleness, ethnicity, and context—first-century Judea—are not poetic embellishments. They are historical details.
To ignore those realities is not creative interpretation, it’s erasure. No one would dare recast Muhammad, Moses, or Buddha in ways that sever them from their essential identity.
Why is Jesus the only one so easily deconstructed? Is it because Christianity is seen as a safe target, its adherents expected to absorb every cultural blow with quiet grace?
“If everything is up for grabs—even the sacred—what, if anything, is left that’s worth defending?”
THE DOUBLE-EDGED LEGACY OF JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
Jesus Christ Superstar has never been a safe production. Since its 1970 debut, it has courted controversy—set to rock music, centered on Judas, infused with irreverence. Every era has reimagined Jesus: often white, occasionally Black, always male.
Yvonne Elliman, Jeff Fenholt in the original 1971 Broadway production
Defenders argue: this is theater, not theology. Art is meant to provoke, not preserve. But art doesn’t live in a vacuum. Especially not when it invokes the sacred.
Casting Erivo as Jesus is not just another casting choice. It is a declaration, an argument in flesh and blood about who Christ is and who gets to stand in His place. It doesn’t expand the circle. It redraws it entirely.
THE INTELLECTUAL CASE FOR BOUNDARIES
Christianity is often caricatured as anti-intellectual, as if belief were allergic to reason. But the Christian intellectual tradition runs deep, from Augustine to Aquinas, from Bonhoeffer to King. At its core is this conviction: history matters. Flesh matters. God became a specific man in a specific time and place.
NBC’s 2018 Easter Sunday production of “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert” featured John Legend as Jesus Christ. (Credit: NBC)
To universalize Jesus by abstracting away His human identity is to hollow out the Incarnation. This isn’t nostalgia for tradition, it’s a defense of theological and historical integrity. The particularity of Jesus is not a limitation. It’s the point.
THE ARGUMENT FOR REIMAGINING—AND ITS LIMITS
Yet there is a counterpoint. Christianity’s global reach owes much to its adaptability. Across continents and centuries, Jesus has been depicted through diverse cultural lenses—Black, Asian, Indigenous—each emphasizing Christ’s nearness to the marginalized.
Art at its best disrupts, challenges, reframes. If Jesus has long been whitewashed, is it hypocritical to protest when the pendulum swings the other way? Are we defending theological accuracy or defending a distortion that’s simply more familiar?
These are fair questions. But even within artistic freedom, boundaries matter. Not every reinvention honors the truth. Not every disruption reveals wisdom.
A CROSSROADS FOR CULTURE, FAITH, AND RESPECT
This is the heart of the debate: Is everything up for grabs in the name of progress? Are there lines rooted in history, theology, and basic reverence that should not be crossed? Or is the sacred now just another stage prop in the theater of cultural experimentation?
Christians aren’t calling for censorship. We are calling for seriousness. For the recognition that faith is not mere folklore. That Jesus is not a malleable symbol. That reverence for the hallowed is not a form of repression but a sign that we still know how to recognize holiness when we see it.
THE QUESTION THAT WILL NOT GO AWAY
As the lights go up at the Hollywood Bowl, the arguments will continue online, in pulpits, around dinner tables. This controversy won’t end with a standing ovation or a boycott. It will linger because it touches something primal: our longing for meaning, our reverence for truth, our need to know whether anything—anything—is still sacred.
This is the test of our age: Can we be a culture that prizes both freedom and respect, artistry and truth? Can we allow the Christian story to be told with integrity, not just for believers, but for anyone who values history, meaning, and the fragile line between creative expression and cultural desecration?
The world is watching. The line is clear. The conversation is far from over.
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