A century later, that question sparked a popular Christian youth movement-and some lucrative merchandise. According to http://www.wwjd.com, 14 million WWJD? bracelets have been sold so far.
No figures are available for all the books, bumperstickers, board games or-and they do exist-WWJD? underpants (which begs the question: What Would Jesus Wear? Boxers or briefs? )
WWJD? isn't the first or even most successful Christian take on "the sincerest form of flattery;" The Imitation of Christ is frequently cited as history's best-selling non-fiction book, second only to the Bible itself.
Frankly, reading just a few sentences of Imitation gives me a rash, so I've adopted an only slightly more attainable role model: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.
Here's a woman who witnessed her husband's horrific public murder, then crawled across the bloody trunk of their speeding limousine-all without losing her hat. What's not to admire?
And it isn't just me. Jackie's life has inspired an opera, an off-Broadway musical, pop songs ("I Want To Be Like Jackie Onassis" by HSR), good paintings and bad novels.
Consider the Jackie-fication of Laura Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show. Or Marge Simpson, the matriarch of America's real first family; as loyal fans know, her maiden name is Bouvier.
On film, "Jackie drag" is invariably the purview of lunatics (The House of Yes) or losers (Love Field), but who says it has to be so negative?
For inspiration, I took up Donald Spoto's new bio, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life. Appropriately, Spoto's previous book was The Hidden Jesus: A New Life, the most luminous life of Christ in recent memory.
Spoto's is the first work touching upon "the spirituality of Jackie Onassis." Hardly surprising: he's a former monk with a Ph.D. in theology. Spoto maintains that Jackie's cryptic "mystique" was in fact a glimpse into her soul:
"It is precisely at this point that the so-called enigma of Jackie is resolved-in her willingness to absorb suffering into her journey, her willingness to grow and change, her refusal to rely on mere fame or social status to provide any depth at all (...)
Jackie developed what might be called a profoundly Catholic sense of things. This sense has nothing to do with matters parochial and is not, ultimately, primarily something traditionally 'religious.'"
This "Catholic sense of things," Spoto continues, "is far more than a static immersion in academic or pious forms. It takes seriously indeed the idea that God has once and for all entered into human matter and experience. Nothing human is outside the order of grace, which carries human destiny forward and provides a way of coping with darkness and confusion. There is no room in authentic Catholic faith for a rejection of the world or contempt for the body."
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