10 Weirdly Hot Pinterest Jesus Drawings, Ranked By Weirdness and Hotness

Amanda Killian
6 min readSep 1, 2018

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Did you know that if you break beneath the surface of Weird Christian Mom Pinterest, you find another, crunchier sublayer of images? That’s right! I found an entire Pinterest board devoted solely to pictures of Jesus that can be described both as “hot” and “weird as hell”! As someone with no sense of shame and an Art History degree, it’s my duty to turn these images into a bad listicle for you, free of charge, before someone else with no sense of shame and an English degree gets paid to do so first.

Disclaimers:

  1. I am a lesbian, so my metric for “hotness” has much more to do with how much blue steel and muscular forearm these Jesus-es are objectively serving. I do not want to personally bone any of these Jesus paintings. I tend to appraise men sort of how I appraise a nice golden retriever: on how well-behaved and well-groomed they are.
  2. Is this heresy? Maybe. But I feel like Jesus would also have an issue with the Pinterest board I took these from, so who cares!
  3. It should go without saying, but all of these are gonna be White Jesus. Historically Accurate Brown Jesus wants nothing to do with this, as is only right.

On to the rankings!

10. Smooth, Paternal Disney Prince Jesus

This one wouldn’t be as weird if the brushstrokes didn’t remind me of those freaky deep thought computer algorithm paintings. Also, this Jesus looks like a cross between Jason Momoa and literally any dude you’d find on Icelandic Tinder. It also introduces a favorite sub-genre I’ve noticed exists within these images, which is “Jesus is a better, hotter dad than your husband.”

9. Uncomfortably Smug Pierce Brosnan Jesus

Does this Jesus look exactly like middle-aged woman heartthrob Pierce Brosnan? No. But he has the exact energy that Mr. Brosnan brought to the first ‘Mama Mia’ movie, and he gets points for that. So squinty! So smug! He’s going to leave his adult children for you, just before bursting into the most uninspired cover of Abba’s “ S.O.S.” that anyone has ever heard, before or since.

8. Pensive Republican Country Star Jesus

To be clear: All of these paintings look like they’re the type of male country star who actually grew up in central Pennsylvania and owns three different boats. But this one…this one looks extra conservative. He’d be perfect fodder for one of the first few seasons of The Bachelorette. This Jesus has a look that says “Hey, girl. You got a lifestyle blog that needs bankrolling? I’ve got you. Just let me be passive-aggressive to innocent minority members of the service industry who I’ve decided don’t belong in this country, and you’ll have my heart forever.”

7. Anatomically Confounding Homoerotic Aquatic Rescue Jesus

Whose hands are those? Whose bicep is that? Is that a robe or an arm? When being rescued from drowning, is it important to lose track of where your body ends and where Jesus’s begins? Is this what Freud meant when he talked about “the oceanic feeling?” Why does this image remind me of the phallic party mansion flyer from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Questions abound, but I guess I’m not supposed to let go of God’s Hand while I’m asking them.

6. Extremely Ripped Rustic Carpenter Jesus

With arms to rival those of Sufjan Stevens himself. Bonus points to whoever digitized this for adding a totally unnecessary vignette to the image. All the soft focus in the world couldn’t distract us from those tan, vascular forearms! (Do straight women like tan, vascular forearms? Who knows. I’m sure somebody does.)

5. The One Where Jesus Looks Exactly Like The Crying Cat Meme

You know the one.

4. Power Pop Mosaic Fem-Adjacent Jesus

I’m really into this one, both because of how rosy and tender this Jesus looks and because he ALMOST has facial features that seem straight out of a 2nd century Coptic portrait, which would have been…not historically accurate, but at least in the ballpark. However, it’s pretty clear that the artist panicked at the last second and decided to add that tinge of caucasian basicness to his overall vibe, landing us squarely in “Bearded Troye Sivan” territory. Extra points for that floaty, flirty shroud he’s wearing.

3. The Jesus That Most Resembles Jonathan Van Ness

Can you believe?

2. Absurdly Homoerotic High-Quality Interracial Couple Jesus

This one gets points for sheer, unintentional horniness, but loses them because I can’t actually see if Jesus himself is super hot and weird in this one. However, his forearms are even more vascular than those of Extremely Ripped Rustic Carpenter Jesus, and just look at how tender this composition is! The little bit of hip muscle peeking over the jeans of whatever hot guy Jesus is saving! The fact that the artist managed to make flowers look kind of phallic! The fact that despite his superior technical skill, the artist couldn’t quite land the plane on making “rapture” not look like sexual frustration! I love this weird-ass painting and I hope the guy who made it is secretly trying to get the Jesus Painting market into hunk4hunk softcore.

1. Smoldering, Anachronistic Galaxy Hands Jesus

Here’s a fun pseudo-art historical fact: it’s pretty easy to tell when one of these bad Jesus paintings was made. The Waner Sallman Jesus is probably the one that exploded the trend of commercially available devotional images, but by the 60s, it was a free-for-all on weird, white, mass-printed Jesus paintings. When photorealism and larger-than-life fantasy painting both got big in the ’80s, the Jesus Painting industry really felt it, and there was a LOT more of what I’d call sci-fi pulp action hero Jesus. 90’s Jesus has the pre-digital tenderness of a Meg Ryan love interest, and ’00s Jesus looks like your average Bush-era Republican heartthrob until the moment people find out about digital art and everything goes crazy.

But this guy? Hoo boy. I have no idea. I literally can’t place him. The face is pretty ’90s in a sort of sensitive Keanu Reeves way, but the brushwork says early ’80s, and yet there’s this wild digital overlay to the whole thing that looks like it can only be a photoshop brush. In addition, there’s something about this Jesus that looks like he could maybe serve you overpriced craft beer in an obnoxious New England microbrewery. Why are his eyes so soulful? Do I have to look at this image while on acid to really “get” it? I could look into this painting’s history, but that would counteract the low-res mystery of the Hot Jesus Pinterest Culture.

To be honest, I don’t want to know. I just want weird, hot Jesus to guide me to the next astral plane, or at least direct me to whatever shitty IPA his microbrewery is promoting so I can get drunk and forget all of these bearded men I just had to look at.

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