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speaking His words
Radio host assumes role of Christ for listeners
By Jeff Bercovici
For radio talk show hosts, delusions of self-importance are as much a part of the job as hourly traffic reports and throat spray.
But there's one radio personality in particular who, even by the standards of his profession, seems convinced that everything that comes out of his mouth is Gospel--or at least the next best thing.
His name is Neil Saavedra. His show is "The Jesus Christ Show."
By his own description, Saavedra is a six-foot-four, 240-pound Latino man. A martial artist and former punk rocker, he sports a shaved head, a goatee, earrings and a handful of tattoos.
Every Sunday morning at 8 a.m., Saavedra arrives at the studios of KFI-640 AM, a Los Angeles-area radio station, and adopts the persona of the Son of God.
For the next two hours, he takes phone calls from listeners and weighs in on matters both religious and secular, from abortion and the nature of evil to the Harry Potter craze.
In plain English and in a normal tone of voice, he does his best to answer as he thinks Jesus might when listeners call up seeking wisdom or comfort.
"I use the Bible as a script, but I try to paraphrase a lot so it doesn’t sound like a lot of preachy scripture getting thrown at you," says Saavedra.
Oddly, the man whose job it is to impersonate the Savior hesitates to characterize himself as devout, or even religious.
"Devout is always kind of a creepy word because of the connotations it has. People see it as more fanatical," says Saavedra. "Yeah, I'm a Christian, but I'm a bit rebellious at times. I get frustrated with the church--what I refer to as 'Churchianity.'"
"The Jesus Christ Show" had its genesis, so to speak, in a number of Christmas and Easter segments Saavedra did on another KFI show, Bill Handel’s morning program.
Saavedra, who calls himself "KFI’s token theologian," was hosting a spirituality-themed program called "The Hour of God" when Handel got the idea to have him do a guest spot in the role of Christ.
"My original feeling was, 'Is this going to be blasphemous? Would we be doing it just for yuks?'" Saavedra recalls.
"I told them I would want to be able to play it straight, and they said fine. I thought it was sort of a novel approach."
A little less than a year ago, "The Jesus Christ Show" debuted in its current format, and as you would expect, the show attracted more than its share of passionate critics, though Saavedra says most complaints come from people who have never listened to the program.
Saavedra, who never went to college but has studied religion and philosophy in an academic setting, says his Jesus--or, as he calls him, "KFI Jesus"--is strictly non-denominational.
"Here's the deal: I think there's only one way to see Christ, I really do. There are certain essentials to who he is. It's the nonessentials that we kind of stack onto Christ later that cause the denominational differences."
When presented by callers with thorny questions of religious doctrine or intractable social issues, he defuses them by telling stories and asking questions, much as Jesus himself did, says Saavedra.
"Christ wasn't a real 'Sit down, shut up, let me tell you what to do' kind of guy."
That's not to say, though, that he doesn't take positions. For instance, he criticizes the church for condemning homosexuality more energetically than it does other sins like gluttony, lying and gossiping.
One of the bigger difficulties of playing the part of an omniscient being is that "I don't know" isn't an option. Neither is sounding stupid.
"I can’t break character. It defeats the purpose," says Saavedra. "Trust me, sometimes I would love to. I’m wetting my pants in fear of saying something wrong."
In a pinch, he’ll resort to Deuteronomy 29:29: "Secret things belong to the Lord."
More often than not, though, the callers with the unanswerable questions are seeking compassion rather than logic, he says.
"There are two ways to answer every question: the intellectual/philosophical way and the emotional way. Some people will call up with great animosity and frustration towards God and vent it on me in the character of Christ."
That was the case this past weekend, when all Saavedra’s callers wanted to talk about was the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. Their questions, he says, were "the ones that you’d expect: Why did this happen? Why do bad things happen to good people? Are you trying to wake us up?"
His tough-looking exterior notwithstanding, Saavedra says it’s calls like these that sometimes force him to his knees, weeping, right there in the studio.
"I do the show because, as corny as it sounds, I sincerely love people. Much as they piss me off on the freeway, I love people."
September 21, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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