About

Buddy Christ refers to a scene from the Kevin Smith film Dogma in which a cardinal attempts to rebrand Jesus Christ to attract new converts to the Catholic church. The Buddy Christ is a smiling, cartoonish depiction of Jesus Christ who is holding both hands up and giving the thumbs up and winking.

Origin

Buddy Christ first appeared in the film biblical comedy Dogma, which was released on November 12th, 1999.^[2] In the film, a cardinal introduces a group of reporters to a rebranded crucifix for the Catholic church, the Buddy Christ.

Spread

On October 7th, 2005, Urban Dictionary^[1] user Madmann defined "Buddy Christ." The definition (shown below) received more than 270 upvotes in 12 years.

The user defines the character:

"Originally from the Kevin Smith movie "Dogma". In the film, Cardinal Glick, during his "Catholicism WOW!" campaign to move the church towards a younger, "hipper" demographic, suggest replacing the crucifix with a new image of Christ. This version is grinning like an infomercial host, with one hand thumbs up and one hand doing a phony Hollywood "Bang-bang" gesture. Imagine Jesus if he were subject to Neilsen ratings."

On January 13th, 2012, an entry for "buddy jesus" was uploaded to memegenerator.com. From there users published a series of
impact font font image macros. As of January 2018, the site has more than 28,000 examples.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References