That's why they cast a queer black woman to play Jesus. 

According to Deadline, Cynthia Erivo will play Jesus in the upcoming stage production: 

Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo will play the title role of Jesus Christ Superstar at a Hollywood Bowl presentation of the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical this summer.

Performances of Jesus Christ Superstar will start on August 1 and run through August 3. Additional casting will be announced at a later date. Sergio Trujillo directs and choreographs, with Stephen Oremus serving as musical director and conductor.

Erivo previously portrayed Superstar’s Mary Magdalene in the two-volume all-female 2020 concept album Jesus Christ Superstar: She Is Risen. As Magdalene, Erivo performed “Everything’s Alright” and “I Don’t Know How To Love Him.” As Jesus, she’ll sing such numbers as “Hosanna,” “The Last Supper” and “Gethsemane.”

If you're wondering why her, there hasn't been any official reasoning given by cast or crew as of this writing, but I think it's not hard to imagine why they want to cast Erivo. 

For one, after the breakout success of "Wicked," she's become something of a star, especially in the musical and theater scene. So she has star power, but that wouldn't be enough. This performance has to be explosive, and few things draw the eye more than controversy and outrage.  

This is the first Hollywood Bowl musical since the pandemic. Many theaters took a large financial hit from the COVID closures, so this return needs to be as big of a draw as possible, and that includes eyeballs well before the production is put on in August. 

Let's also remember that Hollywood isn't the biggest fan of Christians, especially right now. Christianity has often been a punching bag for Hollywood, and after the election of Donald Trump, it's not a long shot to say that they're feeling especially uncharitable, to put it lightly. 

Put it all together, and you have what is, admittedly, a smart marketing strategy. 

You announce the return of the Hollywood Bowl, then to draw even more eyeballs to the event, you announce that a black, queer woman is going to be playing the role of Jesus in one of the most popular musicals of all time. This will undoubtedly make Christians angry — which it has — and you automatically get free advertising and great PR to theater goers all over the nation. People will attend to see Erivo sing dressed in drag as the savior of mankind that many of them either don't believe in yet obsessively mock. 

The marketing strategy might actually be solid, but I wouldn't exactly say it speaks volumes about the confidence of those putting it on. Either that, or it speaks to their hatred of Americans. I'm not entirely sure if there's an in between here.

The question on my mind is, why do something that is guaranteed to outrage people with this casting choice? This implies that there isn't a lot of confidence that this production would have been well attended, or drawn the hoped-for attention, without that controversy. Are they not confident in their own ability to entertain and put on something spectacular that could exist on its own merit? Are they that desperate? 

It feels like this casting decision was done out of fear. 

The only other option is that they did this because it's a way of getting back at those dastardly Christians for winning in 2024. They'll show those conservatives in flyover country a thing or two by making their beloved sky daddy into a queer black woman. 

It could be neither, it could be both, but I have a hard time thinking it's not either. Clearly, Erivo was not the best casting decision they could have made. This is a miscast that looks, feels, and sounds entirely intentional, and if it waddles, swims, and quacks like a duck...

The point is, they want you, my Christian brothers and sisters, to be furious and to rage against them. They're either feeding off it to boost their production's popularity, or it's scratching their own bigoted itches. Either way, it doesn't speak well for the quality of the production if this is what they're doing to get people to look.