Re-examining how Jesus is depicted

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/07/2020 (2295 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Like many other Canadians and Americans, I reacted positively to the removal of statues of Confederate generals and leaders in the U.S. It’s time to see those old symbols of racism go; taking them down is a good first step in promoting healing and reconciliation in that country.

But what about statuary and paintings of Jesus that show him as a white man? Should those go, too?

That’s what some African-Americans in the U.S. are calling for in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

This includes Black Lives Matter supporter Shaun King, who said on Twitter: “I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been. In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went? EGYPT! Not Denmark. Tear them down.”

Added award-winning science fiction African-American author Nnedi Okorafor on Twitter: “Blond blue-eyed Jesus IS a form of white supremacy.”

Both King and Okorafor were reacting to the traditional way Jesus has been pictured for centuries, especially in North America and Europe — as a white, European man, not as the Middle Easterner he was.

For many Christians, the one picture that has come to personify Jesus more than any other is Warner E. Sallman’s “Head of Christ.”

Painted in 1940, the famed image of a very white and brown-blond Jesus was found in many homes throughout the U.S. and Canada. It was in my home when I was growing up.

The image soon spread widely, being found on paintings, prayer cards, clocks, bookmarks and magazines. It could be found in a wide range of churches.

This included Black churches in the U.S., where people like Anthea Butler, associate professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania, saw it as a child.

Sallman’s Jesus was “the Jesus you saw in all the Black Baptist churches,” Butler told Religion News Service.

But, she added, he didn’t look like Black Christians. Instead, Jesus looked “like the people who were beating you up in the streets or setting dogs on you.”

That Jesus sent a message that told Black people “If Jesus is white and God is white, then authority is white.”

Edward J. Blum, co-author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America, would like to see that painting, and others, removed.

“If white Jesus can’t be put to death, how could it possibly be the case that systemic racism is done?” he told RNS. “This is one that just seems obvious. This one seems easy to give up.”

But is it? The angry reaction from some to King after he tweeted out his call to get rid of statues and paintings depicting Jesus as white suggests the answer is no. A survey by pollster Rasmussen Reports in the U.S. found 69 per cent of American adults opposed removing statues and paintings depicting Jesus as white.

One American Christian publication that expressed support for a change in the way Jesus is depicted was the National Catholic Reporter. In an editorial it said King and his supporters have a point.

“As a Palestinian Jew, Jesus was not white, and the ubiquitous depiction of Jesus as not only white, but often blonde-haired and blue-eyed as in the famous Warner Sallman illustration ‘Head of Christ,’ is not without consequences, both theological and psychological,” the newspaper said.

An exclusively white Jesus “not only narrows our understanding of him, it sends a message that connects Jesus to the powerful, not the oppressed.”

It noted one of the uniquenesses of the Catholic experience is the way Jesus, Mary and many of the saints are represented differently in societies across the globe.

But, the paper went on to ask, “how many of us think of these faces in our daily prayer lives? How many of us are confronted with the image of Jesus in a Black body at our parishes? How many of us are uncomfortable with the fact that God chose to become incarnate in a body that was not white, but likely brown?”

The editors did not call for the elimination of depictions of Jesus as white, but for more balance. They suggested dioceses across the country could host art contests, inviting people to create different images of Christ and featuring them in churches in each parish.

“Symbols matter,” they concluded. “The versions of Jesus that white U.S. Catholics see in their parishes will surely influence how they look at their non-white neighbors and whether those white Catholics will stand up to oppose sinful structures of racism… there are at least as many faces of God as there are people on Earth. Our churches should depict the multitude.”

faith@freepress.mb.ca

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