December 2023 - The Color of Jesus
If you’re dreaming of a “white Christmas,” and you happen to be Christian, you’re in luck! Christian iconography and mainstream western culture overwhelmingly centers white people. Centuries ago, Renaissance painters used local residents as models, which may have contributed to this phenomenon. Certainly, most of the characters of Bible stories – Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Mary – are depicted as relatively light skinned. The lightest of all is often Jesus Christ.
Few people promoted a white Christ as much as Warner Sallman. His 1940 painting, Head of Christ, was reproduced over half a billion times thanks to the Madison Avenue savvy of religious publisher Kriebel and Bates. The image of the blue eyed, fair-haired Jesus was distributed on prayer cards by church networks around the world. Folks carried around the image thanks to the “Christ in Every Purse” project endorsed by President Eisenhower. It appeared on pencils, bookmarks, lamps, and clocks hung in courtrooms, police stations, libraries, and schools.
Sallman’s “Protestant icon,” as some called it, crowded out multicultural depictions of Jesus. Tai Lipan, gallery director in charge of the Warner Sallman Collection, said that it was particularly embraced because it seemed like “a school or professional photo of the time making it more accessible and familiar to the audience.” Even Rev. Lettie Moses Carr of the First Baptist Church in Glenarden, Maryland, who gazed at the painting hung by her parents as a Black child thought that the depiction accurately “represented the image of God.” But when doing biblical research as an adult, she realized that it “didn’t make sense that this picture was of this white guy.”
Recent historic research and scientific analysis support a growing consensus that Jesus was definitely “not white.” Joan Taylor, author of “What Did Jesus Look Like?” believes Jesus was “a Middle Eastern Jew, with brown skin, brown eyes and black hair.” Jemar Tisby, in his 2019 bestseller The Color of Compromise, concurred. He added that assuming Jesus was white often “denigrates the image of God in Black people and other people of color.”
There was backlash from angry whites wanting to maintain a pale Jesus. Taylor’s book received indignant and dismissive critiques. Tisby’s The Color of Compromise – while selling well – was condemned by some white evangelical communities. Archbishop Justin Welby, head of the Church of England, who dared to suggest the church should rethink portraying Jesus as white, was called a “disgrace.” One tweet asked, “What is wrong with this man?”
Is such push back related to more violent forms of white supremacism? Professor Vince Bantu at Bethel Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Church believes so. He explained, “I think the image of a White Jesus, it really plays into the hands of white supremacists and that rhetoric that says, ‘we are the superior race,’ or, ‘by the way, this is what God looks like, so we must be the superior race.’”
But there are portrayals throughout history of Christ as a Black man. David Morgan, professor of religious studies at Duke, noted some early images of Jesus “with very dark skin and possibly African.” And many contemporary artists portray a Black Jesus, including Vincent Barzoni (“His Voyage: Life of Jesus,”), Robert Lentz (“Jesus Christ Liberator”), and Janet McKenzie (“Jesus of the People”). Jemar Tisby welcomes greater diversity of representation, explaining that “people are resisting a monolithic vision of Jesus’ embodied self.” This allows more folks from different backgrounds to identify with Christ.
Prof. Bantu believes that a great way Christians can honor God is by embracing “the beautiful racial diversity in which He’s created humanity.” He promotes images of Jesus that look indigenous, Asian, Polynesian, Arab, African and, yes, European. Wouldn’t multicultural portrayals deny white Christian Nationalists power over how we see Jesus?
Bantu favors a “multi-cultural face of Jesus, because he came for all humanity.” Joan Taylor’s Black and Brown associates tell her how much they care about diverse portrayals of the savior. “From what they’ve shared with me,” Taylor explains, “there is a profound sense of relief. Seeing Jesus with brown skin severs Jesus from a link with the global legacy of European authority and dominance.” Besides, doesn’t a Christ of many colors reflect the spirit of love we enjoy during this holiday season?
Further actions:
1) Counter the distorted narrative about the color of Jesus spread by Sallman’s Head of Christ distributed by many widespread networks, such as the Salvation Army, the YMCA, and the U. S. military which made sure many WWII soldiers carried it with them into battle. Offer this article that offers a scientific angle to dispelling this myth.
2) Learn more about the “Black Madonna.” The image is seen throughout the world. Over 400 Black Madonnas have been identified in Europe, especially in Italy of the 13th and 14th century where the Virgin Mary, and sometimes baby Jesus, is depicted having dark skin. There is a Black Madonna from 1508 in the Chartres cathedral. Black Madonnas exist throughout the Middle East, the Caucuses, and Africa.
3) Read “The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America” (2014), where Edward Blum and Paul Harvey write about the horrific 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The bomb detonated by White supremacists that killed four young Black girls also destroyed the white face of Jesus in the church’s stained-glass window. Blum found it striking that this “White Jesus” suddenly “was made a casualty of race war.” When it was rebuilt, it remained White. But a gift from Wales of another stained-glass window featured the image of a Black crucified Christ. As Sandi Dolbee of the San Diego Union-Tribune described it, “His arms are outstretched; the right hand said to symbolize the pushing away of injustice and hatred, while the left hand offers forgiveness. A much-needed message for such a time as this — for all races, all colors.”
4) Appreciate why Edward Blum bemoans the fact that many Christians seem unwilling to give up the image of white Jesus. He said that this is “an example of how far in some respects the United States has not moved.” ”If white Jesus can’t be put to death, how could it possibly be the case that systemic racism is done?” “So the fact that Jesus was made White is a great expression of how much White supremacy needed, and White power needed, a White Jesus. And the ultimate mirror of, ‘I’m not willing to give up a White Jesus,’ that says something powerful about us.” Movies like King of Kings, The Passion of the Christ, The Gospel of John, or Son of God hang on to white Jesus.
NOTE:
This is a follow up a past blog: “Black Santas Matter,” December 2022. and a future blog will explore Black-centric Christian iconography, like at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia.
SOME SOURCES:
How Jesus became white — and why it’s time to cancel that by Emily McFarlan Miller, June 24, 2020
The Indelible Whiteness of Jesus by Mark P. Fancher, November 1, 2023, LA Progressive