Baptist News Global
Sections
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Curated
  • Storytelling
    • Faith & Justice >
      • Charleston: Metanoia with Bill Stanfield
      • Charlotte: QC Family Tree with Greg and Helms Jarrell
      • Little Rock: Judge Wendell Griffen
      • North Carolina: Conetoe
    • Welcoming the Stranger >
      • Lost Boys of Sudan: St. John’s Baptist Charlotte
      • Awakening to Immigrant Justice: Myers Park Baptist Church
      • Hospitality on the corner: Gaston Christian Center
    • Signature Ministries >
      • Jake Hall: Gospel Gothic, Music and Radio
    • Singing Our Faith >
      • Hymns for a Lifetime: Ken Wilson and Knollwood Baptist Church
      • Norfolk Street Choir
    • Resilient Rural America >
      • Alabama: Perry County
      • Texas: Hidalgo County
      • Arkansas Delta
      • Southeast Kentucky
  • More
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donate
    • Associated Baptist Press Foundation
    • Planned Giving
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Advertising
    • Ministry Jobs and More
    • Transitions
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions and Permissions
Donate Subscribe
Search Search this site

What if white Christians had a more realistic image of Jesus, a dark-skinned, religious-minority refugee?

OpinionLaura Mayo  |  December 4, 2019

My neighborhood in Houston, Texas, takes the holiday season seriously. Arches cross over the streets. Houses compete for wattage to power Christmas or Hanukkah lights. A baby Jesus can be seen on almost every corner: Jesus in plastic and Jesus in painted wood; Jesus held by Mother Mary and Jesus lying in the hay.

One thing these neighborhood versions of the Christ-child have in common is their coloring. Every Jesus is white. Some even have blond hair. I wonder how things would be different if our modern renditions of Jesus made him look like the Middle Eastern Jew he was.

I think of my friend Nafisa. She wears a hijab. Nafisa looks to me the way I imagine Mary might have looked, especially when she wears light blue. Every picture of the manger scene I saw as a child had Mary with a light blue head covering. Nafisa was leery of becoming friends with me. Her experience of Christians, and Baptists in particular, has not been positive.

The first time I met her was at an interfaith gathering. I explained that I am a Baptist minister. She confronted me: “I know many Baptists. Christians talk a lot about this Jesus and his love, and then these same people are evil to me. You see my hijab. Just this week at Target a man saw me walking into the store and waited on me. As I came inside the doors he began to yell at me, calling me trash and filth, telling me to leave. He spat at me. Is this the love of your Jesus?”

“What if the sins Jesus saves us from don’t have anything to do with gender identity, sexual preferences, race or class?”

Her words filled me with shame: my shame that anyone would treat her so cruelly; shame that her perception of Christians, of Baptists, of me, was of people who talk about love and then spit on Muslims. I wanted to close my eyes and shut out the horror of her words and her experiences. Instead, I held her gaze and apologized. I said how sad I was that anyone would be so cruel. I said she was right that Jesus did teach love and that I couldn’t understand how people who claimed to follow him could be so dehumanizing. I said I was sad, that I was sorry and that I wanted her to be safe and to feel welcome.

I wonder if such mistreatment, hatred and violence would happen, especially in this time of year, if we had a more realistic image of Jesus. I don’t know that it would solve everything, but if the man who attacked Nafisa had noticed that she looks more like Jesus’ mother than his own mother likely does and that Nafisa’s young son looks more like Jesus than his own child does, could he hate her? If we put a dark-skinned Mary, Joseph and Jesus on our Christmas cards, coffee cups and front-yard manger scenes, would it change anything?

Ann Belford Ulanov in Picturing God tells us that without intentional intervention, children in our culture image God as an old white man. This image reigns unchecked unless it is countered with other God images. The idea that God is an old white man is reinforced by our images of Jesus. The vast majority of the artistic renderings of Jesus seen by most Americans depict him with pale skin, light brown hair and often blue eyes. You only need to think of the paintings, movies, TV mini-series and stained glass windows you have seen to know this is true.

As BNG opinion contributors Alicia Reyes-Barriéntez and Greg Jarrell have noted, many of us, without conscious intention or awareness, have become disciples of a white Jesus. Not only is white Jesus inaccurate, he also distorts our connections to the stories of Jesus and the stories of people of color.

Scholars and theologians debate about just how dark Jesus of Nazareth’s skin was. Princeton biblical scholar James Charlesworth notes Jesus was “most likely dark brown and sun-tanned” (The Historical Jesus: An Essential Guide, 2008). The late theologian James Cone wrote: “The ‘raceless’ American Christ has a light skin, wavy brown hair, and sometimes – wonder of wonders – blue eyes. For whites to find him with big lips and kinky hair is as offensive as it was for the Pharisees to find him partying with tax-collectors. But whether whites want to hear it or not, Christ is black, baby, with all of the features which are so detestable to white society” (Black Theology and Black Power, first published in 1969).

JESUS MAFA. The birth of Jesus with shepherds, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

While shades of brown are debated, it is clear that Jesus was not white. The earliest depictions of an adult Jesus showed him with a brown complexion. But by the sixth century, some Byzantine artists started picturing Jesus with white skin, a beard and light hair parted down the middle. This image became the standard.

In the colonial period, Western Europe exported its image of a white Christ worldwide, and white Jesus often shaped the way Christians understood Jesus’ ministry and mission. Some 19th-century Christians, eager to justify the cruelties of slavery, went out of their way to present Jesus as white. By negating his true identity as a dark-skinned, oppressed minority, slaveholders were better able to justify the master-slave hierarchy and forget Jesus’ ministry to set the oppressed free (Luke 4:18).

Our dominant, white Christian culture has white-washed Jesus. Instead of expanding our understanding of those who are different from us (including many who in fact look more like Jesus than we do), we have replaced them and their stories with a light brown-haired, blue-eyed lie.

We didn’t stop at white-washing, though. Not only was Jesus not white, he was also, as a Jew, part of a religious and ethnic minority in the Roman Empire. Jews were marginalized by Romans, Greeks and other non-Jewish groups in many imperial cities. As an infant, Jesus was the target of ruler-sanctioned violence and his family fled to Egypt as refugees. Joseph and Mary fled because of the gender of their firstborn. The lives of Jewish boys under age two were threatened by the empire. Jesus was a dark-skinned, religious-minority refugee whose family fled persecution because of his gender.

“Some 19th-century Christians, eager to justify the cruelties of slavery, went out of their way to present Jesus as white.”

The story of the birth of Jesus as it’s recorded in the Bible also comes with a significant amount of sexual scandal. In the genealogy that begins the Gospel of Matthew and leads directly to the Christmas story, Tamar appears. Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute in order to conceive a child with her father-in-law, Judah, in a desperate attempt at justice and security. Rahab is the next woman listed, and while she saved the Jewish spies and was crucial in the campaign to obtain the promised land, she is most remembered for being a prostitute. Ruth is named. She seduced her way into marriage and security in order to care for her mother-in-law, Naomi. Bathsheba is not named but is listed as the wife of Uriah. King David “took” Bathsheba and then plotted to have her husband, Uriah, murdered. The last woman mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus is Mary. Mary was pregnant before the wedding.

Jesus in the popular imagery of America’s white religious culture – the light-haired, blue-eyed, untainted, popular evangelist – bears almost no resemblance to the stories about Jesus in the Bible. What we find in our sacred stories is a dark-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired Middle Eastern child born amid sexual scandal; ostracized for his family’s religion; persecuted because of his gender; friend to tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners and other outcasts; who grew up in Nazareth. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

How would Nafisa experience Christians if those Christians saw a manger scene on every corner with dark-skinned refugees? If, as Christians sang “Silent Night,” they remembered that Jesus with his parents fled from the Middle East to Africa in order to escape persecution for Jesus’ gender, could they really say hate-filled words about, and advance unfair and cruel treatment of, LGBTQ persons? Would racism continue and, in many places, now thrive if those who hate people for no reason beyond their skin tone knew we follow a black Christ?

“She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins,” Matthew and Luke tell us.

“While shades of brown are debated, it is clear that Jesus was not white.”

What if the sins Jesus saves us from don’t have anything to do with gender identity, sexual preferences, race or class? Or, actually, what if they have everything to do with those distinctions? What if Jesus embodies the groups that are so often marginalized and oppressed? What if Jesus embodies refugee, religious minority, dark skin, poverty, sexual scandal and persecution for gender identity? What if Jesus saves us from our sins of racism, classism and Islamophobia and other forms of xenophobia?

What if the saving grace of Jesus is meant to deliver us from the hell we create with our hate?

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)

OPINION: Views expressed in Baptist News Global columns and commentaries are solely those of the authors.
Tags:racismhuman sexualitygender identitywhite JesusxenophobiaJesus as refugee
More by
Laura Mayo
  • Get BNG headlines in your inbox

  • Featured

    • The state murder of Tyre Nichols

      Opinion

    • Armie Hammer links his sexual excesses as an adult to his abuse by a youth pastor when he was 13

      News

    • Three images to remember Tyre Nichols

      Opinion

    • U.N. World Harmony Week is only seven days but must last all year, speakers say

      News


    Curated

    • Via jokes, ChatGPT chooses which religious traditions and figures deserve respect — and therefore what counts as ‘religion’

      Via jokes, ChatGPT chooses which religious traditions and figures deserve respect — and therefore what counts as ‘religion’

    • A brief history of the Black church’s diversity, and its vital role in American political history

      A brief history of the Black church’s diversity, and its vital role in American political history

    • “Left Behind: Rise Of The Antichrist” Is The Latest Installment In The Apocalyptic Thriller Franchise. It’s Nothing More Than Evangelical Make-Believe

      “Left Behind: Rise Of The Antichrist” Is The Latest Installment In The Apocalyptic Thriller Franchise. It’s Nothing More Than Evangelical Make-Believe

    • Antisemitic flyers could spur action on proposed Georgia law

      Antisemitic flyers could spur action on proposed Georgia law

    Read Next:

    PC(USA) committee lambasted for choosing a ‘text of terror’ for ordination exam

    NewsMark Wingfield

    More Articles

    • All
    • News
    • Opinion
    • Curated
    • How a medical emergency during worship showed love in action

      OpinionZach W. Lambert

    • U.N. World Harmony Week is only seven days but must last all year, speakers say

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • The historical significance of ETBU acquiring B.H. Carroll Institute

      AnalysisMark Wingfield

    • Three images to remember Tyre Nichols

      OpinionJulia Goldie Day

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • The state murder of Tyre Nichols

      OpinionLisa Sharon Harper and David Gushee

    • Armie Hammer links his sexual excesses as an adult to his abuse by a youth pastor when he was 13

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • ‘I remember repeating to myself: “I have the right to be here.”’

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Lyell asks Alabama court to dismiss Sills lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • PC(USA) committee lambasted for choosing a ‘text of terror’ for ordination exam

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • BCMD executive director, also a NAMB vice president, resigns due to ‘moral failure’

      NewsMaina Mwaura

    • Title 42, congregations and the sojourner

      OpinionSean Powell

    • SBC Executive Committee member once again criticized for sexually crude social media posts

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • The truth about police brutality

      OpinionJames Ellis III

    • In Ukraine: ‘We cannot just preach like we did before the war’

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • TikTok trends and three questions you and your church should ask this year about rest

      AnalysisLaura Ellis

    • Two churches ‘under inquiry’ by SBC Credentials Committee for platforming Johnny Hunt

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Biblical orthodoxy 2023: Sign or get ‘churched’

      OpinionBill Leonard, Senior Columnist

    • Zimbabwean pastors flee ministry to join more lucrative care work in the UK

      NewsRay Mwareya

    • Jesus and Buddha are talking with me about loving and blessing my enemies

      OpinionH. Stephen Shoemaker

    • Biden administration urged to remove Cuba from list of state sponsors of terrorism

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Why most everything you think you know about global migration is probably wrong

      AnalysisMark Wingfield

    • What did Pope Francis say, and what did he mean, in AP interview on homosexuality?

      AnalysisMallory Challis

    • Transitions for the week of 2-3-23

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Letter to the Editor: Kudos all around for Baptist News Global

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • U.N. World Harmony Week is only seven days but must last all year, speakers say

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Armie Hammer links his sexual excesses as an adult to his abuse by a youth pastor when he was 13

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • ‘I remember repeating to myself: “I have the right to be here.”’

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Lyell asks Alabama court to dismiss Sills lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • PC(USA) committee lambasted for choosing a ‘text of terror’ for ordination exam

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • BCMD executive director, also a NAMB vice president, resigns due to ‘moral failure’

      NewsMaina Mwaura

    • SBC Executive Committee member once again criticized for sexually crude social media posts

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • In Ukraine: ‘We cannot just preach like we did before the war’

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Two churches ‘under inquiry’ by SBC Credentials Committee for platforming Johnny Hunt

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Zimbabwean pastors flee ministry to join more lucrative care work in the UK

      NewsRay Mwareya

    • Biden administration urged to remove Cuba from list of state sponsors of terrorism

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Transitions for the week of 2-3-23

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • ‘Can you imagine looting the religious artifacts that help strengthen the Christian faith from the Vatican?’

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • Panelists discuss how the Hamline University controversy could have been handled better in a diverse culture

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Pope Francis arrives in Africa on a two-nation tour seeking peace amid decades of conflict

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • Museum of the Bible to host Wednesday morning event to pray for God’s judgment on America, and breakfast is not included

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • National Prayer Breakfast gets new sponsorship but still looks like government-sponsored religion, BJC leaders say

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Zimbabwe Theological Seminary names new principal

      NewsBNG staff

    • What happens when church and state merge? Look to Nazi Germany for answers

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Southwestern Seminary student arrested for alleged ‘felony sexual assault’

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Trial date set for Patterson and Southwestern versus Jane Roe

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Faith groups must fight online hate, Interfaith Alliance urges

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Colorado cake maker back in court, this time for refusing service to a transgender woman

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • How a medical emergency during worship showed love in action

      OpinionZach W. Lambert

    • Three images to remember Tyre Nichols

      OpinionJulia Goldie Day

    • The state murder of Tyre Nichols

      OpinionLisa Sharon Harper and David Gushee

    • Title 42, congregations and the sojourner

      OpinionSean Powell

    • The truth about police brutality

      OpinionJames Ellis III

    • Biblical orthodoxy 2023: Sign or get ‘churched’

      OpinionBill Leonard, Senior Columnist

    • Jesus and Buddha are talking with me about loving and blessing my enemies

      OpinionH. Stephen Shoemaker

    • Letter to the Editor: Kudos all around for Baptist News Global

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • Letter to the Editor: Jesus expects us to follow him; Trump expects us to follow him

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • Humor and hope mark the dark journey taken by a creative and brave photojournalist

      OpinionKathy Manis Findley

    • One year of sobriety

      OpinionGlen Schmucker

    • Men’s ministry needs more than, eggs, bacon and football

      OpinionMaina Mwaura

    • The church must show the world a more excellent way of nonviolence

      OpinionRodney Kennedy

    • Church historian Richard Hughes reflects on a lifetime of ‘Troublesome Questions’

      OpinionTed Parks

    • What churches could learn from the Pub Choir phenomenon

      OpinionMike Frost

    • Living into lament: A white response to the killing of Tyre Nichols by police

      OpinionRobert P. Jones

    • Of church cemeteries, pulpit committees, crafts and sweet potato casserole

      OpinionChris Ayers

    • Of Margie, mountains and ‘El Shaddai’

      OpinionBert Montgomery

    • What I learned from meeting Martin Luther King in Louisville and Josie in Hopkinsville

      OpinionBill Thurman

    • On the baptism of our firstborn

      OpinionEmily Hull McGee

    • Has virtual worship actually harmed Christianity?

      OpinionSara Robb-Scott

    • ‘What can we forgive?’: An interview with Matthew Ichihashi Potts on Forgiveness

      OpinionGreg Garrett, Senior Columnist

    • My father’s faith

      OpinionBrett Younger

    • The apology that never came at Bubba-Doo’s

      OpinionCharles Qualls

    • Trump and his allegedly disloyal white evangelical supporters

      OpinionRobert P. Jones

    • Via jokes, ChatGPT chooses which religious traditions and figures deserve respect — and therefore what counts as ‘religion’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • A brief history of the Black church’s diversity, and its vital role in American political history

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • “Left Behind: Rise Of The Antichrist” Is The Latest Installment In The Apocalyptic Thriller Franchise. It’s Nothing More Than Evangelical Make-Believe

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Antisemitic flyers could spur action on proposed Georgia law

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • A brief history of the Black church’s diversity, and its vital role in American political history

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • New effort surveys Sikh students about bullying and school climate in the US

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Civil rights legislation sparked powerful backlash that’s still shaping American politics

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Church of England submits blessings for same-sex couples to fierce debate in Synod

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • GOP Rep. Who Spoke At Pro-Hitler Event Goes After Ilhan Omar Because Of ‘Anti-Semitism’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Psychedelic churches in US pushing boundaries of religion

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Prominent Jewish leaders add to drumbeat of criticism of Israel’s new government

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • At Tyre Nichols’ funeral, VP Harris and Sharpton among those praying and promising reform

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Marvin Olasky Still Wants to Make Journalism Biblically Objective

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Progressive National Baptists to deploy $1 million grant to boost ‘compelling preaching’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Church of England sheds light on ‘shameful’ slave trade ties

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Chinese Christians remain in Thailand fearing deportation

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Black police officers aren’t colorblind – they’re infected by the same anti-Black bias as American society and police in general

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Ohio is investigating a Nazi homeschooling network that teaches children to love Hitler

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Omar says some Republicans don’t want a Muslim in Congress: ‘These people are OK with Islamophobia’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Tyre Nichols police beating video prompts faith leaders to react with grief, goals

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • How Egyptian police hunt LGBT people on dating apps

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • N. Carolina church says it lost nearly $800K in email scam

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • On A Mission To Fill Empty Pulpits: A Couple Addressing The Preacher Shortage

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Second gentleman Emhoff visits Auschwitz, part of a push against antisemitism

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • A Buddhist disaster relief organization offers key support after Monterey Park shooting

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    Conversations that Matter.

    © 2023 Baptist News Global. All rights reserved.

    Want to share a story? We hope you will! Read our republishing, terms of use and privacy policies here.

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    • LinkedIn
    • RSS