In America, Jesus Christ is big business. Very big business.
We’ve heard the statistics. Gospel music is now the fastest growing genre of music in recorded history. Christian churches receive nearly $90 billion dollars a year in donations.
And Jesus of Nazareth has personally endorsed every single Republican presidential candidate since 1984. Every one of them.
What’s more, portrayals of Jesus in Hollywood are plentiful and lucrative. Jesus has been depicted in the American cinema, without exaggeration, thousands of times.
If the savior of the world is white and they cared little about the marginalized, then it becomes easy to justify the mistreatment of people of color by proof texting Biblical passages about obedient slaves and cursed Africans.
And Jesus has helped movie directors, movie studios, and actors garner billions of dollars in profits. Just ask Martin Scorsese and Mel Gibson.
Making Jesus a big business is not in and of itself a terrible thing. While religious entrepreneurs turn a profit, the world is exposed to the Son of Man. And there’s a certain amount of nobility and power in controlling Jesus’ image.
But, what if the image of Jesus they allow us to see is not actually Jesus at all?
Let me explain. We’re all familiar with the common conception of Jesus. He’s a rugged individualist, he believes in Manifest Destiny, he endorses capitalism, the death penalty and abstinence. And, of course, he’s white.
Right?
We’ve received this depiction of Jesus for so long, that we simply accept it as an accurate characterization of Christ.
In fact, not too long ago, Fox News anchor Meghan Kelly called both Jesus and Santa Claus “white men.”
But, Kelly, like the popular depiction of Jesus, is wrong. Jesus never endorsed capitalism or the death penalty. He wasn’t a rugged individualist. And, yes, he was a Black man. Not brown, or olive-hued. Black.
And there’s ample historical, biblical, and geographical evidence to support this.
Let’s put aside the miracles and the Ascension and the Transfiguration. While I believe that those things occurred, those things are not dispositive to Jesus’ physical manifestation.
Historically, it is clear that a person called Jesus of Nazareth actually existed. He was born, he did teach a radical message of love and empowerment to followers, and he was crucified by the Roman Empire. Even Jesus’ first-century haters have acknowledged that much in recorded documents.
We can also illustrate that Jesus was born within a lineage of people who would be considered Africans and was taken to Africa to hide from Roman authorities.
How does the Jesus born within an African lineage and hidden in Africa by his parents, manifest the European features our culture insists he has?
No serious historian or theologian would currently support any assertion or inference that Jesus was a “white man.”
So why does this matter? This big business of inaccurately depicting Jesus and his lineage is directly responsible for the much of racism, slavery, and marginalization this country has experienced.
If the savior of the world is white and they cared little about the marginalized, then it becomes easy to justify the mistreatment of people of color by proof texting Biblical passages about obedient slaves and cursed Africans.
Again, it makes for big business, but it’s not true.
Every ethnicity, every gender, and every individual looks for themselves within the image of Christ. It is empowering.
But, not when it’s done at the expense of others.
