What Skin Color Was Jesus

What did Jesus expect like? The many dissimilar depictions of Christ tell a story about race and religion in America. Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey explore that history in their new book, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. The book traces how unlike races and ethnic groups claimed Christ equally their own — and how depictions of Jesus take both inspired civil rights crusades, and been used to justify the violence of white supremacists.

The Ku Klux Klan could not rely on Christian doctrine to justify their persecution and violence, so they had to turn to religious icons. "The belief, the value, that Jesus is white provides them an image in place of text," Blum tells Fresh Air'due south Terry Gross. "Information technology gets them away from actually having to quote chapter and verse, which they can't really do to present their cause."

If Blum had to pigment a realistic portrait of Jesus, he says he wouldn't be white: "I would probably paint him darkly complected, non pure black, more in a kind of calorie-free brownish [color]."

Up until the late 1800s, Blum says Americans were comfortable with Jesus' Semitic roots and depicted him with brown eyes. But as waves of Catholic and Jewish immigrants came to the United states, some Americans "became concerned that it was changing the face of America too much, changing it racially, changing it religiously." In the early 20th century, in that location was an endeavour to distinguish Jesus from his Semitic background. Religious writers and artists who were advocating for clearing restrictions began to depict Jesus with blond pilus and bluish optics.

Interview Highlights:

On how slave owners presented the image of a white Jesus

"When slave owners effort to Christianize their slaves, they bring Jesus in two forms — one is equally a servant, and that's to say, 'Hey await, service is skilful, service is godly, and so your work service is good.' But they also nowadays Jesus as master ... You have to follow his lead to not lie, not steal. But when slaves take this Jesus, how they reconnect the dots is to say, 'OK, well if Jesus is primary, then my earthly principal isn't my only ane, he's not my near powerful one, in fact I have a master to a higher place my master ... and that principal can claiming the slave owner, can teach a higher law.' And then when nosotros get to service, when slaves hear that Jesus was a servant, they say, 'Hey, look a second, he too suffered, he was crucified, but that wasn't the rest of the story. The rest of the story was he was resurrected, and non only was Jesus resurrected, but he resurrected his friends in the story of Lazarus.'

"So for African-Americans who accept death all around them — and non just literal death, only likewise the expiry of families, you know, when you see your wife or kid sent away ... Jesus has resurrection power for him and his friends. And so what slaves do is they basically take those models of chief and of retainer, and they just connect them differently than the fashion the slave masters intended, and they create basically a wholly new form of Protestant Christianity."

Edward Blum studies the history of race and religion in the U.Due south., and is a professor at San Diego State University. His previous books include *Westward.Due east B. Du Bois: American Prophet* and *Reforging the White Republic.* (Iris Salgado/UNC Press)

On how Mormons claimed a sacred America with the epitome of a white Jesus Christ

"Geographically, 1 of the problems Americans had had before Mormonism was they wanted to stake their belief on Jesus, but a Jesus who never lived hither, never lived in this space. And so when the Volume of Mormon has prophecy of [Jesus] and then [has] Jesus here on the American continents, of a sudden America is sacred. ... It precedes Columbus, and the fact that this Jesus is white with bluish eyes — it gives Americans long history; not theft from the Indians, only a reclaiming of the land. And so the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-solar day Saints, they're reclaiming the organized religion, they're reclaiming the land, and they're doing information technology through a white notion of the sacred."

How Joseph Smith explained race in America

"In Mormon theology — and Smith himself would merits he's not explaining any of this, that these are revelations to him from on loftier — that basically physical distinctions like light skin, white pare, night skin, black skin, that those are made past God in function from the Book of Genesis, where after the flood, Noah curses his grandson and, supposedly, his son and grandson so become to Africa. So it seems that Noah's expletive is actually from God, then people of African descent are cursed. Simply as well in Mormon theology, there is a sense that one's peel tone reflects ane'due south pre-this-life sinfulness.

"For Mormons, ane'southward body existed earlier in a pre-life state, and information technology'll exist after our lives — our literal bodies volition — and so when Joseph Smith looked around him and saw Native Americans, when he saw blackness Americans, when he saw white Americans — the revelation told him the lighter the peel, the more blessed one and the less sinful one was in the past. And he actually thought that societies would lighten. And then the more Native Americans, for instance, would bring together the church building and be skilful Latter-day Saints, they would actually lighten over time as part of condign more sacred. But the curse of those [of] African-American descent is intense. Brigham Young, for case, would say that if a white homo was defenseless having a sexual relationship with a woman with any African descent, he should be executed, maybe even beheaded on the spot. So while Native Americans could be redeemed more with fourth dimension, Africans-Americans, people with African descent, were seen actually as the ultimate other."

On when the image of a black Jesus emerged

"During the 1920s and 1930s, we see people out of Due west.Eastward.B. Du Bois' circumvolve drawing Jesus every bit a Southern blackness man who is lynched, basically. And so the second time we see it is during the civil rights movement, during the mid- and tardily-1960s and the 1970s ... that Jesus is more Africanized. He might have an Afro, he might wearable a dashiki. ... Nosotros see the rise of identity politics, and and so making a Jesus who looks like y'all as part of an expression of power, it becomes important — and that'south exactly the aforementioned time that African-Americans are quote unquote 'discovering their roots,' as Alex Haley put it. And so going back to Africa, looking more ... 'African' becomes of import culturally, and so doing that to Jesus happens at the same time."