Jesus cleansing a leper, medieval mosaic from the Monreale Cathedral, late 12th to mid-13th centuries. Public domain.
Over the last couple weeks I’ve been reading The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race In America. Without going into too much detail, the book traces the development of Jesus as white in the United States and the contested place of His whiteness. Broadly speaking, when the Puritans came here, they eschewed images, including pictures of Jesus. And in the early days, when Jesus appeared to people, He appeared as light, not as racialized.[fn1]
Little by little, Jesus began to be more embodied in the American imagination; His embodiment emerged roughly (though not entirely) with technology that allow the mass production of pictures and pamphlets. And embodied Jesus began to be depicted as racially white.
Especially after the Civil War and into the first half of the 20th century, His whiteness was often (not always, but often) pressed into the service of white supremacy. Jesus was white because white was better, white was purer, white was worthier.
Again, this outline is very surface-level; the book provides a lot more detail and nuance. But overall, it represents the book’s outline (at least through the Civil Rights movement and the creation of Black Liberation Theology, which is where I currently am in the book).
As a Mormon, the book—and the arc of history it describes—is particularly troubling: it points to Mormonism’s role in creating and perpetuating a white Jesus. Our role was nationally significant; Mormon depictions of Jesus didn’t notably influence others in their perpetuation of a white Jesus. But our art did emphasize His whiteness:
In 1969, John Scott painted his Jesus Christ Visits the Americas. It was an instant hit and features Jesus with blond hair and fair skin. He shows his wounded hands to Anglo-looking Native Americans, who bow, weep, and marvel at his power. The women wear skirts and dresses that come straight from the 1960s, while the men display their muscular physiques. This presentation of the white Jesus and his relationship to white Native Americans became so popular that Mormon leadership had it featured in The Book of Mormon they put in hotel room dresser drawers (254).
Now here’s the thing: we don’t pretend that our artistic depictions of Jesus are actual photograph-like representations of His appearance. In fact, our most popular painting of Jesus—Del Parson’s 1983 painting Christ in Red Robe—has uncanny similarities to the Warner Sallman’s immensely popular 1841 painting Head of Christ.[fn2]
***
My first semester back from my mission, I took the return missionary Portuguese class. In that class, among other things, we read Ariano Suassuna’s play Auto da Compadecida, a play that follows the (mis)adventures of João Grilo, a poor trickster character. Lots of stuff happens and, since I haven’t read the whole thing in more than 20 years, I don’t remember most of them.[fn3]
I do distinctly remember, though, the point where João encounters Jesus. What follows is my (inartful, but roughly accurate) translation of that part:
João Grilo: Jesus?
Manuel: Yes.
JG: But wait, you’re Jesus?
M: I am.
JG: That Jesus that they called Christ?
M: Called, no, that was Christ. I am, why?
JG: Because … I don’t mean disrespect, but I thought you were a lot less burned [my note: “burned” here implies dark skin; Manuel/Jesus is Black].
Bishop: Shut up, brat [note: probably “brat” isn’t the best word, but, while I went literal in the last one, I decided to try to capture the connotation here].
M: Shut up yourself. [Proceeds to berate the Bishop for his hypocrisy and generally bad behavior]
JG: Very nice. You only speak a little, but you speak well. Your skin color could be better, but you speak powerfully.
M: Thank you, João, but now it’s your turn. You’re full of racial prejudice. I came like this today on purpose, because I knew this would elicit a reaction. How shameful! I Jesus, I was born white, I wanted to be born Jewish, how could I have been born Black?
To me, Black or white, it doesn’t matter. You think I’m an American with racial prejudices?
***
About four months ago, the First Presidency informed the church that, to “testify … of our central belief in Jesus Christ,” art in they foyers of all church buildings had to feature Jesus. But not just any art that featured Jesus: church buildings are allowed to choose from a collection of 22 painting reproductions.
All of the paintings church buildings can choose from feature a white European Jesus. In fact, other than one Black boy in one painting, everybody in each of the paintings is a white European.
This is a real, significant problem. And note that I don’t want to overstate the bad intent behind it: I don’t believe for a second that Church leaders chose these paintings out of racist intent. They have almost certainly grown up their whole lives with a mental image of Jesus as a white man. They’re largely products of a culture that includes Del Parson and Warner Sallman and Cecil DeMille’s The King of Kings and all of the other representations and portrayals of Jesus as white.
But here’s the thing: none of those paintings purport to be accurate representations of Jesus. We may not know what He looked like, but we certainly know that He wasn’t European. He wasn’t white as we’ve come to define white. So any paintings we choose to decorate our buildings are meant at best to symbolically represent Him.
To the extent that we’re only willing to represent Him as a white Scandinavian, then, we’re perpetuating a myth of white supremacy, albeit without intending to do so. We’re sending the message that since we don’t know what He looks like, only white skin is good enough to represent our Savior.
It doesn’t have to be that way. If we’re going to have pictures of Jesus in our foyers, let’s have representations of Jesus as Black. We should have representations of Jesus as Asian. As Latino. As Native American. Etc.
Portraying Jesus as exclusively white does real harm. It is confounding and offputting to many who are not white, while it reinforces the superiority of whiteness both to those of us who are white and to believers who are not.
I’ll note that, as an attorney, I recognize the practical issues that (at least in part) likely caused church leaders to choose the 22 pictures they chose. I suspect that the Church owns the right to use those paintings and that it doesn’t have to pay to license the rights to the paintings. For what it’s worth, if that’s true, it’s a circular problem: we reinforce the whiteness of Jesus because, in the past, we created Jesus as white. It’s a self-reinforcing problem
And it’s one we can escape. The paintings we have didn’t emerge from nowhere. In the 1980s, we commissioned Del Parsons to paint Jesus. Today, in 2020, we have a number of talented artists, including artists of color who create religious art with people of color. The Church could absolutely commission new depictions of Jesus, specifically to add to the Gospel Art Library and to the foyers of our buildings.[fn4] The varied depictions of Jesus that emerged would not right the racial wrongs that the Church—and the society in which it is embedded—have participated in. But it would go a long way toward making our Christ-centered foyers more inclusive and inviting to all members and all people.
[fn1] This initial description of Jesus-as-light resonates with early Mormonism: in his First Vision, Joseph Smith saw a column of light with two Personages whose “brightness and glory” defied description. Sixteen years later, when Jesus appeared to Joseph in the Kirtland temple, He was still essentially light:
His were as a flame of fire; the hair of his head was white like the pure snow; his countenance shone above the brightness of the sun; and his voice was as the sound of the rushing of great waters, even the voice of Jehovah;
[fn2] In fact, even the Mormon urban legends surrounding the Del Parsons painting are derivative of stories about the Sallman painting. Maybe you’ve heard the story about the little girl who saw the painting and said something to the effect of, “That’s the man who saved me after the car accident”? (I did once, growing up, during someone’s talk.) The Color of Christ relates that “When first seeing it, one two-year-old exclaimed, “That’s Jesus,” and others remarked, “That’s Him” or “There He is” (209).
[fn3] A subtitled version of the 2000 movie is available on Vimeo.
[fn4] Frankly, I’d go a step further and remove portrayals of a white Jesus from the list of approved foyer art. Why? A couple reasons. First, because members are familiar with it, I suspect that for at least a generation they would largely choose the white Jesus art they’re familiar with. Second, and relatedly, we can all close our eyes and see white Jesus. There’s value in being forced to confront Jesus as different from what we’re used to, if only to remind us that the paintings we grew up with are not, in fact, photographs. (The Color of Christ says that “[o]ftentimes, writers referred to [Sallman’s Head of Christ] as a ‘photograph,’ and one elderly woman claimed that is was ‘an exact likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ'” (209.)