No Shaun King, depictions of Jesus as white is not White Supremacy.


              With all the craziness going on the United States and the tearing down of statues and monuments, activist Shaun King has come out against “white depictions” of Jesus, stating that it is a form of white supremacy (https://twitter.com/shaunking/status/1275106946916499456?lang=en). He has also unfortunately allegedly received multiple death threats over this tweet, which I do not condone in the slightest. What I want to do, is look at the content of his tweet, and see if there is any reason to think that depictions of Jesus as a white man are any form of white supremacy. Spoiler alert, Mr. King is grasping at straws here, as best as I can tell. We are going to look at artwork from around the world and show that Jesus, and sometimes Mary, are depicted as the ethnicity of the time/culture. I acknowledge that there are some denominations that are uncomfortable with visual depictions of Jesus and we could have avoided the problem altogether, but alas, here we are.
              Through my interactions with fellow Christian apologists who have looked at this issue as well, the reason we have primarily white depictions of Jesus in the west are because of how the artists got started. Plenty of depictions of Jesus or other holy figures will represent the cultures of the artists that painted them, simply because the models for the artwork were from that culture. Tim McGrew was kind enough to provide multiple portraits and statues of Jesus depicted in other cultures like Native American, Traditional African, and Japanese. I will provide these examples below.







              So if we have artwork that depicts Christ and other religious figures as that cultures’ ethnicity, should we accuse those cultures of supremacy as well? I don’t think so. A much simpler explanation I think, would be that the artists pulled from their experiences and cultures to describe the divine. Unfortunately, this tweet from Shaun King seems to have helped catalyze a large anti-Christian movement, where churches and church goers are being attacked around the world. Pray that cooler heads will prevail and that we are able to help those around us see the love of Christ, rather than lash out in the same manner that we are being attacked. May God bless you and have the rest of your day.
References:
Thanks to the CAA: Christian Apologetics facebook group for the resources and great discussion on this topic, especially Dr. Tim McGrew for the artwork.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdDvKSNbLNI&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR28_JnH8d95QfQuX4kIoul505qXZ7FdZVx1hDpGTQ1M46OLAYJ6w5atWX0
 https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Through-Centuries-History-Culture/dp/0300079877


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