99% invisible just released a podcast on this subject ☞ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/615-your-own-personal-jesus/
The most popular image of Jesus Christ in the world—a white man with blue eyes, wavy brown hair, and a soft, peaceful gaze—comes from Head of Christ, a 1940 painting by Chicago artist Warner Sallman. It’s been reproduced over a billion times, shaping how millions imagine Jesus.
But its dominance also cemented a white Jesus in the cultural imagination. Scholars point out that the historical Jesus, a Middle Eastern Jew, likely had darker skin. Yet Head of Christ reinforced whiteness as central to Christian identity in America. As historian David Morgan puts it, “It gave white Americans a Jesus that was theirs.”
White Jesus predates the '40s by quite a long way. European Christians have been depicting him that way for centuries. I’m pretty sure Americans had a white Jesus before then as well.
Sadly, it’s hard to find accurate depictions of Jesus in the western world.
“Racists prefer to think of themselves as special.”
Imagine if he went to Korea
This Jesus looks like he could just break free from the cross.
You could say - he is crossfit.
He died for our gains
I mean, He did go to Japan
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-little-known-legend-of-jesus-in-japan-165354242/
How Jesus really looked
That’s a terrorist. Deportation right now. My “not at all pedophile president” and his “not at all nazi” friend say this guy woke and wants to push inclusion and equity. Christian, rise up against this disguting plan.
Wtf dude
It’s christian love.
Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying about 9/11
Slap!
You were having that dream where you made the white people riot, weren’t you!?
I just told them the truth.
Are we at the point where the touchiness of 9/11 has worn off and we can actually talk about what involvement the bush administration had in making 9/11 without being called wacko conspiracy theorists?
Those neocons were up to something.
See, the thing I look back on is the non-stop, never ending coverage of it on the news.
It was like they were trying to traumatize people.
He would also be saying it in Aramaic as an illiterate builder (stone worker being more likely than carpenter but the Greek word translates generically).
And there were a lot of early groups (Marcion and all the groups we call Gnostic) who took Jesus’ teachings to mean God from the Old Testament was an evil demiurge God and Jesus’ teachings were to overcome the material world.
With how Christian teachings have coalesced into the Trinity etc it would be really interesting to hear what the historical man himself was actually saying.
How can god be illiterate
He doesn’t call himself God until the gospel of John which was written later than the others. Pretty sure the historical Jesus wouldn’t be claiming to be God at all. That’s just something that happens with religions over time.
