On Sunday, comedian-actor John Fugelsang, eschewing comedy for the moment, decided to inject race relations into the Bible, tweeting, “The only white people in the Bible are the ones who executed Jesus.”
The only white people in the Bible are the ones who executed Jesus.
— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) August 9, 2020
This latest effort to negate the idea of Jesus Christ as white (as if his color matters) follows the principal leader of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, saying in June that the West should think again about its depiction of Jesus Christ as a white man, adding that some statues of historical figures in Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey “will have to come down.”
Justin Welby, who was enthroned at Canterbury Cathedral in March 2013, was asked if the “way the western church portrays Jesus needs to be thought about again.” Welby answered, “Yes, of course it does, this sense that God was white . . . ” He noted of churches around the world, “You go into churches and you don’t see a white Jesus. You see a black Jesus, a Chinese Jesus, a Middle Eastern Jesus — which is of course the most accurate — you see a Fijian Jesus.”
Welby continued, “Jesus is portrayed in as many ways as there are cultures, languages, and understandings. And I don’t think that throwing out everything we’ve got in the past is the way to do it, but I do think saying ‘that’s not the Jesus who exists, that’s not who we worship,’ it is a reminder of the universality of the God who became fully human.”
At roughly the same time, during an interview with Fox News, Hawk Newsome, head of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, part of the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter movement, called a Jesus Christ as “the most famous black radical revolutionary in history.”
Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum asked about a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King: “I just want to put up this quote from Martin Luther King, and I’ve heard you talk about Martin Luther King vs. Malcolm X, and you said that he was an anomaly, Martin Luther King. He said, ‘Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, ‘White Power!’ when nobody will shout ‘Black Power!’ but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power. Do you agree with that?”
“I love the Lord,” Newsome responded. “And my lord and savior, Jesus Christ, is the most famous black radical revolutionary in history. He was treated just like Dr. King. He was arrested on occasion, and he was also crucified or assassinated. This is what happens to black activists; we are killed by the government.”
A third example from June, as The Daily Wire reported: Shaun King, the controversial Black Lives Matter activist, called for destroying Jesus Christ statues and Christian churches for their depiction of the “white” holy family, arguing they are forms of “white supremacy” and “racist propaganda” that promote “oppression.”
“Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down,” he tweeted. “They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been.”