5 Realities on Race for the Church (pt 2 of 2)

 

5 Realities on Race for the Church (pt 2 of 2)

I’ll start by assuming that you read part 1.  If you didn’t, I encourage you to check it out.  Part 2 goes in a different direction.  While part 1 focuses on realities on history, I think the other half of the discussion has to focus on subject matter that has sociocultural relevance.  That, and it probably has a tighter connection to the present.  While in part 1 I emphasized race relations, particularly as it pertains to the black/African community in or around the church, here, I’ll try and situate the discussion in more of a multiracial/international cross section, especially as it pertains to culture.  We’ll see how well that goes.  I only have 2 points.

Without further ado…

“Black Jesus” isn’t Necessarily a Political Statement

At the risk of someone misrepresenting my point, let me start with a disclaimer.

I have no idea the color of Jesus’ skin.  I think it’s of very little importance.  My greater interest is who He was, what He did, and who He did it for. While I’m of the school of thought my previous 3 points in part 1 are objective and factual, as they’re a synthesis of history, this next point is a bit more speculative, although I’m hoping you’ll see the point I’m making.

Okay, so that’s taken care of.

I stand by my proposition: Black Jesus isn’t necessarily a political statement.  Even in saying and writing that, I feel like I’m making a political statement, which is absolutely ridiculous.  When we think of pictures of a “Black Jesus”, even as an African man, certain imagery comes to mind.  I tend to think of a Neo ‘Black Panther’, black power, black supremacy, “only buy black”, ‘black people should go back to Africa or at least secede from the United States’, type man or woman.  Suffice to say, highly controversial/political/radicalized black people, and I feel pretty embarrassed to say that.  But thinking of Jesus as black shouldn’t be such a controversial and/or radically political idea.  After all, white (or fairer complexion) conceptions of Jesus tend not to produce those kind of feelings, right?  If I walk into your living room, and I see a big picture of a fair-complexion Jesus hanging on your wall, I don’t assume you’re a white supremacist.

In fact, generally speaking, I would say pictures of Jesus depicted in a fairer complexion are both ubiquitous and “normal”.

There are 2 very important ideas worth highlighting.  The first is pretty obvious.  Observation 1. Africa has very, very rich representation in the scriptures.  For most other geographic regions of the Bible, they go by a different name today than they did back then.  For that reason, we have to juxtapose Biblical geographic references with current ones, to try and triangulate an approximate location as to where things in the Bible actually happened.  It’s worth mentioning that’s not the case for every reference though.  For instance, Ethiopia and Egypt are explicitly mentioned by name in the Biblical text, and they’re mentioned quite frequently.  Both play important roles, albeit in different capacities, in the Old and New Testament.

It’s not like we read anything about Germany, or the Netherlands, or Switzerland, or Portugal, or Great Britain in the scriptures… at least not by those names, anyway.  Spain is mentioned once in Romans (15:24).  Of course, Rome is in Italy, and the ancient Roman empire expanded across much of Europe, including many of the nations I just listed, plus most of the rest of continental Europe, but Jesus wasn’t Roman…  Jesus was Jewish.  And you would have to ask if there were visible features that distinguished Jewish people from their counterparts.  Maybe, maybe not.

But with all the mention of Africa in the Bible, it doesn’t seem farfetched to assume Jesus could be of the darker variety.

That doesn’t sound so contentious to me (to be fair, North Africans, today at least, are very, very fair complexioned.  That said, by definition, they’re still African.).  In fact, it’s worth noting that Jesus and his family fled to Egypt, as refugees, shortly after he was born to protect Jesus from King Herod (Matthew 2).  I’m not entirely sure why God wanted them to go to Egypt for protection (there are other places they could have went to avoid persecution), but it could be possible they blended in well there.  Otherwise, they would have drawn a great deal of attention to themselves in a country of mostly darker-skinned people.  Again, I don’t know if that’s the case, but it’s a thought.

Observation 2. A black person thinking of Jesus as black is natural and to be expected.  I’ll make my point with an example.  I want you to think about Santa Claus.  Santa Claus is a mostly western figure, but that’s not to say he’s not recognized internationally.  If you walked up to a child in Japan and told him about Santa Claus, what race do you think he’ll assume Santa Claus is?  I’m of the school of thought he will assume Santa Clause is either white (American perhaps) or Asian (Japanese, no doubt).  Both, I think, have very important implications for this discussion.

Let’s discuss both cases.

As for the former, Santa Clause as white, I don’t think this is a stretch.  I’ve been around the world, and one of the things I’ve learned is that America is highly, highly regarded, even if Americans aren’t always well liked, per se.  Further, I think in certain parts of the world, people have been conditioned to believe that popular, influential, prominent figures of history will be white or from Western society.  True story.  Everywhere I go in the world, people want to talk in English.  They want to play American music and watch American movies and eat American food.  Say what you will about Americans, but internationally, America is extremely relevant.  For that reason, I think in some ways, people in certain regions of the world are predisposed to think that if you’re a figure of global significance, you’ll probably be white or American (probably both).  Crazy, but that’s my observation.  In that sense, Jesus is a highly relevant historical figure, so Him being white would seem like a good guess.

Let’s deal with the second case as well, Santa Claus as Japanese.  Why would a Japanese child, upon hearing about Santa Claus, assume Santa Claus is Japanese?  Well, the better question is, why wouldn’t he?  That’s what’s most familiar to a Japanese child.  A Japanese man, speaking Japanese… and giving him presents, in Japan.  Why would he think anything other than Santa Claus being Japanese?  Don’t we in the church do something very similar with Jesus? For most of us here, English is our first language. When we read the Bible and read these amazing stories in the Gospel, do you think of Jesus speaking Aramaic?  Do you think of him speaking Greek?  Of course not!  We think of him doing all those amazing things in English!  Interestingly though, that’s not particularly accurate (sorry to burst your bubble), but we do that because it’s what’s most familiar to us.

In the absence of actually being there and partaking in the experience, that’s what our mind does… it paints a familiar picture, which in this case means Jesus speaking English.

In the same way, for someone who’s white, a white Jesus is probably incredibly familiar.  A black Jesus just seems really foreign.  Well, if you’re black, “Black Jesus” probably seems pretty familiar as well, but I think there are 2 important caveats.  1.  Much like in the example with the Japanese boy, I think blacks/African Americans have been conditioned in some ways to think the most influential and pivotal figures in history will be of the fairer complexion, ie. white.  Jesus as black in that capacity just seems like a longshot… if you open up most history books, you won’t see many black people, so why would Jesus be any different?  2.  Jesus as white is more or less the dominant school of thought, even though, for the most part, we lack the information to be able to know for sure whether or not that was the case.  In spite of that, Jesus as black is considered to be some type of radical political statement, even though thinking about unfamiliar things (ie. a historical figure we’ve never seen or spoken to before) in a manner that’s most familiar to us is literally what we do in almost every other situation.

Again, I want to be clear.  I don’t feel a vested stake in the outcome of this discussion because I don’t think the color of Jesus’ skin actually matters.

But, can I be honest? I do think race, in general, matters a lot more in church than we’d like to admit.  If it doesn’t:

 

1. Why is Jesus as white considered to be the norm?
2. Why is Jesus as black considered to be a political statement?
3. Why do I have to preface “Black Jesus” with the qualifier “black”?

Again, I don’t lean here or there, but in the interest of our topic, the church has to come to terms with the reality that Black Jesus isn’t necessarily a political statement (although I acknowledge He can be, in certain situations).

Moving on.

God moved powerfully through the 1^st Century Church… but they had to deal with some race related issues, too. 

We live in the New Testament.  The 1^st Century Church is of extreme significance because they represented the New Testament church in closest proximity to the ministry of Jesus, both geographically and chronologically (Acts 2, Pentecost, took place 50 days after the crucifixion.  We read about it over 2,000 years later).  The book of Acts is all about the Acts of the apostles and the acts of the Holy Spirit, moving in a powerful way to advance The Gospel message.  Don’t be fooled, though.  This church, just like any other, had its fair share of challenges.  There was famine & crippling poverty (Acts 11:27-30), cliques (Acts 6:1-3), and diverging perspectives among church leaders (Acts 15:36-41), but the biggest challenge for these Christians was probably race relations.

Up until the book of Acts, the church consisted mostly of Jews.  The Apostles Paul and Peter didn’t start the ministry to the Gentiles (non-Jews), of which you and I are a beneficiary of, until after Pentecost, well after Jesus died.  My intuition is that the Jews probably saw culture, nationalism, and religion all going hand in hand.  Jewish people practicing their Jewish customs singing their Jewish songs, in Aramaic, to praise their Jewish God. You have to understand for many (if not all) Jews, that was the only version of Christianity they had ever practiced.  For sure it was the version of Christianity that they were most comfortable with.  Then along come Paul and Peter, some time after Jesus was crucified, bent on building a ministry to reach out to the Gentiles.  GENTILES IN THE CHURCH?  It was extremely controversial.  There are several chapters in Acts that are almost exclusively dedicated to highlighting that point (Acts 11 & Acts 15 are great places to start).  Can you believe it?  Paul and Peter had to convince Christians that salvation was for non-Jewish people, too.  Sound familiar?

What was the underlying controversy?  We could dig into the spiritual specifics about Gentiles being ceremonially unclean according to Old Testament law, but I want to dig more into the social side.  The short of it is when you have a homogenous group of people, it dramatically reduces the likelihood for conflict.  You have this Jewish community, and they all speak the same language, come from the same country, have similar values, practice similar customs, and have pretty converging views on who God is and how He should be worshiped.

What happens when you baptize a few Romans?  Their views on the Roman empire and Caesar will almost certainly differ from that of the Jews.  So, you’re adding different political perspectives, for sure.  What if you convert a few tax collectors?  Well, depending on how greedy they were as a tax collector, these may be fairly wealthy people… so your congregation isn’t just a bunch of poor people anymore… so, now you have some socioeconomic disparities among church members. Maybe those tax collectors talk to a few of their friends, and now you have people coming to your church who are slave masters, when previously most of your congregation may have been slaves.  So, maybe a different perspective on social issues like slavery?  Hmmm, sounds like it’s getting tougher to be a unified body of believers.

You reach out to a few Ethiopians, Egyptians, and Persians, and now all of sudden you can’t even have your worship service in Aramaic anymore.  Maybe now you have to do it in Greek (Greek back then was what English is today: a universal, multicultural language), because it’s the only common language among church members.  The nerve of these Gentiles, to even suggest worshiping a Jewish God in Greek!  I’m exaggerating slightly, but this isn’t too far off.  Paul and Peter had their work cut out for them when they had to convince the Jewish community that salvation is for all and the bride of Christ is indeed multicultural.

Can I be honest?  Guys, this isn’t a new problem.  Even in the 1st Century, the church had difficulty managing diversity and race relations.  “Getting back to the Bible”, or getting back to “the basics” doesn’t necessarily remove that challenge, per se.  The 1st Century disciples had to wrestle through this too, and honestly, they made some mistakes along the way… so let’s not romanticize them and pretend otherwise.

It’s hard for us, just like it was hard for them.

If we fast-forward 2,000 years, we’re still getting hung up on some of the same things.  Let’s be honest; black culture and white culture are really different (every culture is different, but understand, this is the dyad I’m focusing on, for now).  We speak differently, interact with each other differently, we grow up differently (I’m Nigerian, so I was raised in a very different capacity than my American counterparts, white or otherwise), enjoy different types of entertainment and music, live in different parts of town, etc.  I’m generalizing a bit, obviously, but I’m sure, on some level, you catch the drift.  Sure, there are differences.

Maybe for church, you want to sing Jesus Culture and they want to drop 100 bars in a freestyle.  The crazy thing is, both of those represent worshipping God.  Maybe you want to get on stage and do a testimony about your life, and maybe they want to do a spoken word or interpretive dance, which they also consider to be a testimony about their life.  Again, both of those represent worshipping God. Maybe for the quarterly social you want to go camping or do a garden party and they want to have a cookout in the backyard. As they say in Thailand, “Same, same, but different.”

**I don’t mean to imply white Christians don’t enjoy freestyles, spoken word/interpretive dance, or cookouts; however, I am drawing attention to different preferences that may manifest across race lines.**

What’s the point?

First of all, I applaud you for making it to this point in an extremely long post.  But I’ll bring it full circle with a point I made earlier: I think the church needs to be more honest.  We need to be honest with ourselves, and we need to be more honest with people outside the church, too.  The truth is, there are aspects of church history that don’t mesh particularly well with race relations, and we have to acknowledge that.  The truth is, there are things that have unfolded throughout history that very much play a part as to why people, particularly black people, don’t view the church in a positive light.  Further, although we’ve made progress, we still face race-related issues today in various capacities, and that shows with how “Black Jesus” is received in an (unnecessarily) critical way and the difficulty we have serving the diverse spectrum of communities situated in the four walls of the church.  I think being honest about these realities is extremely important as we interact with each other and people on the outside looking in.  MAYBE we do a decent job fooling ourselves, but I don’t think we’re doing a good job fooling people, particularly those outside of the church or who may not think fondly of it.

Can I be honest?  Time will tell.  Some random thoughts.

Nnamdi