Racism and the meaning of Christian Art

In these days of racial tensions and BLM protests, the Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken of challenging the mindset that sees Jesus as a white man. This in turn has lead many to argue that these depictions are white supremacist, part of a racist discourse done with images.

I want to begin by saying that I don’t want to discuss whether Italian, Sephardi or Iraqi Jews (the closest to the genetic makeup of Palestine in Jesus’ time), are white or not. Or whether ” Middle Eastern” looking Jesus, to quote the AofC means anything speaking of one of the most ethnically diverse regions of the world.

You can google and decide for yourself. My aim is to discuss the meaning of Christian art, whether it is part of a racist polemic done with images or a way of doing theology.

I will start by a land far away from ’black’ and ’white’. I will begin with Japan, where the mother and child are frequently depicted as Japanese and in Japanese dress.

The baby looks much less ugly than in most western depictions where the child appears as a minuscule old man or an impish creature of some sort, the result of an attempt at infusing a toddler looks with eternal wisdom.

A symbolism gone wrong absent in Japan, where the serene newborn is held by his mother dressed as a Shinto temple maid (Red and white) to communicate her purity and virginity.

Now, closer to the contested depictions of Jesus, I want to turn to one of my favourite pieces of religious art, ’Christ in the House of His Parents’. Here Mary and Jesus are very white, however, far from this depiction having been approved by the Victorian imperialist establishment, it was instead criticised.

Dickens himself was indignant that Millais had dared to depict Mary so pale, as he thought this made her look as an alcoholic from the Parisian slums. Another critic was less exercised by Mary, and more by ”the studious vulgarity of portraying the youthful Saviour as a red-headed Jew boy”.

Reviews that give occasion to doubt the idea suggested by many contemporary twitterati that the painting of Jesus as white is a sign of a white supremacist ideology.

So, why did the preraphaelite Millais depict Jesus as ginger? Probably part of it was his love for medieval Tuscan art, where Jesus used to be depicted as red-headed to stress his bloodline back to King David, a biblical hero that tradition thought red-headed since Antiquity.

In other words, in depicting Jesus as red-headed the artists aimed at saying in images what the Gospel of Matthew stresses with words.

I hope that by now, my point is clear. The Japanese Mary dressed as a shinto maid and the Preraphaelite red headed Jesus sit in a long tradition that begun in Antiquity where the earliest depictions of Jesus are of him as a youthful Adonis or Dyonisus (divinities dead and resurrected) or a Graeco Roman sage with long hair and beard. A tradition that sought to make theology with images.

In this tradition stands also black Jesus, prevalent in Africa and many black churches. A clothing of the gospel, in the Pauline spirit, Greek to the Greeks and Jewish to the Jews, to make the point that Christ is like us, human and real. An incarnational message delivered by art.

Of course Jesus did not look like a Nigerian or a Danish top model. He would have looked as nowadays look Italian, Sephardi and Iraqi Jews or more generally people sharing in the genetic continuum of much of Syria, Sicily, Southern Italy, Lebanon and the costal regions of Turkey and Greece. Peoples that incidentally look remarkably similar to the I century portraits preserved by the dry climate of Egypt.

Yet, would it be reasonable to demand to take down black, Japanese and red-headed Jesuses alike and use as models only people from those regions? I say no; yes, as an artist and a red head, I may be said to be biased, but I favour the idea of continuing to make theology with images . Long may this tradition live.