Ed Gaskin is our featured blogger this week. Ed is a Black Protestant Christian running Greater Grove Hall Main Streets; he attends Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley as well as Reservoir Church in Cambridge. He has also co-taught a course with professor Dean Borgman called, “Christianity and the Problem of Racism” at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary for over 25 years. Read below to hear Ed describe his reflection on a billboard on I-93.
As I drive along I-93, I see a billboard in Dorchester of a white, pale Jesus who looks more like a scary ghost from a horror movie than the Jesus I have come to know in my spiritual journey. I consider myself a Judeo-Christian, practicing both Judaism and Christianity. On any given weekend, you will find me at Shabbat services on Friday and in church on Sunday. I am a conservative Christian who believes in the fundamentals of the Christian faith when it comes to traditional Christian doctrine.
When I see a ghost-like Jesus, it scares me, and it should scare you too. The ghost-like Jesus is a political statement, and the political values and ideas it represents are scary: primarily white supremacy and white nationalism. In my article, “Whitewashed: How a Jewish and brown Jesus became an Aryan,” I explain the history and politics around the creation of the white Jesus.
That white Jesus has always been on the wrong side of history, starting with Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant reformation, who was deeply antisemitic. Some scholars have said the Holocaust would not have been possible without his teachings. White Supremacist thinking reflected in the church and state led to the Doctrine of Discovery, which established a religious, political, and legal justification for colonization and seizure of land not inhabited by Christians.
The Doctrine of Discovery was a church doctrine, not a national political policy, yet it was cited in U.S. Supreme Court decisions as late as 2005 and formed the basis for the 19th century concept of Manifest Destiny — the belief that the United States was destined by God to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent. Through Manifest Destiny, the United States justified the forced removal of Native Americans and other groups from their homes. Similarly, the notion of American exceptionalism argues that the United States is uniquely virtuous and superior to other nations, in part due to its historically Christian roots.
It should be no surprise, then, that Germany claimed to be practicing conservative Christian values when following Hitler. Nazis worshipped the white Jesus.
Such beliefs mixed with Christian nationalism and white supremacy form a toxic Kool-Aid ingested by too many Christians today. They worship an orange Jesus, who gazes out from billboards with his fake tan. Despite the four years of his presidency — and more on the campaign trail — during which he was documented as telling more lies than any president in history, many people who identify as Christians are still willing to say with a straight face that this grifter, this orange Messiah, best represents the Christian faith and is the person they want as commander in chief.
Indeed, the Ku Klux Klan is a Christian organization, and those who participated in the January 6 insurrection describe themselves as patriots in the Christian fight for God and country. The John Birch Society, claiming God was on its side, promulgated the fear that communists had infiltrated the government in the 1950s and 1960s, leading to official steps aimed at removing them, including a blacklist.
In contrast, consider the revolutionary groups of the 1960s: Black Power groups and others that wanted to overthrow the government. None of them, not even modern-day socialists or anarchist groups such as antifa have traveled an inch in their journey relative to Trump followers, who successfully infiltrated every aspect of our government, from the legislative branch to the Department of Justice, the judiciary, and every level of the executive branch, including the White House.
The term “Christian terrorism” should be an oxymoron, but sadly it is not. When the extent of the planning involved in the January 6 attempt to overthrow our government was exposed, it demonstrated that Christian insurrectionists were the pros, and all the others were mere paper tigers. We should have been fearing conservative Christians in government all along, not communists or anarchists.
The Founding Fathers understood this. In reviewing the sweep of history, they saw that consolidating religious and political power was too dangerous, so they required the separation of church and state.
Now you know why the white Jesus scares me.
Ed, the bottom left shows “paid for by,” which is hard to read, but I see a Reddit post indicate Phu Cuong Market in Dorchester, which seems correct. The first links below expands that context: apparently a Vietnamese Catholic promotion of this Devine Mercy / St. Faustina image devotion (Polish). I can’t read the full web site address (St?), but the original image based on “Hyla/Weber” (perhaps painted less pale but adding blue to the colors) can be found through the website of the mentioned parish in the first link. Does this invalidate many of your concerns? No, and you indicated black churches reusing such images in your other article. However, I think there’s more going on here, and it’s possible the payee is not so aware of this even. I see Faustina attributing this to Jesus: “I bear a special love for Poland, and if she will be obedient to My will, I will exalt her in might and holiness. From her will come forth the spark that will prepare the world for My final coming.” I’ve seen similar things adopted by the Catholic church with political dimensions, like perhaps Fatima (consecration of Russia).. The last Devine Mercy talk is presented as “not political,” but ultimately is “I trust in you” the only thing conveyed?
https://www.dotnews.com/2013/after-five-years-phu-cuong-market-ready-customers
https://www.thedivinemercy.org/videos/ukraine-russia-fatima-what-heaven-telling-us
What scares me the most is beyond the appropriation of a whole race, the Jewish race, through the depiction of the white Jesus, it is the trivialization of the historic fact that when Jesus walked in the plains of Judea there was no question he was Jewish, I wonder thought if anyone has ever questioned the historicity of Jesus, if anyone had, this visual lie would have died a long time ago except it is resurrected… the Catholics did it – and historians could fill in the gaps when that happened, the protestants resurrected the white Jesus and encouraged the reformers, and today the prosperity gospel leaders lead the band… now that is scary. The question no one seems to be asking is why there is so much idolatry around this image and complete disregard of history if we find the New Testament repulsive and do not want to depict Jesus as a Jew. It is there I rest my case and for the same reasons will never consider that Jesus so popularized in this white image.
The image of Divine Mercy portrays Jesus’ blood and water gushing forth from his body leaving it absent of color. What you see is not white Jesus but a merciful Jesus. I do not think any group using that image is promoting one color or one race over another but rather portraying Jesus as someone anyone of any race or color can trust in.