The debate over the color of Jesus’ skin is one of the oldest running arguments in religion. But this Easter, the question is a serious one — for several reasons.
CNN
“When I see the Easter story, I see Jesus being a victim of state-sanctioned violence. I see Jesus surrounded by Black and brown people who wish they could do something, but had no power in the moment,” says Cleveland, author of “God Is a Black Woman.”
“And I see people being victims of a system that can’t see their full humanity and assumes the worst of them. And yet there’s hope in the end,” she says. “The universe does bend toward justice, even though the arc is long.”
As Christians worldwide celebrate the resurrection of Jesus today, Cleveland’s story points toward an uncomfortable truth: The true face of the historical Jesus looks nothing like the one many still see in their church’s stained-glass windows, in Hollywood movies, or in the image many carry in their minds.
Many scholars and archeologists now agree that Jesus was most likely a brown-skinned, brown-eyed man — more akin to a “Middle Eastern Jewish” or an Arab man. A commentator once said that if Jesus was taking a flight today “he might be profiled for additional security screening” by the TSA.
Some may counter with a big: So what? The debate over the color of Jesus is one of the oldest running arguments in religion. As a man who was raised in a Black church with a giant portrait of a White Jesus hung behind the pulpit, I recall many heated arguments in barbershops and cookouts where armchair theologians insisted that Jesus was Black by citing scriptures like Revelation 1:14-14 (“The Bible said he had hair that was ‘white as wool” and feet like “burnished bronze’ so don’t tell me Jesus didn’t have an Afro!”).
