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December 13th, 2013
09:30 AM ET
Call Jesus (or Santa) white? Expect a big fightOpinion by Edward J. Blum, special to CNN (CNN) - Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly sparked outrage this week by insisting that Jesus and Santa Claus are both white, saying it's "ridiculous" to argue that depicting Christ and St. Nick as Caucasian is "racist." "And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white," Kelly said, "but this person is arguing that we should also have a black Santa." Kelly was responding to an article in Slate that said St. Nick needs a makeover from fat, old white guy to something less "melanin-deficient." The Fox News host would have none of it. "Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change," Kelly said. "Jesus was a white man, too. It's like we have, he's a historical figure; that's a verifiable fact. As is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy, in the story, and change Santa from white to black?" Arguing about St. Nick, who was originally Greek before Currier & Ives got their hands on him, is one thing. But as for Jesus, people have been arguing about his skin color since the earliest days of American history. You might even call it an American tradition. What's new about this latest brouhaha is how swiftly Kelly’s remarks were attacked. Thousands of people have rebuked her through blogs, articles, Twitter posts and Facebook updates. Comedian Jon Stewart accused Kelly of "going full Christmas nog." “And who are you actually talking to?" Stewart said on "The Daily Show." "Children who are sophisticated enough to be watching a news channel at 10 o’clock at night, yet innocent enough to still believe Santa Claus is real — yet racist enough to be freaked out if he isn’t white?” It seems that now, if you want to call Christ — or even Santa — white, you should expect a fierce fight. The immediate and widespread rebuttal showcases how much America has changed over the past few decades. The nation not only has a black president, but also has refused to endorse the Christian savior as white. Since the earliest days of America, Jesus was thought of as a white man. When white Protestant missionaries brought Bibles and whitened images of Jesus to Native Americans, at least a few mocked what they saw. Taking the imagery seriously, the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh asked future President William Henry Harrison, “How can we have confidence in the white people? When Jesus Christ came upon the earth you kill’d and nail’d him on a cross.” It was not until around 1900 that a group of white Americans explicitly claimed Jesus was white. Concerned that large numbers of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, especially Jewish immigrants, were “polluting” the nation, anti-immigrant spokesmen like attorney Madison Grant asserted the whiteness of Jesus to justify calls for exclusionary legislation. READ MORE: From science and computers, a new face of Jesus Making Jesus white was a means to distance him from Judaism. “In depicting the crucifixion no artist hesitates to make the two thieves brunet in contrast to the blond Savior,” Grant wrote in his xenophobic best-seller "The Passing of the Great Race." “This is something more than a convention,” Grant continued, and suggested that Jesus had “Nordic, possibly Greek, physical and moral attributes.” Even Martin Luther King Jr. claimed that Jesus was white, after being asked why God created Jesus as a white man. King responded that the color of Christ’s skin didn’t matter. Jesus would have been just as important “if His skin had been black.” He “is no less significant because His skin was white.” READ MORE: Turkish town cashes in on Saint Nick legacy Challenges to Christ’s whiteness have a long history, too. Famed evangelist Billy Graham preached in the 1950s, and then wrote emphatically in his autobiography "Just As I Am," that, “Jesus was not a white man.” But Graham was far from the first American to contradict the whiteness of Jesus. That honor goes to Methodist and Pequot Indian William Apess. In 1833, he wrote to white Christians, “You know as well as I that you are not indebted to a principle beneath a white skin for your religious services but to a colored one.” Almost 100 years later, the Jamaican born, “back-to-Africa” spokesman Marcus Garvey told his followers, “Never admit that Jesus Christ was a white man, otherwise he could not be the Son of God and God to redeem all mankind. Jesus Christ had the blood of all races in his veins.” In our age, the color of Christ has become both politically dangerous and the butt of jokes. In 2008, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s words “God damn America” and “Jesus was a poor black boy” almost derailed then-Sen. Barack Obama from winning the Democratic primary. Now, Kelly bears the brunt of attacks and, in no surprise, was pilloried by comedians like Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Few Americans went on public record against King when he asserted Jesus had white skin in the 1950s. Today, thousands upon thousands from virtually every race and tribe of Americans have taken Kelly’s words seriously and seriously disdained them. All the chatter about Jesus being white (or not) shows how much America has changed. There used to be “whites’ only” restaurants and schoolrooms. Now, even Jesus cannot be called white without repercussions. What the debate hides, however, is what Jesus of the Bible actually did and how he related to people. The gospels are full of discussions about Jesus and bodies. He healed the blind and those who suffered from disease. He touched and was touched by the sick. His body was pierced by thorns, a spear and nails. And he died. READ MORE: What all those Jesus jokes tell us The phenotype of Jesus was never an issue in the Bible. Neither Matthew, nor Mark, nor Luke, nor John mentioned Christ’s skin tone or hair color. None called him white or black or red or brown. Obsessions about race are obsessions of our age, not the biblical one. When asked what mattered most, Jesus did not say his skin tone or body shape. He instructed his followers to “love the Lord your God with all your heart” and to “do unto others as you would have done unto you.” Maybe this Christmas season, we can reflect not so much on whether or not Jesus was white and instead consider what it meant for him to be called the “light” of the world. soundoff (7,485 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 Next »
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The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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The good news is that delusions work in almost any color.
Bravo to Megyn Kelly taking a common sense approach, and courageous stand against this rubbish. Unfortunately, I am certain that she will lose her job when the blacks start to complain. No one can offend the blacks!
It's quite courageous to stand up for something so asinine and false, especially on national TV. Courageousness isn't always righteous, however.
A common sense approach would be to do some homework... She has not done any and makes statements out of ignorance. Jesus was not white... he was middle eastern. That's not white by any measure. And you're right... offend the "blacks" to your own detriment...
Here is the link: http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/19/showbiz/duck-dynasty-suspension/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 The following
"We understand that when God made man in his own image and pronounced him very good, that he made him white. We have no record of any of God's favored servants being of a black race...every angel who ever brought a message of God's mercy to man was beautiful to look upon, clad in the purest white and with a countenance bright as the noonday sun." (Juvenile Instructor*, Vol. 3, page 157)
* Mormon publication for the indoctrination of children
Another pack of lies....
Why do atheists always tell lies? Answer: They have no God to keep them moral, so why not....
Are you disputing the accuracy of the citation ?
By your logic any person who is not christian is not moral
what a filthy perverted belief system you have there
Yes, and immoral person would say that. LOL...
Jesus wasn't white, he was Semetic and probably looked like a modern day Palestianian or Syrian. The Bible doesn't really tell us and most agree his ethnicity was Jewish. If we gather what we know from the people of the time, he was a darker skinned Middle Eastern.
Try Luke if you don't like the King of the Jews prophesy; Jesus bin Perez was dark black.
Jesus bin Perez would be lynched if he were alive today
This isn't even a debate. Anyone with even half a brain knows that Jesus Christ was a Hebrew. End of story. The scriptures state, "He came to his own and his own received him not". Meaning he came to the Israeli people as their savior but they rejected him.
John 1:10: He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
Thus this debate is a non-issue...
Oh then you must have been around 2000 years ago and met him personally if you know all this definitively.
Rita… And so what part of the scriptures do you not understand? Apparently, all of them...
Quoting the bible is like an 8 year old stabbing at you with his pretend Star Wars light saber........... cute and ineffective
It won't seem so ineffective on Judgment Day. That same bible will send you to the lake...
Pope Julius II paid or supposedly paid Michelangelo to paint these white images and these are the one's no other race can forget. The psychological effect from these pieces have had a terrible impact on the minds of those who are non-white, but not to mention the horrifying tales that democracy started with the Greeks and Romans. The World History has been distorted to favor one particular race, and what race might that be? If we want a better understanding of World History we must start with The Ancient Kemet Mystery System. Kemet = Africa. Africa (Aphrike) is a Greek word basically meaning "Not Cold".
Bookies are just lookin' for a new market.
Why does this matter? It isn't what they looked like – it's what they did that counts.
If Jesus were white the Union would have ceased to exist at the end of 1862. I matters a lot in America.
Jesus probably looked like Osama. It's all part of the grand scheme. When Jesus comes back everyone will think he is Osama and be all like "kill it with fire!" and he will be all "Peace unto ye" and then kill us all for not practicing what he taught...which is forgiveness. It's all in the bible.
Jesus is hispanic, everybody knows that
Jesus bin Perez makes that obvious.
LOL. People are actually arguing over the color of their imaginary friend.
Any moron who thinks Jesus was imaginary is a moron indeed...
Oh the irony........
"Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed, and most biblical scholars and classical historians see the theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted.[1][3][49][10][11] In antiquity, the existence of Jesus was never denied by those who opposed Christianity." from Wikipedia
I'm an atheist, I believe the man Jesus most likely existed, but please, PLEASE don't quote Wiki. It's not anything close of a reliable source of info.
Most residents of the middle east are white.
Just as you say, by our way of thinking most in the so called middle east are considered white today, but not all are and never were. And as we know Jesus was not like most he was the one and only with a dark complexion of an Afro Asiatic man. Live with that fact and may God bless you.
This is a non-story in response to a non-story. Who cares about any of this? Must be a slow news week.
The trolls do.....
Gandalf.
The concept that Jesus was not white might scare an incredible amount of people away from Christianity.
It would only scare those people who didn't have the truth in the first place...
Well, here is the thing people in the Middle East tend to often have a olive skin color. So they are neither white or black. So neither race for that matter has right to claim what Jesus looked like. But I would guess he looks just like every modern citizen living in Israel right now. Probably had a beard long hair olive colored skin. Because they lived in a desert which most of the Middle East actually, which would leave it hot.
Jesus was from Israel. Or atleast from that area of the world. So he was of Caucasian/ middle eastern tones and features. He looks something like a tan, bearded middle eastern man.
Mary was from Ephraim, not Judah.
He was white, since people of Jewish and Arabic ancestry are considered white. He was just not blond and blue eyed with a fair skin complexion.
They don't consider themselves white. Westerners classify Middle Easterners as Caucasian, because they didn't want to cop to a Jewish Jesus.
Black as an Ehraimite.
Jesus Christ was a Hebrew. And why is it you don't know that?...
Jesus is Jewish.
There are several subgroups of Jews with different culture and traditions:
Ashkenazic: Descendants of Jews from France, Germany and Eastern Europe
Sephardic: Descendants of Jews from Spain, Portugal, North Africa and the Middle East
Mizrachi: Descendants of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East
• Other subgroups are Yemenite, Ethiopian and Oriental
Actually..........Jesus is dead
What a loser you are Bilial.
What a brainless, religious, degenerate you have become. Have fun with your life of religious hate and discrimination.
Benjamin Franklin Tarver freed the slaves silly fool.
Hey Lucifer. You don't look like the picture of health either.
Yeah I'll admit........it's a tad warm down here but maybe it's just me
The tribe of Ephraim is in Ethiopia today, just ask them.
None of us were there at the time, soooo................... the remainder of the story is just plain ol' run of the mill faith.
At least AIDS is real. I'll settle for that.
You want AIDS?
Bug hunter.
I like it when gay atheists get it. Proves God's existence.
Jesus is simply a combination of many myths dating over 1000 years BC. Make your imaginary friend any colour you want. The only miracle is that people who live indoors are still talking about this.
John the Baptist is an historical figure, due to the riot he started killing 120,000 Magis; driving out the false religions.
Oh but i thought 'thou shall not do murder'..........unless in the name of god. Then it's kill, kill ,kill
Funny how one can automatically call other religions "false religion" and then claim without scientific proof that it's the only true religion.
That sounds like more than a riot.
Well said.
2 John 1:7 – For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist...
Try sticking to Mark. It's a lot less fantastical...
"Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed, and most biblical scholars and classical historians see the theories of his non-existence as effectively from Wikipedia