Archbishop of Canterbury Wants ‘Rethink’ on ‘White’ Jesus

Archbishop of Canterbury Wants ‘Rethink’ on ‘White’ Jesus

The Archbishop — Eton-educated ex-oilman Justin Welby — insisted he was not an iconoclast: “So I’m not really concerned with bringing down and breaking the statues. I know this is controversial but, you know, we need to have the memory and some of those symbols remind us, and they make the memory still valid.”

Asked if the “way the Western church portrays Jesus needs to be thought about again”, he said:

“Yes of course it does, this sense that God was white… You go into churches (around the world) and you don’t see a white Jesus.

“You see a black Jesus, a Chinese Jesus, a Middle Eastern Jesus – -which is of course the most accurate — you see a Fijian Jesus.”

Of course, nobody knows what Jesus looked like. In early Church iconography, he was betrayed as beardless with a Roman haircut because that is how his fanbase looked back then. Later, he developed his beard and long hair.