Now that the world is moving in “woke” fashion, nothing is taboo.
Activist, Shaun King tested that theory by dialing up the protest movement to nuclear. He took to Twitter and tweeted that “statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down.”
As Bruce Buffer says before every Octagon showdown, “Itttttssss Tiiiimeee!” No he didn’t you say?
Oh yes, he surely did.
https://twitter.com/shaunking/status/1275233551034843136?s=20
King roundhouse kicked the kickstand from beneath the fragility of the moment and careened it straight into religion. How could the movement not enter the pulpit?
For centuries, religion has been used as a righteous oppressor both in the states and in the Motherland of Africa. Through co-opted text, like the slave Bible that was modified to keep the enslaved subservient, Christianity, in particular, has been just as toxic as it’s been positive.
Slave Bible for the British West Indies. Thanks Tony Bogues who saw it on display at Glasgow University. pic.twitter.com/VOAZawANYd
— Rupert Lewis (@gbgandad) January 24, 2020
Recently, statues of the men who formed the systemic racism we experience today are being removed, toppled and desecrated around the world. Now, King has thrown down the gauntlet calling for the removal of European depictions of Jesus Christ.
His Feet Were Like Burnished Bronze…
For many scholars, Revelation 1:14-15 offers a clue that Jesus’s skin was a darker hue. It states that his hair was woolly in texture. The hairs of his head, it says, “were white as white wool, white as snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace.”
https://twitter.com/shaunking/status/1275106946916499456?s=20
Go to any street corner in northeast America and you will see the Israelites espousing the same gospel. The skin tone and color of Jesus have been in dispute for centuries, however, never was it placed in the center of the realm of societal change of humanity.
By co-mingling Church and State, King enters a world where the true essence of white supremacy lies, dogma.
Dogma, is a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. Read that again, incontrovertibly: not able to be denied or disputed.
Much like the blind eyes of those who wish to believe systemic racism is a construct of black victimhood, religion holds the followers entranced by dogma. To stray from tradition and what is popularly believed is akin to heresy.
However, it shows that black frustration with everything white supremacy permeates is at an all-time high. King calls for the removal of the imagery adorning stained glass windows and church facades. It is a shock to the system that will negatively affect people of color as well.
https://twitter.com/shaunking/status/1275108707140087812?s=20
Many black folks subscribe to the European version of Jesus Christ and can separate that belief with their want for the eradication of white supremacy.
But the two are tethered together. A marriage of convenience by traveling “saints” and evangelists that wish to align their political and economic interests with the survival of impoverished nations of black and brown.
https://twitter.com/shaunking/status/1275231500577931266?s=20
King opened Pandora’s Box with the religious statements and once you have heard it out loud, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
Instead, like everything else white supremacy has corrupted, you can only mull over its true impact globally and decide for yourself whether white Jesus was manufactured to maintain control.
Either way, we are talking about it, and that like everything else happening in the world currently is our saving grace.
