We must rethink idea of a white Jesus, says Welby
And memorials will have to be removed too, says archbishop
THE idea that Jesus is white should be rethought, the Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday.
The Most Reverend Justin Welby spoke out following a challenge from a leading Black Lives Matter activist.
Shaun King claimed traditional statues of Jesus were a form of white supremacy.
Asked about the issue on Radio 4’s Today programme, the archbishop said the 165 countries of the Anglican Communion had different ideas about depicting divinity.
‘When you go into churches you don’t see a white Jesus, you see a black Jesus or a Chinese Jesus, or a Middle Eastern Jesus, which is of course the most accurate,’ he said. ‘You see a Fijian Jesus, you see a Jesus portrayed in as many ways as there are cultures, languages and understandings. I don’t think throwing out everything we have got in the past here does it, but I do think saying that is not the Jesus who exists, that is not who we worship, it is a reminder of the universality of the God who became fully human.’
But the archbishop said he would back the removal of plaques and memorials to individuals guilty of wrongdoing. This puts him in line with Oxford’s ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ demonstrators and campaigners pressing for the removal of the name of slave trader Edward Colston from public buildings in Bristol.
The Dean of Westminster Abbey, the Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle, is considering the future of plaques to Cecil Rhodes and to Scouts founder Robert Baden-Powell.
The latter is in the spotlight over atrocities against Zulus, his supposed sympathy for the Nazis and his dislike of homosexuality.
Archbishop Welby said cathedral statues should be considered very carefully and said of forgiveness: ‘We can only do that if we’ve got justice, which means the statue
‘Some names will have to change’
needs to be put in context. Some will have to come down. Some names will have to change.
‘You just go around Canterbury Cathedral, there’s monuments everywhere, or Westminster Abbey, and we’re looking at all that, and some will have to come down.
‘But yes, there can be forgiveness, I hope and pray as we come together, but only if there’s justice. If we change the way we behave now, and say this was then and we learned from that.’
Cathedrals are run locally and are not directly controlled by CofE archbishops or the diocesan bishops. The archbishop added: ‘We’re going to be looking very carefully and putting them in context and seeing if they all should be there. The question arises. Of course it does. We have seen that all over the world. There has got to be more justice, more equality.’
Archbishop Welby has made a number of denunciations of racism. In February he likened the attitude of the CoE toward Caribbean immigrants to the way German churches ignored persecution of Jews in the Nazi era. Just this week he condemned ‘environmental racism’, which he said was devastating black lives through climate change.
Nelson Mandela’s widow, Graca Machel, also appeared on the Today programme and said the statues should stay.
‘It is not the issue of bringing down a statue which is going to resolve the ills of the past,’ she said. ‘What is important is to look at the history of what is it which brought us to the situation where we are.
‘I believe even it might be much more positive to keep them because you want to tell generations to come: This is how it started and this is how it never should continue to be. So I’m not really concerned about bringing down and breaking the statues.’
She wondered if, for example, a statue of Rhodes was removed it might make it harder to explain to a child of today that apartheid had once been institutionalised in South Africa and to discuss ‘those many others’ behind a society divided by resentment and anger.