5 THINGS ABOUT CHURCH LEADER’S PLEA

The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged the church to reconsider portraying Jesus as white and to think “very carefully” about its controversial monuments in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.

1 STATUES WILL FALL

The Most Rev. Justin Welby suggested that statues in Canterbury Cathedral are going to be looked at “very carefully” to see if they should be there. He added that “some will have to come down” and that monuments would be put “in context.” Canterbury Cathedral confirmed that all its items are under review to ensure that any connected with slavery, colonialism or contentious figures from other historic periods are displayed with clear contextual information to avoid “any sense of aggrandizement.”

2 DEPICTIONS OF JESUS CHRIST

It is understood that cathedral officials are also reviewing its range of depictions of Jesus Christ. Asked if people should forgive the “trespasses” of people immortalized in the form of statues, rather than tearing them down, he responded: “We can only do that if we’ve got justice, which means the statue needs to be put in context. Some will have to come down.”

3 FIRST JUSTICE, THEN FORGIVENESS

“You just go around Canterbury Cathedral,” he added. “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, but only if there’s justice. If we change the way we behave now, and say ‘this was then and we learnt from that,’ and change how we’re going to be in the future, internationally, as well.”

4 FORGIVENESS REQUIRES CONVERSION

He said the decision to remove statues was not his, but said: “We’re going to be looking very carefully and putting them in context and seeing if they all should be there …” He added: “For forgiveness, there has to be this turning-round, this conversion, the Pope called it.”

5 WESTERN VIEW OF JESUS NEEDS TO CHANGE

The Archbishop was also 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.”