Seldom has there been more controversy and cautious anticipation preceding the release of a motion picture than that which has been swirling around the film, The Passion of the Christ. The uproar concerns its alleged depiction of the Jews of that time as being principally responsible for sentencing Jesus to His tortuous death and the extent to which that interpretation may or may not coincide with Gospel accounts. There is also some degree of unease with what has been described as the unsparingly graphic brutality of Jesus’ crucifixion. Still, millions of Christians, particularly evangelicals and fundamentalists, eagerly awaited the movie’s Ash Wednesday release and view its production as a sign that Hollywood, long regarded as dismissive of or hostile to Christianity, no longer ignores them. The problem I have with this film, and the very reason that I will not see it, is its casting. This film is just the latest example of the one thing – with regard to virtually all dramatizations, representations and depictions of Jesus – that is almost never questioned: that is, that Jesus was white.

‘Stayed’ on Jesus

Many black people become highly agitated and offended when confronted with the issue of how and why Jesus is nearly always depicted and portrayed as a blond-haired, blue-eyed white man. Even when confronted with evidence that the people of the Holy Land at that time almost certainly didn‘t look like that, Black ministers will sometimes harshly admonish their congregants for even entertaining such thoughts. Many black clergymen (and women), most of whom of course have a picture of this Caucasian Messiah hanging behind their pulpits, have even been known to respond to the issue with a reminder that despite what Mary and Joseph may have looked like, Jesus was, after all, God’s son; seemingly oblivious to the inference this makes. True believers, they say, should cultivate a spiritual relationship with Jesus and be endlessly grateful that He came to deliver and redeem us from sin, to be our comforter through the storms of life and to intercede on our behalf to God and not concern themselves with a matter as trivial as what Jesus looked like. To follow this pious decree, however, is to turn a blind eye to the calculated distortion of Christian religious imagery, which began in Europe during the Renaissance, as one of the most effective and enduring tools of white supremacy. This is the principal basis upon which Christianity was introduced to Africans in this country. As the African-American theologian James Cone has noted:

The fact is that white people desperately want to believe that Jesus was white. Why? Because it is sine qua non (‘without which it is not’) to the political and social doctrine of white supremacy, the belief that whites are innately superior to and possess the right of hegemony over dark-skinned people. Without the belief that God and therefore Jesus were (are) white, they cannot lay claim to having been made in His image and thereby justify the racial hierarchy that they have created upon which they claim the top spot.

In an article titled "Children of a White God: A Study of Racist ‘Christian’ Theologies," religious scholar Matthew Ogilvie details how several racist Christian groups and sects rationalize their beliefs and explains their close theological ties to more mainstream Christian fundamentalism. The one common tenet among them all, be they white separatists, supremacists, nationalists or anti-Semites, who deny that Jesus was even a Jew, is that both God and Jesus are white, despite there being no scriptural basis for this belief. The perception that Jesus is white has given whites the preening arrogance with which they have enslaved, oppressed and subjugated blacks and other non-whites not merely with impunity but with, as they choose to see it, blessings from above. Segregation, Jim Crow and particularly laws against racial inter-marriage were based upon whites’ belief that separation of the races was ordained by God; the slave-holding Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney referenced his conclusion in the Dred Scott case, summarized by the assertion “that the black man has no right that the white man is bound to respect,” with the rationale that this was in accordance with God’s principles; without the belief that God is white, this country could not sustain a system of capital punishment that is designed to execute mostly poor non-whites who kill whites; ministers of the Gospel could not possibly have led white lynch mobs in prayer after a hanging; nor could the cross-burning Christian terrorist group the Ku Klux Klan have sustained itself for more than a century without a perverted theology that affirmed violence, hatred, intimidation and racial conflict to be in accordance with the perfect will of God.

What Did Jesus Look Like?

Do we have any way of knowing what “color” Jesus actually was? The Bible contains no specific physical descriptions of Jesus. There are some compelling pieces of evidence, though admittedly indirect, that indicate Jesus almost certainly was a person of color. According to the African-American biblical scholar Cain Hope Felder, we should view the Middle East of Jesus' day as a kind of eastern extension of Africa. According to available archaeological and linguistic evidence, the interaction of peoples between those regions can readily be established. We know that the entire Jewish nation, including all members of Jesus’ genealogical lineage, lived in Egypt for many years before Moses led them out. Jesus Himself is known to have lived in Egypt for a time when his earthly father Joseph was visited by an angel and told to flee there with the Christ child from Herod the king, who intended to kill Him. (Matt. 2: 13) (Why would they have been sent to hide in a place where they couldn’t have blended in with the local population?) God Himself heralds His return with the words, “Out of Egypt did I call my son.” (Matt. 2: 15)

Throughout Europe there remain a number of places of worship which feature paintings, statues and frescoes of a dark-skinned Jesus and His mother Mary such as the cathedral of Moulins in France, the Church of Annunciata, the Church of St. Stephen at Genoa, the St. Francisco at Pisa, the Church of St. Theodore at Munich, etc. While not conclusive, these facts offer at least as much proof that Jesus was a man of color as any that may support his having been a fair-skinned, flaxen haired Caucasian, but you’d never know it. Ironically, the only person I’ve heard discuss the issue of the film’s casting of a white actor portraying Jesus is NBC‘s "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno. To paraphrase, Leno insisted that only a black man could have been arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced to death and executed within twelve hours!

Limited Verisimilitude

One of the main selling points of the "The Passion of the Christ" is its unprecedented realism, the most prominent example being its dialogue consisting only of the Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew languages spoken during biblical times. But if the film’s producer Mel Gibson was aiming for such a high degree of cinematic verite, why didn’t he use actors who looked like the people of that time? Of course that is a rhetorical question that we all know the answer to; Jesus was white, end of discussion. Mel Gibson has used his claims of difficulty in getting this picture made to add a crusade-like aura to its release, which coming from an A-List Hollywood superstar such as he I find very hard to believe. Difficulty of an insurmountable nature would certainly have arisen had he attempted to film a movie about Jesus casting Omar Epps and Alfre Woodard as Mary, and we know why.

Passion Seen and Unseen

It’s probably no coincidence that a network television news report the night before the nation-wide release of the film featured comments by several African-Americans as they exited a movie theater after seeing the film. One gentleman had spent thousands of dollars of his own money to screen the film in advance of its release; one lady was shown kneeling on the ground outside of the theater crying "Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Lord!" There is no doubt that many people will be awed, moved and touched by seeing The Passion of The Christ. But all should bear in mind that the fact that the subject of the film is divine does not in any way confer divinity upon the film itself. And whether or not we choose to acknowledge it, this movie reflects two deeply held “Passions”: the one that unfolds on the screen and the deviously scheming one that lurks beneath it.

Miles Willis is a free-lance writer living in the Washington, DC metro area.