Woke Welby and his 'white Jesus'

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby                                 Source: Rebel Priest

From The Jerusalem Post: The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the Anglican Church should reconsider its portrayal of Jesus as a white man.

It is not clear for whom he was speaking when he expressed his belief that Anglicans thought of the Son of God as a white man. The archbishop and most of his trendy episcopal colleagues long since abandoned the faith as orthodox Anglicans along with the Church in Wales and the Episcopal Church of the United States (TEC), both of which have become irrelevant as Churches for the faithful.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Justin Welby said that in light of the Black Lives Matter protests, the West needed to question whether the traditional portrayal of Jesus as a white man by Western churches was the correct approach to take.

The archbishop added, “Jesus is portrayed in as many ways as there are cultures, languages and understandings."  He did not think that "throwing out everything we’ve got in the past is the way to do it" but thought "that’s not the Jesus who exists, that’s not who we worship. It is a reminder of the universality of the God who became fully human.”

Commenting on the Black Lives Matter campaign to remove statues to figures deemed controversial, he said that people should forgive the 'trespasses' of those who were being commemorated, rather than remove statues, but added that the church would be reviewing the monuments it holds.

When asked if people should forgive the trespasses of those immortalised in the form of statues, rather than tearing them down, Welby said: "Some will have to come down. We can only do that if we've got justice, which means the statue needs to be put in context.

"Some names will have to change. The church, goodness me you know, you just go around Canterbury Cathedral, there are monuments everywhere or Westminster Abbey, and we're looking at all that, and some will have to come down."

Described as the Woke Archbishop the Archbishop of Canterbury, Welby is “ashamed of our history” and of his supposed advantages as a straight white male.

He has become leader of the self loathing brigade, apologising for anything and everything in the past that is questioned in the woke culture.

He preaches the gospel of woke and slanders his own flock. With no supporting evidence he asserted "There is no doubt," that "when we look at our own Church we are still deeply institutionally racist."

Bending the knee to the latest trend is not leadership. It is capitulation.

Source: BBC/LORNA MAY WADSWORTH

It encourages gestures such as that in St Albans Cathedral where a copy of a picture of the Last Supper showing a black Jesus was placed at an altar "in support of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement" presumably without knowing what the BLM movement stands for.

According to BBC News the artist used a Jamaican-born model for the basis of her interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci's 15th Century work because she wanted "to make people question the Western myth that [Jesus Christ] had fair hair and blue eyes".

Jacob Epstein's 'Christ in Majesty'

 One aspect lost in the controversy about the suitability of artwork is the effort put into producing the work and possible motivations behind it. It may represent an interpretation by the artist or sponsor or result from a specific commission.

If someone in a free society objects to a work they are at liberty to criticise it. Once gone the opportunity for criticism is lost, along with the hard won freedoms which allow extremist pressure groups to behave as they do.

The example of ISIS destroying artefacts they disliked should be a warning of the destructive power now being unleashed, something religious leaders should be speaking against, not for.

Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew born in Bethlehem of Judea. He would have been neither black nor white but somewhere in between - see So what colour was Jesus?

 As the Religious News Service (RNS) aptly put it: We can’t cancel ‘white Jesus,’ but we can keep telling our church’s story.