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- [00:01]
Bob Garfield
From WNYC in New York. This is on the media. And this week we put Christianity under the microscope. We examine the role of the religious right in US Politics.
- [00:12]
Andrew Whitehead
Evangelicals want the power and the privilege that comes with Christian nationalism. And who delivers that to them? They don't care as much.
- [00:21]
Bob Garfield
And how the religious left is harder to define.
- [00:24]
Candida Moss
I mean, Native American spirituality is not the same thing as covering an Episcopal priest, which is not the same thing as is covering a Muslim community.
- [00:32]
Bob Garfield
Also, the myth of Christian martyrdom.
- [00:35]
Mary Harris
No, Christians never cowered in the catacombs. That's actually a tourist myth.
- [00:41]
Bob Garfield
And what race is Jesus anyway?
- [00:44]
Jack Jenkins
It was kind of like a revelation. I said, oh, wow. I never even considered the idea that Jesus could have possibly been black. Who could have thought of this?
- [00:56]
Bob Garfield
It's all coming up after this on the media.
- [01:01]
Candida Moss
Supported by Progressive Insurance, you chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.
- [01:26]
Brooke Gladstone
The election has come and gone. Now we're in a new era. It can be easy to get discouraged, frustrated, but you can't afford not to pay attention. You need trustworthy, independent journalism to cut through the noise and hold power to account. I'm Mary Harris, host of what next from slate.com. we are a Daily news podcast with a kind of transparent, smart, yet tongue in cheek analysis you can only find at Slate. Follow and listen to what Next wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:56]
Bob Garfield
From WNYC in New York, this is ON the media. I'm Bob Garfield.
- [02:01]
Eloise Blondio
And I'm Brooke Gladstone. You know, you wake up on a Friday morning to wrap up your show after a long night of tweaks, edits and reconsiderations. And now there's no time left except to mix the show and send it out. And then you see a story is broken so fast moving it can't be addressed in any way that would last more than 15 minutes. So you throw up your hands. It's not for us. You say, thank God. You think. Now, if you're a believer in God these days, you might think that despite Einstein's dictum, God really does seem to be playing dice with us. Maybe you would consult the holy books for some insight into God's mysterious ways with regard to the diagnosis of Donald J. Trump with COVID 19. The Quran says that if a plague victim is patient and trusts in Allah's decree he will be rewarded as a martyr. The New Testament says that the prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise them up and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. The Old Testament says God is teaching you a lesson when he whacks you, one you'll never forget. Now Trump's family pastor was Norman Vincent Peale, who preached the prosperity gospel, that if you have health and wealth, you deserve it. And if not, well. In this hour, we probe American Christianity as a political force right, left and center, and look into the face of Jesus. President Trump, despite a strong evangelical following, doesn't exert much effort on displays of personal piety. It's not really part of his brand.
- [03:52]
William Barber
I'm wondering what one or two of your most favored Bible verses are in life.
- [03:57]
Eloise Blondio
I wouldn't want to get into it because to me, that's very personal.
- [04:00]
Bob Garfield
You know, when I talk about the Bible, it's very personal.
- [04:02]
Eloise Blondio
And he's often caught off guard by questions about his faith.
- [04:06]
Bob Garfield
You used the word Christian. Have you ever asked God for forgiveness?
- [04:12]
Candida Moss
That's a tough question.
- [04:13]
Bob Garfield
I don't think in terms of I have. I'm a religious person.
- [04:17]
Eloise Blondio
Nevertheless, Trump's strategy as defender of the faith has been a political win, at least among his base. He spoke about that on Thursday in a virtual address at the annual Al Smith Dinner.
- [04:30]
Bob Garfield
One of my top priorities is to defend religious liberty and the cherished role of faith and faith based organizations in our national life to protect your God given rights. I was recently honored to nominate one of our most brilliant legal minds, Judge.
- [04:46]
Eloise Blondio
Amy Coney Bear, a Catholic judge popular with the religious right to the Supreme Court. Fox News was quick to call out the Democrats for bias.
- [04:56]
Candida Moss
So it's bad when she takes her faith seriously, but good when Joe Biden doesn't. But to my original question, is any other faith at risk of being mocked the way Christianity is by our media?
- [05:07]
Bob Garfield
Trump's base often is characterized as largely white evangelicals. But that's misleading. According to sociologist Andrew Whitehead, author of Taking America Back for Christian Nationalism in the United States, there's a crucial distinction between evangelicals and Christian nationalists.
- [05:26]
Andrew Whitehead
Christian nationalism is a collection of myths and narratives, like the US Was founded as a Christian nation, but it also includes symbols and value systems that come along as a package deal, a bunch of assumptions about nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy, authoritarianism and militarism.
- [05:46]
Bob Garfield
True Christian nationalists mostly are white evangelicals. Take VP Mike Pence, who subbed out the word Jesus for the red, white and blue at the Republican national convention.
- [05:58]
Eloise Blondio
Let's fix our eyes on oh glory and all she represents.
- [06:03]
Bob Garfield
But roughly a quarter of white evangelicals either reject or resist Christian nationalism. Those who do subscribe to it have much more in common with each other, regardless of their faith or even lack thereof, than with the dissenting evangelicals. In Christian nationalism, the Christian part seems to be negotiable. What draws the movement together is not devotion to God or religiosity, but rather, to quote people like us, usually white and American born.
- [06:35]
Andrew Whitehead
They want the power and the privilege of that comes with Christian nationalism for them in the public sphere. And who delivers that to them? They don't care as much.
- [06:45]
Bob Garfield
But no matter what you personally believe, you do have to contend with Christianity in America, because Christian nationalists make up more than half of the electorate. Of those, according to Whitehead's study, 20% fiercely endorse Christian nationalism.
- [07:02]
Andrew Whitehead
When Americans are able to create symbolic boundaries about what it means to be an American, and if they're able to say that to be a citizen of the US is to be Christian like us, and again in quotes, then those symbolic boundaries get translated into social boundaries where others don't have the same access to political parties or office or social services, or even identifying who is a real citizen or who can vote. And when groups legitimate their political positions and policies with the sacred with, then really all bets are off. Because if God has willed it, they should be willing to do whatever they need to by any means necessary to ensure that it comes to pass.
- [07:46]
Bob Garfield
But then there are what Whitehead calls accommodators, fully 32% of us, not so strident, but not unsympathetic.
- [07:54]
Andrew Whitehead
I think many of those Americans, they want to see Christianity play a role in American public life, but not to the extent that others are excluded completely. And so I feel as though the more that they're exposed to different voices on the margin or different news sources that highlight the dissonance between perhaps teachings of Jesus that they might begin to see. We need to start to move away from that.
- [08:18]
Bob Garfield
One of the principal tactics of Christian nationalism ambassadors in recent years is to testify endlessly about their religious persecution, which is baseless.
- [08:29]
Andrew Whitehead
This is a more recent turn, using that rhetoric of religious freedom to support their views of how social society should work. It isn't as though Muslim Americans or Jewish Americans or non religious Americans should have equal say. It's that religious freedom means I should be able to live out my faith and see my country reflect my views at the center of American life.
- [08:55]
Bob Garfield
Andrew Whitehead is a professor of sociology at Indiana University, Purdue University, Indianapolis, and author of Taking America Back for God. Christian Nationalism in the United States. To Trump, anyone who isn't Christian nationalist is anti Christian or anti religious. That's how he describes Joe Biden, who has talked often and openly about his Catholic faith. He says Biden will take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment, no religion, no anything, but hurt the Bible, hurt God. He's against God. In a Trump campaign ad titled Meet Joe Biden's Supporters, the closing shot is a photo of Biden kneeling in a black church with black church leaders behind him. You won't be safe in Joe Biden's America. While Christianity has dominated America since its founding, the notion of Christianity under siege persists. Candida Moss, professor of theology and religion at the University of Birmingham in the uk, says the persecution trope dates to the early church.
- [10:09]
Mary Harris
Well, the story that we're told in Sunday school is that from the death of Jesus onwards, his followers were constantly hounded by a hostile Roman government. There were Christians who died under Roman rule, but there were really only very brief periods in the very late feast third and around the turn of the fourth century that Roman emperors actually turned their focus to Christians and said, you either sacrifice to the emperor or you die. So when the Emperor Valerian decided in 256 that he was going to target Christians, one of his first steps involved exiling Christian members of his own imperial household and sending them off to country estates states. And another one was to remove Christians from high ranking positions in public office. This tells us the Christians were in high ranking positions. They can't have been cowering in secret if he takes these kinds of steps.
- [11:13]
Bob Garfield
Look, I'm Jewish, but I remember that I learned in school or somewhere of early Christians cowering in the catacombs of Rome for fear of the Romans who were going to kill them.
- [11:26]
Mary Harris
No, Christians never cowered in the catacombs. That's actually a tourist myth that goes back to the 18th and 19th centuries when Americans and Brits were touring continental Europe and they were told that Christians used to shelter here, but there's actually no evidence that they did that. There used to be big sort of church like structures built on top of the catacombs and that was where Christians would assemble. And the reason why that matters is of course the everyone knew where they were and where to find them. They certainly weren't hiding.
- [12:01]
Bob Garfield
So are there any other examples? False stories of martyrdom?
- [12:05]
Mary Harris
First of all, our narratives about the deaths of the apostles, the most famous being perhaps the death of Peter, which was immortalized in the movie Quo Vadis, in which he's crucified upside down because he doesn't feel worthy to die like Jesus.
- [12:21]
Bob Garfield
To die as our Lord died is.
- [12:25]
Simon Howard
More than I deserve.
- [12:29]
Candida Moss
We can change that.
- [12:31]
Mary Harris
That story comes from the 4th century Church historian Eusebius. If you go back to the earliest reference to the death of St. Peter, we're told that Peter died as a result of jealousy. And the Greek word there actually refers to in group jealousy, almost as if other Christians did things that led to his death. So this is just one very famous martyr who probably was executed by Roman authorities for being a troublemaker. But we don't know that much about what happened because the stories are from so much later.
- [13:10]
Bob Garfield
I want to ask you about the marketing of a new religion. Two thousand years ago, you write that persecution was seen as a sign that your God or gods were weak. And along comes Christianity, which had a different selling proposition. How so?
- [13:31]
Mary Harris
Well, as you say, prior to Christianity, if you were persecuted, it was either because you had sinned and your God was punishing you, or because your God wasn't that powerful. So with Christianity and the idea that God itself became incarnate and died for human beings, we see a radical new understanding of what suffering and death can mean. People had to contend with their own mortality all of the time. And so having Christianity promise an afterlife, promise rewards and speak about social injustices, this was enormously compelling for people. But accompanying it is the idea that now suffering for God is a good thing. That was revolutionary at the time.
- [14:26]
Bob Garfield
If I understand what you're saying, the notion of persecuted Christians actually intensified as Christianity grew and became more powerful around the world.
- [14:38]
Mary Harris
That's right. I mean, what we call the cult of the saints, which is the veneration of martyrs, really takes off after Christians take over the Roman Empire. And of course, there were places Christians could really die. But after the Roman Empire has been effectively Christianized, that Christians start using the history of persecution to justify their violence against those who are not members of their own religious groups. There was a 5th century Christian monk called Shenuta who once said that there is no crime for those who have Christ to defend all kinds of violent things that he and his monks had been doing. And that's a very dangerous idea.
- [15:26]
Bob Garfield
Well, let's look at contemporary times. It's easy to understand from a purely political point of view why modern American Christians would describe themselves as persecuted. But how did they square the concentrated power of Christians throughout the entire history of the nation with the notion that they are somehow under siege they simply overlook it.
- [15:57]
Mary Harris
So when I wrote my book, it was during the Obama years. And one of the things that I thought was, if there was now a Republican president who actively identified himself as a defender of Christians, surely the persecution narrative should go away if they were really persecuted. But it didn't. It actually intensified. And the reason for that is conservative evangelicals in particular feel that they are under attack by the forces of secularism, feminism, relativism. Christians always return to the Jews as the source of their complaint for anything that is wrong. And this, too, is part of the martyrdom story. The first martyr named in the New Testament is Stephen, who was stoned to death by a Jewish mob. And this kind of evolved into this idea that the Jews not only killed Jesus, but they also persecuted his followers. None of which is true.
- [16:59]
Bob Garfield
Is this American version of a persecution myth a thing of its own that's entirely untethered from Christianity's history? Is it perhaps just a modern expression of political conservatism?
- [17:13]
Mary Harris
As an outsider looking at it, one might say, how can one both be the most dominant religious group and also victims? But in a way, this is how Christianity flourished from the early Church onwards. When Christianity succeeded and converted the Roman emperor, that was a sign that. That they were protected by God. But when Christians were persecuted, which some really were, that was also a sign of their virtue. And that's really what's being invoked when someone like President Trump says that he's the greatest president ever, but also that he's a victim of conspiracies.
- [17:56]
Bob Garfield
Persecution is a real thing. We're not suggesting that it doesn't exist, are we?
- [18:02]
Mary Harris
There are, in fact, Christians who are truly persecuted in other parts of the world, just like Muslims are persecuted. And all of those groups, not only Christians, need the assistance of more powerful countries. I think the problem with the rhetoric of persecution is that it distracts from those very real instances of persecution.
- [18:29]
Bob Garfield
This simply has to be said. Nothing against Christians or Christianity. We're discussing a phenomenon of a persistent myth that tracks to the origin of the religion. And other religions have them, too.
- [18:45]
Mary Harris
Absolutely. The deaths of one's heroes are highly regarded in Islam, in Judaism, in Hinduism, in Buddhism. And just as every religious group has its martyrs, every religious group has also acted as persecutors. And I should add, as problematic as I find this rhetoric. I'm a practicing Roman Catholic, so for me, these are really treasured stories that I learned from my youth. But just because I am very committed to that religion and to these stories doesn't mean that I shouldn't also acknowledge the problematic ways in which Christian history is deployed.
- [19:30]
Bob Garfield
Candida, thank you very much.
- [19:32]
Mary Harris
Thank you for having me.
- [19:34]
Bob Garfield
Candida Moss is the author of the Myth of How Early Christians Invented A Story of Martyrdom. She is professor of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham in the uk.
- [19:48]
Eloise Blondio
Coming up, the hidden power of the Christian Left.
- [19:52]
Bob Garfield
This is on the Media.
- [20:01]
William Barber
On the Media is supported by Progressive Insurance.
- [20:04]
Candida Moss
Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [20:23]
Brooke Gladstone
The election has come and gone. Now we're in a new era. It can be easy to get discouraged, frustrated, but you can't afford not to pay attention. You need trustworthy, independent journalism to cut through the noise and hold power to account. I'm Mary Harris, host of what next? From slate.com, we are a daily news podcast with a kind of transparent, smart, yet tongue in cheek analysis you can only find at Slate. Follow and listen to what Next.
- [20:50]
Bob Garfield
Wherever you get your podcasts, this is ON the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
- [20:56]
Eloise Blondio
And I'm Brooke Gladstone. In an era when Christianity seems to straddle our politics like a colossus, attention is focused mostly on one leg, namely the one on the right. It's much easier to see with a clear outline and single purpose. But the left, like, is also in motion, first on behalf of the abolitionist and suffrage movements, and ever after to really understand, though, the considerable, if less visible, power of today's Christian left. Jack Jenkins, national reporter at Religion News News Service, suggests we look back to the social gospel movement of a century ago. Jenkins, author of American the Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of Our country, says the pastors behind the social gospel movement viewed the predation of the Industrial revolution as a new kind of sin, not individual, but structural, corporate, that there are.
- [22:03]
Candida Moss
These systems that are actually hurting and oppressing people. And around this same time there was this critique of, quote, unquote, liberal Christianity coming from a group of Christians who would eventually call themselves the fundamentalists. And they saw the social gospel and other movements within liberal Christianity as incompatible with the gospel that they abided by. And so there was this majority schism.
- [22:27]
Eloise Blondio
Then white Christian fundamentalists became an ascendant political force.
- [22:32]
Candida Moss
Yes, the religious right was a response to the success of liberal Christianity of the early 20th century, and the new religious left of Today is in many ways a response to the success of the religious right in the 1990s and early 2000s. It's worth noting that when these fundamentalists of the 1930s, who eventually rebranded themselves as evangelicals, when they kept losing in the public square, what they did is they kind of went back and formed their own counter revolution in terms of their own media. So by the time you got to the ascendant religious right of the 1980s and 1990s, they had their own media apparatus ready to go to be able to help influence American politics.
- [23:14]
Eloise Blondio
But even though the religious left and the religious right counter each other, they're not mirror images. For one thing, the religious right is largely white and Christian, whereas at least now, the religious left comprises multiple faiths.
- [23:29]
Candida Moss
Yes. And so to do things together often requires quite a bit of coalition building and community building and relationship building that you don't find on the religious right, because there's been this sort of contract established that they're going to work with a uniform message. One of the things that I've traced as a reporter is those moments in which the religious left is able to push in the same direction and make big change.
- [23:55]
Eloise Blondio
Show me where it was. As powerful in pushing a policy as the Christian right has been the passage.
- [24:04]
Candida Moss
Of the Affordable Care act, one of the landmark pieces of liberal legislation of the past century. Barack Obama stood before a group of Catholics and said that the Affordable Care act only got passed because of the influence of Catholic nuns and progressive religious people. The reason Barack Obama said that is that right around the very end of the Affordable Care act fight, the head of the Catholic Health Association, Sister Carol Keon, a Catholic nun, published in her own little magazine of the Catholic Health association, which isn't widely read, this letter saying that she believed that it was time for a universal healthcare, and she had actually been deeply involved in the crafting of the bill and been in conversation with major liberal voices such as John Podesta for quite some time.
- [24:53]
Eloise Blondio
Yeah, but she didn't have a constituency of millions that the religious right can rely on.
- [25:00]
Candida Moss
Well, it actually depends on your interpretation of that. So what was interesting about her coming out and endorsing the bill when she did is that she was doing so in direct Defiance of the U.S. conference of Catholic Bishops, who, you know, exhibited broad sway over American politics. But as it turns out, Catholic nuns have higher approval ratings with the American public than Catholic bishops do. Oh. And not only did she come out, but when this sort of tension emerged between her and the bishops, this whole slate of other Catholic nuns who lead other orders here in the United States also collectively came out and endorsed the Affordable Care act to back her up. And then those nuns were then pushed by a group of progressive faith organizations that stood at the ready to really help push this bill across the finish line. And the end result was that the day that the bill was being passed in the House, Sister Carol Kean, she was sitting in a hotel bar in Vatican City with John Podesta on her phone the entire time calling Catholic members of Congress, pressuring them to vote for the bill. That is why when they ended up getting it passed, Barack Obama actually saved one of the pins that he signed the bill into law with. For Sister Carol Keon, the religious left can be very effective in precise moments. That's a moment of legislation. But they're also often very influential when it comes to broader protest movements.
- [26:24]
Eloise Blondio
Give me an example of that.
- [26:25]
Candida Moss
Well, I mean, you know, one of the bigger demonstrations of the last few years for liberals in general was the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina that was led by Reverend William Barber.
- [26:36]
Eloise Blondio
He's a recurring figure in your book.
- [26:38]
Candida Moss
Yes, they were reacting to this Republican legislator that had swept into power in North Carolina and this collective outcry over the course of years. I mean, there were hundreds of people arrested as part of these demonstrations that William Barber helped lead, you know, by the time you got to 2016 on election night. But one bright spot for Democrats was that the governor of North Carolina was unseated that night. And many political analysts actually cited the Moral Mondays movement led by William Barber as the chief reason. And since then, William Barber has proven to be not just one of the most influential figures in the religious left. William Barber has gone on to become one of the most influential activists in progressivism in general.
- [27:20]
Eloise Blondio
Cornel west, you said, described him as the closest person we have to to Martin Luther King today. But what does his approach to organizing tell us about the religious left that supposedly has Jews and Hindus and Muslims as well as Christians in it? I'm sure I'm leaving some very important religions out.
- [27:43]
Candida Moss
Fusion politics, as he calls it, ultimately is his ability to get a diverse group of voices to show up and represent. And it's an interesting development within the religious left. They are one of the ones who can help get things started. But they don't pretend that they're the only voices in the room. In fact, they need all those other religious voices who may not be like them and all those voices of people who definitely don't pray at all to show up to their initiatives. As well.
- [28:09]
Eloise Blondio
I don't think anybody would argue that people of faith play a big role in the progressive movement, despite its depiction as completely atheistic. Where I remain unpersuaded by the argument is that the religious left is a block equal to white evangelicals in getting people elected.
- [28:36]
Candida Moss
It's a lot easier to point to white evangelicals in polling and say, these folks voted, you know, X way. And it's harder to do that when you have this menagerie of different faith voices and having to poll extensively on their affiliations and seeing how they voted on election day. Although there have been moments in which they have made a profound impact. I mean, for instance, black Protestants are one of the most important constituencies within the Democratic Party. One big moment in the last few years was the election of Doug Jones, the Democratic senator from Alabama. He was up against Roy Moore, who was a uniquely flawed candidate. But it's not important that one of the key reasons he was able to become one of the first Democratic senators from the state of Alabama in some time was that black Protestants showed up in a huge way. And in fact, Joe Biden can probably attribute his success primarily to that community.
- [29:25]
Eloise Blondio
I totally get that. I see that as the most identifiable, the most politically hefty subset of the religious left.
- [29:36]
Candida Moss
One big frustration for religion journalists for several years now has been that there is just wildly uneven polling regarding any group other than white evangelical Protestants and Catholics. So it requires a lot of reporting about what we see on the ground without being able to verify it necessarily with data.
- [29:54]
Eloise Blondio
So why is it harder for journalists to cover the religious left?
- [29:59]
Candida Moss
They're covering the religious right because the religious right has proven to be very powerful. But I think another big part of this is that the religious right cast the left as something that is inadequately religious. And it is true that one of the largest groups within the Democratic party are the, quote, unquote, religiously unaffiliated. And religiously unaffiliated are not necessarily atheists and agnostics, although they are also within that group. You know, the religious right can point to that statistic and say, oh, you know, this is. Is a godless party. That narrative has influenced the way a lot of political journalists have covered religion and politics. And I do think covering the religious left is really hard. I mean, you're having to cover a wide variety of faith groups that often have different theological structures or have various different forms of infighting within them. Native American spirituality is not the same thing as covering an Episcopal priest, which is not the same thing as covering a Muslim Community and like that sort of stuff can be really intimidating to the average political journalist who just wants to see who's going to win on election day.
- [31:03]
Eloise Blondio
Does it matter? Does it matter how the religious left is covered?
- [31:07]
Candida Moss
It always matters to not be misled by, you know, simplistic narratives. It always behooves us to, you know, get at what's truly going on. If the religious right won the argument to say that they are, you know, this authenticity form of faith that can have repercussions for smaller religious communities that might get left out. Their religious liberty won't necessarily be protected. If a Muslim American's faith isn't deemed to be as credible as a white evangelical's, if a Native American's faith isn't deemed as credible as a white Catholic's, that can have dire repercussions in the courts, at the ballot box, and just in society. You know, one of the reasons that I became fascinated with this topic is because I do think that it's an important thing to cover and that if we don't, we miss these important moments of influence. If the exact same things were happening on the right, you would see any number of think pieces, but we don't talk about it on the left. And I think that's just missing a really interesting story.
- [32:04]
Eloise Blondio
Jack, thank you so much.
- [32:06]
Candida Moss
Thank you so much for having me.
- [32:08]
Eloise Blondio
Jack Jenkins is a national reporter at Religion News Service and all, author of American the Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the soul of the Country.
- [32:26]
Bob Garfield
Coming up, America's unique ubiquitous image of Jesus. You know it. Blond, blue eyed, a certain resemblance to Errol Flynn.
- [32:35]
Eloise Blondio
Soon you'll know why this is un media.
- [32:44]
Candida Moss
On the Media is supported by progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.
- [33:08]
Brooke Gladstone
The election has come and gone. Now we're in a new era. It can be easy to get discouraged, frustrated, but you can't afford not to pay attention. You need trustworthy independent journalism to cut through the noise and hold power to account. I'm Mary Harris, host of What Next from Slate.com we are a daily news podcast with a kind of transparent, smart, yet tongue in cheek analysis. And you can only find at Slate. Follow and listen to what Next. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [33:39]
Bob Garfield
This is on the media.
- [33:40]
Eloise Blondio
I'm Bob Garfield and I'M Brooke Gladstone. As our national monuments are toppled and our institutions and icons reconsidered, we turn now to a portrait encountered by every American, regardless of religion, many times throughout our lives. White Jesus. You know, the guy with the flowing blonde locks and baby blues focused on the middle distance. For on the media, Eloise Blondio, our resident graduate of Harvard Divinity School, traces how the historically dubious image became American canon and its consequences.
- [34:22]
Mbayo Chuy
The first picture of Jesus that Detroit pastor Mbayo Chewy remembers seeing belonged to his grandmother. It hung in her bedroom and of.
- [34:29]
Jack Jenkins
Course it was an image of a blonde haired, blue eyed guy. That picture bothered me, but I never would say anything, you know, I dare not tell my grandmother. Would you please take that picture off the wall. The eyes moved like it was following you around the room. And at night in the dark, it glowed. In the 60s and 70s, we had a lot of stuff that glowed in the dark, so.
- [34:55]
Mbayo Chuy
And when you say the eyes were moving, the eyes weren't actually moving. They just kind of felt like they were, right?
- [35:01]
Jack Jenkins
No, they weren't actually moving. But you know, as a child you have an imagination.
- [35:07]
Mbayo Chuy
He saw that image of Jesus. Pale skin, long beachy waves everywhere.
- [35:11]
Jack Jenkins
Growing up in Detroit, I couldn't explain why, but I just didn't feel comfortable with that picture. Of course you see the same images when Jesus is portrayed anywhere in popular culture.
- [35:23]
Mbayo Chuy
He was 12 years old in 1967 when his city turned into a war zone.
- [35:31]
Candida Moss
Snipers rolled the city. Gunfire flickered from neighborhood to neighborhood.
- [35:36]
Eloise Blondio
Whole blocks smoldered.
- [35:37]
Candida Moss
The smell was everywhere.
- [35:39]
Mbayo Chuy
For five days, the so called Detroit riots were credited with sparking the black power movement. Over 40 people in the aftermath. Chuy drove down Linwood street with his parents like he did every weekend. As usual, they passed the statue of Jesus that loomed over the intersection. Seven foot tall, arms outstretched, long hair, white stone. But on this day, Jesus looked different.
- [36:08]
Jack Jenkins
They painted the statue black. So of course the news spread all over the city. Everybody was woke up.
- [36:14]
Mbayo Chuy
Decades later, a house painter named Joe Nelson would claim credit. He said he didn't want to pray to a white man before he covered Jesus toes with black enamel paint. He wondered if some people would still stop and kneel at his feet. And apparently not. Soon some white counter protesters got involved.
- [36:33]
Jack Jenkins
And then about a week later, they had painted it white again. And then a couple days later, it was black again. This happened at least three times. And then I guess after the third time they said, okay, forget it, we're not going to keep going back and forth. And they just left it black. And it's still black to this day.
- [36:54]
Mbayo Chuy
Sacred Heart, the Catholic seminary that owned the statue, said it intended to keep the statue black to commemorate the 67 riots. Sure enough, they repaint Jesus black skin every few years. Mbaye Tchuy, who ministers at a church a mile down the road, still sees it every weekend in 60s Detroit. The black Jesus signified a victory in a thriving theological debate. But the question is far from settled. Whenever this country reckons with its ongoing legacy of white supremacy, Jesus comes up. This summer included, an activist called Shaun.
- [37:32]
Candida Moss
King issued the following demand on Twitter quote, all murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus and his European mother and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form of white supremacy created as tools of oppression. So don't be surprised when they come for your church. Why wouldn't they? No one is stopping them.
- [37:54]
Simon Howard
There is no widespread reports of activists tearing down statues of Jesus.
- [37:57]
Mbayo Chuy
Well, President Trump says unnamed forces want.
- [38:00]
Simon Howard
To tear down statues of Jesus.
- [38:02]
Bob Garfield
Now they're looking at Jesus Christ.
- [38:05]
Mbayo Chuy
The white Jesus image isn't going anywhere. But where and how did it become the reigning image? Certainly actors cast as Jesus have almost always been fair skinned guys with blue eyes. In a long list of cinematic Jesuses, we have, for instance, Willem Dafoe, mother.
- [38:25]
Eloise Blondio
I'm sorry for being a bad son.
- [38:29]
Mbayo Chuy
And Christian Bale, who are my kinsmen but those who hear the word of God and accept it. In a striking break from precedent, white blue eyed actor Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, had brown eyes on screen. And in an apparent nod to history, he also spoke Aramaic. When people of color have played Jesus, it's more often in more, more light hearted portrayals like John Legend in Jesus Christ Superstar or on Family Guy, I.
- [39:00]
Candida Moss
Rode into town on an your mama's.
- [39:06]
Mbayo Chuy
Or the TV sitcom Black Jesus.
- [39:09]
Bob Garfield
Oh Negro of little faith.
- [39:11]
Simon Howard
All right, Jesus, what you got for me today?
- [39:13]
Mbayo Chuy
I've been good.
- [39:14]
Bob Garfield
Whatever you want, man.
- [39:15]
Mbayo Chuy
I need the numbers to the lotto. When black actors play Jesus, it's not seen as, you know, realistic.
- [39:23]
Candida Moss
Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change, you know, I mean, Jesus was a white man too.
- [39:31]
Mbayo Chuy
That's Megyn Kelly on Fox News back in 2013, and she's wrong. Most historians, Christian or not, agree that a guy called Jesus existed 2000 years ago and had a following. There's some contention over whether, you know, he rose from the dead and was the son of God, but scholarly consensus is that he would not have resembled the fair haired surfer we all know. He probably had darker skin, hair and eyes. In fact, every few years a new, allegedly more scientific rendering of Jesus makes the rounds.
- [40:06]
Mary Harris
So what then does science say is.
- [40:08]
Bob Garfield
The true face of the Son of God?
- [40:10]
Jack Jenkins
British scientists drew this portrait of what.
- [40:13]
Candida Moss
They believe Jesus really looked like.
- [40:15]
Mbayo Chuy
Whatever the tech, none of these educated guesses suggest the real man looked like an Aryan hippie. So why does America cleave to that image?
- [40:26]
Brooke Gladstone
The most familiar Jesus appeared during the.
- [40:28]
Mbayo Chuy
Renaissance when artists started to show Jesus human side, like Rembrandt, and that's how we see him today. But that overlooks an abundance of Jesus depictions from the early church onwards as dark skinned or racially ambiguous. It also disregards the great rupture between Europe and the not yet United States driven by the Protestant Reformation.
- [40:51]
William Barber
Many Protestants hated the visual arts around them and destroyed images of Jesus because they saw these images as violations of the ten Commandments.
- [41:03]
Mbayo Chuy
Edward Bloom, author of the Color of Christ, the Son of God and the Saga of Race in America, says that for many years, residents of the colonies and later the US had no images of Jesus.
- [41:15]
William Barber
And when they would have dreams where they would see Jesus, they would see him kind of behind a spider web or some kind of veil. So then when Americans create imagery of Jesus in the 19th century, they do borrow somewhat from European artwork, but they also borrowed from other myths and fabrications about what Jesus would look like.
- [41:40]
Mbayo Chuy
So assuming the American white Jesus is entirely homegrown, from whence did it spring?
- [41:46]
William Barber
The Warner Salmon head of Christ has become the lightning rod for the white Jesus because it's so ubiquitous, because it became so abundant.
- [41:58]
Mbayo Chuy
In 1940, Warner Solomon made the picture. I guarantee you've seen it has been reproduced by some counts over 500 million times. Salman himself became somewhat of a celebrity as a result. He even went on TV to repaint the image, accompanied by a full choir.
- [42:19]
Bob Garfield
I would like to begin the portrait.
- [42:22]
Mbayo Chuy
The portrait is called the Head of Christ. His blue eyes are cast upward. His head, his hair gleams gold. A heavenly diffusion of light frames his head. Soulman was inspired in part, yes, by the romantic portrayals of Renaissance painters, but perhaps more so by the Hollywood headshot. Look at studio portraits of actors like Errol Flynn and you'll see that gauzy light that gazed into the middle distance. Solomon made Jesus a movie star.
- [42:58]
William Barber
It became so recognizable. And then any image created after it kind of had to deal with it or look similar to it. There being one ridiculously recognizable Jesus that is new.
- [43:12]
Mbayo Chuy
There's a misconception that people only embrace pictures of God or God's wrought in their own image. That's not true. Solomon's image was and is beloved by all Christians. But as Edward Bloom notes, white supremacists embraced it because it gave them a kind of moral cover.
- [43:32]
William Barber
The Ku Klux Klan actually had documents and pamphlets that presented Jesus as white and his disciples as Klansmen. And Klansmen depicting themselves as followers of Jesus is really what enabled them to think they were doing the right things. They saw Jesus and Jesus disciples as white, as trying to further a white racial agenda, a purity agenda.
- [44:07]
Mbayo Chuy
The KKK wasn't the first group to enlist Jesus in support of white supremacy in even if Salman's portrait made it easier, the argument for the God given superiority of the white race, backed by Bible quotations, was cited to defend slavery and the mass murder of indigenous people. It's not hard to see how white Jesus bridged the dissonance for white families who gathered to watch the lynching of black men before skipping off to church. In Europe, Nazi theologians argued Jesus was not Jewish, but actually Aryan. And in 50s America, white Jesus was used to support segregation.
- [44:49]
William Barber
And they actually put images of white Jesuses on their pamphlets. You know, their calls for organizational meetings to oppose Brown versus the board of education. They made the claims that this white Jesus who was in favor of racial purity was strongly against interracial marriage, something that would happen if young people were brought together in schools. And so the ties between the white Jesus and these kind of white purity movements are there throughout the 20th century.
- [45:21]
Mbayo Chuy
Dylann Roof, who murdered nine black Christians at a Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, drew white Jesus in his prison journal. Marquette University's psychology professor Simon Howard recalls seeing white Jesus in his great grandmother's house.
- [45:39]
Simon Howard
And I loved going to her house, just one, because she was an amazing individual in person. But also she had a lot of different figurines and things, like on a dresser board. But she also had pictures of family members. And I remember seeing this one white man repeatedly, and I'm like, who's this white guy in our family? And, you know, learning later that this was Jesus.
- [46:02]
Mbayo Chuy
But it wasn't until he watched the biopic of Malcolm X starring Denzel Washington that Howard realized why the white Jesus picture bothered him.
- [46:11]
Candida Moss
History teaches us that Jesus was born in a region where the people had color. There's proof in the very Bible that you ask us to read.
- [46:19]
Simon Howard
And so, yeah, how do we arrive at this physical representation, representation, and where did it come from?
- [46:24]
Mbayo Chuy
As he Got older, Howard read up on the black power movement. He heard speeches by Malcolm X denouncing racism in evangelical churches.
- [46:34]
Candida Moss
You go inside a white church, that's what they preaching, white nationalism.
- [46:36]
Eloise Blondio
They got Jesus, white Mary, white God, white, everybody white. That's white nationalism.
- [46:42]
Mbayo Chuy
As a psychology student, Howard realized no one had ever studied how white portrayals of God and Jesus actually influence how people see the world. So eventually he did his own study, assessing bias with a computerized test called an riat, a Race Implicit Association Task, which measures attitudes towards race. He presented subjects with various images, white Jesus among them, and afterwards measured their bias again.
- [47:10]
Simon Howard
And when people are exposed to images of a white Christ, it makes those implicit associations more pronounced, which means that they had a more pro white bias after being exposed to an image of a white Jesus.
- [47:25]
Mbayo Chuy
Exposure to white Jesus pictures actually intensifies the view that white people are better than black people.
- [47:33]
Simon Howard
White supremacy is an ideology that is both conscious and unconscious. Don't mean that as like a white supremacist and a white sheet running around terrorizing, burning crosses, but an ideology that associates whiteness with superiority and blackness with inferiority. And this image reinforces that ideology consciously and unconsciously.
- [47:56]
Mbayo Chuy
Howard and every other critic of the image I spoke to are not calling for forced removal. They just want churches to think more deeply about the impact of these betrayals of Jesus. And they're especially concerned about depictions of white Jesus in black churches.
- [48:13]
Simon Howard
When we have these images that we worship, right? And black people are the most religious group in the US and have been for a long time and overwhelmingly Christian. What I would say for these black individuals is if you don't want to get rid of the white one, put a black one up there next to the white one. And this is primarily thinking about children because now they're not just solely associating godliness with whiteness. There's a more complicated picture that's being painted.
- [48:42]
Mbayo Chuy
Remember Mbayo Chuy, the pastor in Detroit? His church displays no white Jesus. A mile down the street from the famous statue, which still bears its painted black skin, is the shrine of the Black Madonna, which showcases a mural of Mary with deep brown skin holding a dark skinned baby Jesus. Chuy saw that image for the first time when he visited the church of 15.
- [49:07]
Jack Jenkins
It just felt right. It was kind of like a revelation. I said, oh, wow. I never even considered the idea that Jesus could have possibly been black. Wow. Who could have thought of this? Jesus was a man of color. We're just correcting the historical mistake.
- [49:28]
Mbayo Chuy
The shrine of the black Madonna was founded in the 60s by a black Christian nationalist, Albert Clegg Jr. Who asserted that historically, Jesus was a black man with ties to Africa. Other thinkers like James cone, were more interested in how imagining Jesus hanging on the cross as a black man being lynched could bring Christians closer to understanding God.
- [49:50]
Eloise Blondio
To claim that Christ is white is.
- [49:53]
Candida Moss
Indeed an anathema, is a betrayal of.
- [49:56]
Simon Howard
This God who has created us all.
- [50:00]
Candida Moss
As sacred beings and has promised us all a just future.
- [50:04]
Mbayo Chuy
Reverend Kelly Brown Douglas, Episcopal priest and theologian and author of the Black Christ.
- [50:09]
Simon Howard
Why is it a betrayal of that?
- [50:11]
Candida Moss
Because whiteness reflects what it means to be a part of an oppressive culture and reality.
- [50:18]
Simon Howard
And we would be suggesting that God.
- [50:20]
Mbayo Chuy
Is on the side of those who oppress that God is on the side of white supremacists. Unlike Clegg, Reverend Brown Douglass doesn't think Jesus was literally a black man. The symbolism is what she's after.
- [50:33]
Candida Moss
Where would the crucified Christ be today? You could see Christ in the face.
- [50:37]
Eloise Blondio
Of a George Floyd, right as he.
- [50:39]
Candida Moss
Cried out that said he couldn't breathe. That reminded me of Jesus from the cross, crying out and saying, I thirst.
- [50:45]
Mbayo Chuy
Religious images invite believers to draw closer to God. They can also represent a worldview. So Jesus has been imagined as George Floyd, as a Native American, a man with aids. The list goes on. So why aren't there more churches like Chuy's? His church has an outpost in Liberia where there was a lot of pushback when he brought them prayer cards featuring Mary and Jesus with dark skin. They had never seen images like that before. They too had grown up with images of Jesus as white.
- [51:20]
Jack Jenkins
It's hard to go against what you've been conditioned to believe, especially as it relates to religion. It's hard. It's really hard. You can teach kids, but you can't teach adults what they think they already know.
- [51:36]
Mbayo Chuy
And look, if every white Jesus picture disappeared overnight, America's white supremacy would remain. But we know from Dylann Roof back through all America's history and from a raft of psychological research, these pictures do matter. And if the first image Christian kids see of Jesus is a white one, it might take them their whole lives to unleash it, if they ever do. For on the media, I'm Eloise Blondio.
- [52:17]
Bob Garfield
That's it for this week's show, which was produced mainly by Eloise Blondio. Our other producers are Alana Casanova Burgess, Michael Lowinger, Leah Feder, John Hanrahan Xan, Sandra, Ellen, who leaves us this week, and we will miss her. And we had more help from Abba Sasani and our show was edited by Brooke. Our technical director is Jennifer Munson. Our engineer was Josh Hahn.
- [52:45]
Eloise Blondio
Zandra, you infused the show with a rare and glorious bizarre sensibility. Thank you so much. Katya Rogers is our executive producer. On the Media is a production of WNYC Studios. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
- [53:03]
Bob Garfield
And I'm Bob Garfield.
- [53:07]
Brooke Gladstone
Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. Since then, New York Public Radio's rigorous journalism has gone on to win a Peabody award and a DuPont Columbia Award, among others. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.