Why Is Jesus Portrayed as White?: Unpacking the Historical Whitewashing of the Messiah
- karissajaxon
- Aug 15
- 8 min read
In Christian culture, there is an unspoken rule: don’t rock the boat. As long as it’s not blatantly demonic or sacrilegious, most believers are taught to accept what is. Questioning tradition is often seen as rebellion, even when that tradition is rooted in deception. But how long can we, as children of a righteous and honest God, continue to uphold lies that oppress and distort His truth?
White supremacy is not just a relic of history—it has left a lasting imprint on the American church. It has shaped not only the way we worship but also the very image of the one we worship. It made white people superior and all others inferior—legally, socially, and spiritually. For Black people, this wasn’t just a matter of politics or economics. It was spiritual. It made us question our worth, our closeness to God, and even our ability to lead, to be holy, to be seen.
Passivity in the church allowed it. A culture of silence allowed white supremacy to clothe itself in robes and pulpits, stained glass, and cast itself into scripture interpretations, children’s Bibles, and Sunday school coloring pages. This passivity is why so many believers now accept sin, corruption, and lies under the banner of tradition. If we can accept the lie that God incarnate came to Earth as a blue-eyed European—why not accept any other lie?
It’s time to ask the hard, sacred questions.
If most people agree Jesus wasn’t blonde with blue eyes—why is that still the image we see in churches, movies, and homes across America?
Why is Jesus still being portrayed as white in American churches?
What impact has this had on Black identity and faith?
This isn’t just misguided artwork. It’s evil.
It’s a distortion of truth, a manipulation of divinity, and a violent assertion of superiority that has shaped theology, power, and identity for centuries.
It’s also not an accident.
To understand how we got here, we have to look at how Christianity—born in Africa and rooted in the Middle East—was co-opted, rebranded, and repurposed by white empires. We’ll explore how white people claimed ownership of the faith, rewrote its image, and weaponized it to build and maintain systems of oppression. And we’ll trace how those distortions still shape how we practice Christianity today. From who’s seen as a credible preacher to who’s painted on the church walls.
The History of White Supremacy Within the Church
Christianity During Slavery
Christianity was not introduced to enslaved Africans in America as a gospel of liberation, but weaponized as a tool of control. Slaveholders and white ministers curated a version of Christianity that centered obedience, submission, and endurance of suffering. Select verses like “Servants, obey your masters” were emphasized, while scriptures about freedom, deliverance, justice, and rebellion were omitted or silenced.
To reinforce this, enslaved people were often banned from learning to read and denied access to the full Bible. What became known as the “Slave Bible” was heavily edited—removing most of the Old Testament and the entire Book of Revelation, two sections that speak explicitly to God’s judgment of oppressors and liberation of the oppressed.
Enslaved Africans were often only permitted to attend white-led services or plantation sermons designed to pacify, rather than empower. The theology taught to them deified whiteness, portraying white people as divinely appointed overseers and Black people as cursed, inferior, and born to serve.
This was religious manipulation and theological white supremacy, deliberately shaping spiritual identity to justify racial hierarchy.
The Ku Klux Klan and White Christianity
Long after slavery ended, white supremacy within Christianity did not. The Ku Klux Klan, one of the most infamous white supremacist groups in American history, boldly identified itself as a Christian organization. Their cross burnings were more than acts of terror. They were twisted rituals meant to consecrate their racism under the name of God.
KKK rallies included hymns, scripture readings, and prayers. They framed their violence as holy work, reinforcing the belief that whiteness and godliness were synonymous.
Worse still, many white churches were silent in the face of these atrocities. Some even gave tacit or explicit support. It was not uncommon for white Christians to attend church on Sunday morning and a lynching that afternoon, sometimes still in their Sunday best.
Many Black Americans have passed down stories of how churches would ring their bells while bodies hung in town squares. The silence of the white church was deafening, but very relling.
Christianity and Segregation
As America entered the era of Jim Crow, white supremacy remained alive in the pews. Many white churches refused to accept Black members. If allowed in at all, they were often relegated to balconies or back pews, physically separated from white congregants even in spaces participating in the worship of Yahweh.
White Christian leaders often cited scripture to argue against interracial marriage, integration, and civil rights efforts. Verses were cherry-picked and reinterpreted to maintain a racial caste system.
In the mid-20th century, as the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum, many white evangelical churches began promoting a “colorblind gospel.” One that downplayed race, systemic injustice, and historical trauma. While sounding progressive on the surface, this approach ignored the lived reality of Black Christians and erased the need for truth, repentance, and repair.
When faith becomes detached from justice, it becomes complicit in oppression.
The Psychological Impact of Christian Imagery
The Power of Religious Iconography
From stained glass windows to Sunday School coloring books, imagery does more than decorate. It educates the learner on history, culture, and truth. Especially for children, the first images we associate with holiness leave an imprint on the subconscious. And in America, that imprint has overwhelmingly been white.
The white Jesus wasn’t just a cosmetic decision; it was a calculated rebranding. Over time, whiteness became inseparable from godliness. The robes, the halo, the pale-skinned features—all of it constructed a divine aesthetic that said: God looks like them, not us.
This is not a matter of opinion, but psychological fact. Repetition forms belief. When white figures are consistently depicted as righteous, merciful, powerful, and divine, those qualities become coded as “white” in the minds of both Black and white people alike. And when Blackness is absent from divinity, it becomes subconsciously linked with sin, rebellion, or the profane. Just as the outside world portrayed, white is right and black is evil.
How the White Jesus Supports White Supremacy
The image of a white Jesus is not just inaccurate, it’s harmful. It reinforces the lie that white people are inherently closer to God, more worthy of worship, and more deserving of leadership. It tells the world that salvation, justice, and goodness come wrapped in white skin.
Black children grow up in churches where every image of God and the heavenly host is white. That doesn’t just shape what they think of God—it shapes what they think of themselves. They may not say it out loud, but the message is loud nonetheless: God does not look like me, so maybe God is not for me.
Meanwhile, the true historical Jesus—a brown-skinned, Afro-Asiatic man born in the so-called Middle East, who lived under occupation and was executed by an empire is erased. And with him, the possibility of seeing divine beauty in Blackness is erased too.
The white Jesus functions as a silent authority figure in the American psyche. He becomes the spiritual justification for colonization, slavery, and segregation. He blesses the police state. He guards the borders. He votes red. And all the while, his true identity—as a poor, oppressed man who defied empire—is buried. This is not a political matter, as blue politicians push white supremacy more than any other. It is an image issue. One that is inherently demonic and evil.
The Impact on Black Identity and Faith
The damage doesn’t stop with theology. It reaches deep into the souls of Black people trying to make sense of their place in the world. Many grow up loving God but hating themselves, worshipping with passion but walking with shame. When the God you’re taught to love looks like your oppressor, how do you fully embrace that love?
For some, the dissonance becomes too much. They walk away from Christianity altogether, convinced it’s a white man’s religion. For others, the divide remains internal—a quiet war between faith and Blackness, between the desire for truth and the need for belonging.
This is not accidental. This is the legacy of theological white supremacy. A spiritual gaslighting that taught us to ignore our oppression in favor of “unity,” to overlook injustice in favor of “peace,” and to keep bowing at altars built by hands that once whipped our backs.
But truth is rising. And we are reclaiming the right to see ourselves—not as sinners crawling toward a white God—but as image-bearers of the divine, fearfully and wonderfully made, in full color.
Why Is Jesus Still Portrayed as White in American Churches?
Despite centuries of scholarship confirming Jesus was a brown-skinned, Afro-Asiatic man from the region we now call the Middle East whose parents hid him in Black Egypt as a baby, most American churches still portray him as white. Why?
First: comfort. The white Jesus image offers familiarity, especially in majority-white congregations that don’t want to reckon with the violent history of how this image came to dominate. Replacing white Jesus with a historically accurate depiction would mean confronting slavery, colonialism, and racial terror. Topics many churches aren’t willing to face, especially from the pulpit.
Second: capitalism. Christian publishing houses, children’s Bibles, media outlets, and evangelical brands have made billions off white Jesus imagery. From stained glass windows to TV specials, the white savior sells. It’s a financial machine. Changing the image would mean disrupting an entire economic system built around this lie.
Even progressive churches struggle here. Some say, “Jesus’s race doesn’t matter,” while clinging to the image that has always reinforced white dominance. But if it truly didn’t matter, then why has whiteness been the default for centuries? And why is there outrage when Jesus is portrayed as Black?
This is where the double standard comes in. When Jesus is shown as white, few call it sacrilege. But portray him as African, suddenly it’s “heresy.” That tells us everything. The white image of Christ is protected because it upholds the cultural and theological status quo. Any alternative forces people to ask uncomfortable questions about race, power, and the very structure of their faith.
The persistence of white Jesus in American churches is not about accuracy, but allegiance. Allegiance to a version of Christianity shaped by empire, not truth.
Reclaiming the True Image of Christ
To reclaim the true image of Christ is not simply about changing how we draw or depict him. It’s about restoring the truth that has been stolen, whitewashed, and weaponized.
A historically and ethnically accurate image of Jesus matters. It reminds us that God chose to enter history through a colonized, oppressed people and not through power, but humility. Jesus was not a white European. He was a brown-skinned, Afro-Asiatic Jew born in Roman-occupied Palestine. To deny this is to deny truth, and truth is the foundation of justice.
All across the African diaspora, artists have long depicted Jesus in ways that reflect both historical reality and cultural relevance. In Ethiopian Orthodox icons we see a Messiah who actually resembles the people he came to liberate. These depictions aren’t political. They’re restorative. They say: we, too, are made in the image of God.
That’s why culturally honest representations of Christ matter. They allow people—especially Black people—to see themselves reflected in the story of redemption. They help undo centuries of psychological conditioning that equated whiteness with divinity and Blackness with sin or subhumanity.
Conclusion
White Jesus was not born in Bethlehem. He was manufactured in Europe.
From colonial expansion to American slavery, the whitewashed image of Christ has been used to control, pacify, and dominate. It stripped Jesus of his cultural roots and aligned him with the very systems he came to dismantle. This version of Jesus was never about truth. It was about power.
But truth has a way of resurfacing.
So now we ask: What version of Jesus have you internalized?
Is it the one used to justify oppression—or the one who walked among the marginalized, flipped tables in the temple, and was executed for confronting an empire?
It is my opinion that we do not need an image of the Messiah in order to worship him, but if we must have an image, reclaiming the true image of Christ should be for the purpose of recovering history. This should not be done as a way of practicing Black supremacy nor white supremacy, but rather as a way of unlearning what colonization taught us and re-rooting our faith in the soil of truth, justice, and identity.
Because a theology rooted in whiteness cannot liberate Black people or save White people.
Call to Action:
Study. Unlearn. Reimagine. Reclaim. Let the truth make you free.
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