While the debates on the statues or recontextualizations of cinema works or museums rage, the bishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, leader of the Church of England as primate, brought the debate to the religious field. In Today’s program on BBC Radio 4, he said that the Anglican Church and other religious institutions around the world should “of course” reconsider the representations of Jesus who represent him as a white man, recalls Newsweek.
He said on the show that he had visited many churches with diverse cultural backgrounds, so many did not use a bleached representation of Jesus. “You see Jesus portrayed in so many ways that there are cultures, languages and understandings”said Justin Welby. “You don’t see a white Jesus. You see a black Jesus or a Chinese Jesus or a Middle Eastern Jesus, which is the fairest. ”
A few days ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury had stressed that racism remains a scourge of “horrible” magnitude in our current societies. He had called the Anglican Church to “Put order in [sa] clean house”, and at “Recognize one’s own mistakes and historical failures” in matters of racial inequality. The Church of England has approximately 26 million worshipers in more than 165 countries.
In addition to reviewing representations of religious institutions, Welby told the BBC that it was also time to check whether all the monuments depicting Jesus and other historical figures in churches were needed. Not that removing or keeping them is the sole prerogative of Justin Welby, primate of the Church of England since 2013, but the prelate has indicated that there will be “Discussions about whether they all need to stay”.
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