A prominent Black Lives Matter activist on Monday advocated for the destruction of Christian statues, murals and stained glassed windows, calling them “tools of oppression,” racist propaganda,” and “a gross form of white supremacy.”
“They should all come down,” BLM activist Shaun King said on Twitter.
Left-wing agitators have been vandalizing or toppling Confederate statues for years, but in recent weeks they’ve been coming for statues of other noted Americans, including presidents Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, as well as Francis Scott Key, writer of the National Anthem; St. Junipero Serra, a Catholic saint; and Ulysses S. Grant, the celebrated Civil War general who fought the Confederacy.
King believes that Christian symbols need to be torn down, too.
“All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down,” he tweeted.
King, with over a million followers on Twitter, is considered a major influencer on the internet.
As the Federalist pointed out, there has been much debate among biblical scholars about what the historical Jesus looked like.
No descriptions of his appearance survived the chaotic first century AD. As such, when Christianity spread throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia, independent churches made images of Jesus whose appearance and dress were familiar to community members. This includes 1500 years of Ethiopian depictions of a black Jesus.
Because of this, much classical European artwork, from Roman times to the Renaissance, feature Jesus with a European appearance. The National Gallery in the UK states that around 1/3 of its immense collection is of Western European Christian subjects.
Christians, of course, are acutely aware that Jesus was a Jew (or Judaean), therefore likely had olive colored skin and brown eyes.
King’s call for European depictions of Jesus to be “torn down” when Christ is also depicted as African, Asian, Indigenous and Indian in those cultures, is a telling example of King’s gross ignorance and malice.