I don't know if this sign is real or faked, but I like the sentiment.

[Arkansas Granny]

Link to tweet

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Link to tweet

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[marybourg]

1. I don't buy into this man of color conceit.

Unless I and all my Jewish family and friends - the descendants of Jesus’ contemporaries- are now to be considered people of color. Which would be strange considering that we tend to be pretty pale-skinned.

[Dave Starsky]

3. Yeah, I don't buy it either.

Consensus is that he looked more or less like this:



Which is not someone I think of when I think "of color".

[tavernier]

7. How on earth can he look like that when his mother had long blonde hair and blue eyes?

I’ve seen the statues.

[NurseJackie]

13. I grew up believing that Jesus was a ginger.

[marybourg]

24. Well, we Ashkenazi certainly managed to lighten up

considerably in 2000 years, for a people who, both history and gene studies have shown, never intermarried until very recently and who spent many generations largely beyond the pale of settlement in ghettos.

I personally, in nearly eighty years, the first 48 of them living in heavily Jewish areas of N.Y., have never seen a Jewish person who looked like that. I have known two Sephardic families who were dark-skinned, but they were from cosmopolitan trading cities in North Africa, had African features and looked nothing like that man either. But what do I know in the face of the new common knowledge.

[Dave Starsky]

25. I don't know if the skin tone in this image is a product of genetics.

It could just be from working in the sun all day. Jesus and his dad were carpenters, after all. (Yeah, I know, "son of God", and all that; but Joseph raised him and probably changed his poopy diapers every now and then, so that makes him his dad, as far as I'm concerned).

Anyway, I think we can both agree that he would NOT look like this, something like the quarterback for BYU.

[Arkansas Granny]

4. I think the point is that he wasn't the fair skinned, light haired, blue eyed man that is

usually used in illustrations of Jesus.

[Ferrets are Cool]

19. Thank you for the "voice" of reason

[TheRickles]

8. Ashkenazi vs. Sephardi

Most American Jews are descendants of the Eastern European branch of Judaism known as Ashkenazim (from the Hebrew word for Germany) and tend to be quite Caucasian in appearance. They are not genetically considered to be Semites, as are people from the Middle East (although "Semitic" is more of a linguistic or cultural than racial term). Marybourg and her friends (and I) tend to be paler-skinned compared to the Sephardic Jews (from the Hebrew word for Spain) who migrated from North Africa into Europe and compared to the Muslim peoples of the Middle East.

The genetic story is more nuanced and complex and fascinating, but that's the gist of it. So Jesus would have more closely resembled modern-day Lebanese or Jordanians than Germans or French. Whether that makes him "a man of color" depends on how one defines color. Either way, the sign outside the church makes a great point!

[volstork]

12. Another facet of this is

who (or what peoples) have been considered "white" in the US. For many years, individuals of Mediterranean descent, such as Italian and Greek immigrants, were not considered "white," nor were Irish immigrants. Whiteness was used as a weapon against any group of individuals who were intended to be excluded from full participation in and benefit from "white" society at large.

[Collimator]

14. Once again recommending

How the Irish Became White. The book is a fairly dry read for having such a "sexy" title. But it does cover the social journey of Irish immigrants arriving at the designation, "white".

Of course, if one went by actual skin-tone, then the Irish are some of the whitest people on the planet, or so says Conan O'Brien. The fact that they weren't actually considered white in the social sense is a clear testament that the label is social in origin.

One heartbreaking point illustrated in the book is the contrast between the support that Irish people offered to Abolitionist speakers touring Ireland and the attitude toward black people taken by those of Irish descent later on in American history.

[modrepub]

18. Catholicism

Another reason Eastern Europeans and Irish weren’t “white” was their religion, Catholic or Orthodox. A very Italian friend of mine commented when he and his wife moved to VA outside DC, “...have to be careful down here because a lot of people consider us, one of those (Catholics)”. And I’m referring tho social ostracism, which is somewhat mild compared to how others can be treated.

[smirkymonkey]

21. How can the Irish have never been considered "white"?

They are pretty much the whitest people on the planet, strictly speaking skin-wise. The fairest, pastiest people I have ever seen are Irish. And many of them don't even brown up in the sun. Who has decided that they aren't white?

[Collimator]

28. The point that the book makes

is that the Irish were not considered among the socially accepted "white people" when they first immigrated to America. They were undesirable immigrants and the pallor of their skin didn't change that. In the United Kingdom, they occupied a social status similar to that of black people in this country. How one could differentiate between a pale Irish person and a pale English person is a challenge, of course.

Speech, manner and dress were the visual dividers in such situations. Here in America, skin tone and facial features were one damn convenient way to quickly (and ruthlessly) sort between the "good" and the "bad".

After taking it on the chin for the first generations or so of their time in America, the Irish were able to ascend the ladder of social ranking for a number of reasons. This would not have happened, though, if not for having the "right" skin tone, etc.

[smirkymonkey]

29. I see. It's just so strange to identify them by color, though.

I get the social discrimination part of it. I know they were definitely considered to be of a lower class when they first immigrated to this country.

[Collimator]

30. Virtually everybody was considered of a lower class

when they immigrated to this country. The pathetic tragedy of America is that one of the stepping stones on the way up was to stand on the neck of black people. . . And now the police are kneeling on their necks and they think that they are justified.

[Towlie]

26. Here's an interesting take on what Baby Jesus looked like:

Looks like he would have qualified as a member of the Aryan Master Race:

Church at 5201 Johnson St, Hollywood, Florida

[ck4829]

2. "He was no angel"

[boston bean]

6. He did not comply. All his fault he got nailed to a cross.

[Canoe52]

16. But nevertheless he persisted...

[Ford_Prefect]

5. If you have a problem with this term perhaps you need to consider where Jesus was from.

If Jesus grew up in Nazareth 2000 years ago he most likely had darker skin than most western traditional and modern depictions of him show. In today's reference, he would probably be considered a person of color. It doesn't matter to me that he was. He has always described as a physically ordinary man of his tribe according to scriptures and relevant works. He was a man of his culture, and of his region. He certainly did not resemble the pale-skinned Nordic-looking man I could see on the wall of my church school class. I don't know the source of that illustration but Jesus in that picture did not resemble our neighbor from Lebanon.

[keithbvadu2]

9. What does Jesus look like? It depends on whose living room wall his portrait hangs.

What does Jesus look like?

It depends on whose living room wall his portrait hangs.

?quality=90&strip=all

[left-of-center2012]

10. I'm more confused by the sign mentioning ...

I’m more confused by the sign mentioning the Presbyterian Church and the United Church of Christ.

Did they merge?

[grantcart]

15. The denominations did not

It started out Presbyterian.

My guess is that it had a liberal tradition and at some point there was a small UCOC congregation that was also liberal but not big enough to survive and they combined the church into a 'union' congregation and alternate pastoral terms between the 2 denominations.

There are other Presbyterian and UCOC congregations in the area.

[hvn_nbr_2]

23. It's probably similar to my church

I go to a church where two different congregations (one PCUSA and one UCC) share the same building and have services together. Previously I went to one that a UCC and a Unitarian church share the same facilities but have different services and programs.

[grantcart]

27. That's what I originally thought but went to the website

It's a single union congregation with the same pastoral team.

[pazzyanne]

11. The Church and pastor are real.

"Jun 10, 2020 · Good Samaritan Church, "Making Disciples," Rev. Jen Daysa, June 7th, 2020 ... "
They carry on an on-line ministry on YouTube. Don't know about the sentiment on the sign.

[panfluteman]

17. The Romans Killed Jesus, NOT the Law Keeping Jews

Every scholar of Christian history and origins who I have read are all unanimous on this point. The Christian gospels' position that it was the Jews who were responsible for Jesus' crucifixion is historically inaccurate. Crucifixion was a specifically Roman form of execution reserved for those who Rome saw to be seditious to the empire. In addition to being crucified, Jesus' cross bore the sign INRI, which is an abbreviation for Iesu Nazareno Rex Iudaeorum, or Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. The original Jesus movement, the Jerusalem Church led by James the Just, the brother of Jesus, it seems, was actually a movement of Jewish resistance against Rome. But the later gospel writers, who were all folowers of Paul and his buddy and protege Luke, hijacked or co-opted the original Jewish Jesus movement and turned it into a new world religion that was geared mainly towards gentile, or Greco-Roman religious sensibilities. Mark, our first canonical gospel to be written, was written in AD 70. right after the Roman holocaust of Judea and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, which set the Jews on a centuries long diaspora. It also decimated the original Jerusalem Church of Jewish Christianity and provided a huge boost to Paul and his followers, with their revisionist history of Jesus and his message. These early Pauline Christians, for better or worse, had to survive in a Greco-Roman world; therefore, they tried to whitewash the Romans of as much guilt as they could in the crucifixion of Jesus - and pin the blame on the Jews instead.

[Wounded Bear]

20. The sentiment comes from the Bible passage...

where supposedly Pilate offered a pardon for Jesus and to crucify Barrabas the thief instead and the crowd yelled to crucify Jesus.

So the sense is that the Jews had the option to spare Jesus but didn't. It's right there in the text.

Won't argue the rest of your post, that seems to be accurate based on what I've read. I know that much of modern Christianity is based more on the writings of Paul and the Epistles rather than the actual teachings of Jesus.

[cojoel]

22. I interpreted it slightly differently

I interpreted "keepers of the law" as the keepers of Roman law, not the keepers of Jewish law. As such, the Romans are analogous to the cops today who are supposed to be enforcing laws but are often the instigators of violence.

I'm not saying your interpretation is not correct, only that I feel mine fits in well with today's times. But if mine is correct, the writer of the sign certainly should have chosen better words.