Jonathan Merritt has given us a good response to the new face of Faux News, Megyn Kelly, and her laughable response to the color question, especially when considering fictional characters such as Santa Claus and Jesus. If you can go to The Atlantic, it’s worth reading in it’s entirety.
Insisting Jesus Was White Is Bad History and Bad Theology
In trying to police his depiction, Megyn Kelly is wrong on both the facts and the essential universality of the Christian message.
Fox News television host Megyn Kelly told viewers on her December 11 broadcast that Jesus and Santa are both white men.
“Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change,” Kelly said. “Jesus was a white man, too. It’s like we have, he’s a historical figure that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?”
Setting aside the ridiculousness of creating rigidly racial depictions of a fictitious character that does not actually exist—sorry, kids—like Santa, Kelly has made a more serious error about Jesus. The scholarly consensus is actually that Jesus was, like most first-century Jews, probably a dark-skinned man. If he were taking the red-eye flight from San Francisco to New York today, Jesus might be profiled for additional security screening by TSA. …
… warnings hold just as true for believers today. Within the church, eschewing a Jesus who looks more like a Scandinavian supermodel than the sinless Son of God in the scriptures is critical to maintaining a faith in which all can give praise to one who became like them in an effort to save them from sins like racism and prejudice. It’s important for Christians who want to expand the church, too, in allowing the creation of communities that are able to worship a Jesus who builds bridges rather than barriers. And it is essential to enabling those who bear the name of Christ to look forward to that day when, according to the book of Revelation, those “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” can worship God together.
Until that day arrives, though, can someone please tell Megyn Kelly that Jesus is not white?
Perhaps this short passage from Revelation as told by John is closer to how the real Jesus might have looked:
I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters.
Woolly hair and bronze skin: what say you now, Megyn? And as far as Santa is concerned, wasn’t he originally Turkish (then part of the ancient Greek world) and therefore not exactly white? For being the rising star on a news network, Megyn Kelly is certainly bumbling around in untruths and bigotry … wait, I almost forgot this is Fox News … never mind.
A Celebration of Reading 