The Color of Christ

by Edward J. Blum

When the twentieth century came, the West and the South united to create a new Christ for America. Unlike the one of the Civil War era, this one supported white supremacy. He was a white man who strengthened white men, subjugated people of color, heralded the Ku Klux Klan, and did it all in the name of sacred liberty. This white Jesus had his vocal critics and competitors, and the decades following Reconstruction witnessed another round of intense competition for the soul and body of Jesus. If Harriet Beecher Stowe defined a suffering servant Jesus, one closely identified with the slave, her brother pioneered a new way of conceiving of the life and face of Jesus, one that rhetorically claimed no race for Jesus but visualized him as white.