Home »

A new film called "Color of the Cross" aims to capitalize on the color image of Jesus

The Film depicts the biblical Jesus as a dark-skinned black man (played by the film's Brooklyn-born Haitian writer and director, Jean-Claude LaMarre)

By ED BEESON

HERALD NEWS

Darryl Harris remembers the first time he saw Jesus in a new light. He was in his early 20s, enlisted in the Navy and at one of those points in life when having a good time meant more to him than defending American interests abroad.

Harris, a Passaic native who now lives in Paterson, was stationed in the Philippines. One day, while wandering the streets of Manila alone, he came upon a store that sold artwork from Africa. He was poking through the aisles when a bust of Jesus caught his eye. Though never one for art, Harris said he felt transfixed by this sculpture, especially the details the sculptor had carved into stone. He pored over every feature: Jesus' eyes and eyelids, his lips and brow. His chocolatey skin and woolen hair.

"When I saw it," said Harris, who is now 43, "I said, 'Wow. He's dark.'" It was the first time he saw Jesus portrayed as a black man."

A new film called "Color of the Cross" aims to capitalize on that image. The movie, which hits theaters in New York and four other U.S. cities on Oct. 27, depicts the biblical Jesus as a dark-skinned black man (played by the film's writer and director, Jean-Claude LaMarre). Set during the last 48 hours of Jesus' life, the film suggests that the Christian messiah may have been crucified because of his race.

The question of Jesus' race drew Harris to the bust, and the shopkeeper, a Filipino woman, sensed that.

She knew precisely what to say. She approached Harris and told him that the traditional image of Jesus -- the one he grew up with -- was flawed. Based on how people from Nazareth appear today, the shopkeeper said, there is no way that Jesus could resemble the man people see in stained glass, statues and paintings. He would not have had fair skin, blue eyes or soft brown hair.

She then cited a passage from the Book of Revelations that, in one of the few biblical descriptions of Jesus, likened Jesus' hair to "white wool" and his feet to "burnished bronze."

These words had an instant effect on Harris. "After talking to her, I was sold," he said. He bought the statue and placed it in his locker aboard his ship, where he soon would spend the next three months of his life. He said the bust, with its peaceful gaze, kept him level-headed during those long days at sea.

Though Harris, who was raised Baptist, now considers himself more "spiritual" than religious, he still draws inspiration from that bust of Jesus, though he has since lost it. Seven years ago, he opened Nu-Xpressions, an Afro-centric art gallery and store in downtown Paterson that sells many religious icons filled with black people.

"Not to say that I rejected the white Jesus," he said. "I just sort of related to him (the black Jesus) more."

He is far from alone in his beliefs. Nearly a quarter of black Christians say they imagine Jesus as black, according to data gathered in the nationwide National Black Politics Study in 1993. The study also found that about half of the respondents said that churches should display images of Jesus as a black man.

"It's not an image we wrestle with," said the Rev. Albert Rowe of Calvary Baptist Church in Paterson. "He came to reveal -- to me -- God's nature, not God's color,"

And yet, Rowe said, "I take joy in the fact that in my heart of hearts, that (Jesus) is a man that looked more like us."

"Color of the Cross," which FoxFaith, the new 20th Century Fox division for Christian and family-friendly films, will release next year on DVD, uses the topic of Jesus' race to heighten the drama leading up to his crucifixion.

"But he is black," says one of the film's rabbis of the Sanhedrin, the group of Jewish judges who conspired against Jesus in the Gospels. "To say he is a messiah is blasphemy!"

The film is not just an attempt to offer an alternate view of centuries of church iconography that depict Jesus as a white European. It also tries to counter the long history of Hollywood casting white actors to play major biblical figures, such as the Swedish actor Max von Sydow being cast play to Jesus in "The Greatest Story Ever Told."

"There is an image out there and it's false. You've got to counter it," said Jean-Claude LaMarre, who directed several urban-themed movies before helming "Color of the Cross." He said it was especially important to counter the image of Jesus as a white man in black churches, where he said he had heard the vocal criticisms of this film.

"African-American churches have been selling this image to their congregation and it's rooted in ignorance," the Brooklyn-born Haitian director said. "I had one (black) woman tell me, 'Well, read your Bible. He was Jewish.' As if there are no black Jews."

While the film's low-budget look (it was shot for less than $2.5 million) and plodding pace may not draw in the masses the way Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" did, "Color of the Cross" may resonate topically with some black audiences.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell, an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University, is the author of an academic paper titled "Liberation to Mutual Fund: The Political Consequences of Differing Conceptions of Christ in the African American Church," soon to be published in the journal Religion and American Political Behavior. It analyzed responses from the National Black Politics Study to gauge how blacks view the race of Jesus.

Using data collected in the study, a telephone survey of 1,200 black households, Harris-Lacewell discerned that 22 percent of the respondents pictured Jesus as being black. Forty-seven percent gave a more ambiguous response, saying they believed Jesus was neither black nor white. The remaining 31 percent said they believed Jesus was white or didn't know.

Young black men with higher levels of education are more likely to perceive Jesus as black, as are black Baptists and people who live in urban environments. Those who frequently attend church are less likely to see Jesus as black, which Harris-Lacewell suspects is due to the prevalence of church icons that depict him as white.

Yet half of the respondents said black churches should display images of a black Christ, "basically because it is culturally important," Harris-Lacewell said.

The image also might be more important to empowering people's faith. Harris, the owner of Nu-Xpressions, said his customers come looking for images of biblical figures depicted as black.

"They're hungry for it," he said. "They love it because they see their uncles, brothers and fathers in the disciples -- people they look up to."

This is a perfectly natural desire, one theologian said, even if it, too, does not conform to what biblical figures actually looked like.

"We Christians all tend to see Jesus through our own lens," wrote Professor Brian K. Blout of the Princeton Theological Seminary in an e-mail. "But some scholars have pressed of late, over the last two decades or so, that Jesus be represented more as a Palestinian."

In other words, Jesus was "someone who might not be 'black' in the sense of an African or African American," Blount wrote, "but who certainly was not white."

The idea of Jesus as a black man emerged as a central tenet of Black Liberation Theology, a theoretical current that developed alongside the Black Power movement of the mid-1960s and early 1970s. Its principal architects, theologians like James H. Cone and Albert Cleage, re-imagined Jesus as black, or at least non-white, messiah who led a revolution against Rome, a white colonial empire from Europe. While some of its principal assumptions -- like Cleage's claim that he traced Jesus' bloodline to Africa -- stretch credulity, the parable that Black Liberation Theology offers should be clear.

And it offers food for thought today.

"It's not factually controversial," Professor Walton Johnson, acting chairman of Africana studies at Rutgers University, said of the idea of picturing Jesus as black, which he regards as an interchangeable term for "person of color."

"It's emotionally controversial," he said. "It's because everything changes if Jesus is black."

"European-Americans," Johnson continued, "would have to start asking themselves about the status and privileges they've enjoyed in this country. African-Americans would become irate and embittered to a greater degree than they are now because what they've suffered would be unjustified."