When Western Christians think about God, the default image that comes to mind is usually white and male. How did that happen?
Christianity is rooted in the ancient Near East among people of darker skin. But over time, European Christians cast Jesus in their own image, with art that imagined a fair-skinned Savior in the style of imperial rulers. Grace Ji-Sun Kim explores the historical origins and theological implications of how Jesus became white and God became a whitemale. The myth of the white male God has had a devastating effect as it enabled Christianity to have a profoundly colonialist posture across the globe. Kim examines the roots of the distortion, its harmful impact on the world, and shows what it lookslike to recover the biblical reality of a nonwhite, nongendered God. Rediscovering God as Spirit leads us to a more just faith and a better church and world.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim (PhD, St. Michael's College, University of Toronto) is associate professor of theology at Earlham School of Religion. She is author or editor of twenty-four books, including Embracing the Other, Christian Doctrines for Global Gender Justice, and Intercultural Ministry. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
David P. Gushee (PhD, Union Theological Seminary) is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics and director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia. Widely regarded as one of the leading moral voices in American Christianity, he is the author or editor of twenty books and hundreds of articles in his field, including Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, Kingdom Ethics, The Sacredness of Human Life and Changing Our Mind. Gushee is a scholar, activist and churchman. His research interests focus on the ethical teachings of Jesus Christ and the Christian theological-ethical tradition, together with its contemporary implications for Christian discipleship and public witness. He currently serves as senior columnist for Baptist News Global and as a member on the Death Penalty Committee Detainee Treatment Taskforce of the Constitution Project. He serves on the board of directors of Sojourners and as vice-chair of the board of the Public Religion Research Institute. He has most recently become a faith consultant for the Family Acceptance Project. As an activist, Gushee was the principal drafter of both the Evangelical Climate Initiative (2006) and the Evangelical Declaration against Torture (2007). He is regularly quoted in major national media of all types, including NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal as an authority on the role of religion in American public life and as a voice for civility and dialogue across our cultural divides. An ordained Baptist minister, Gushee and his wife, Jeanie, attend First Baptist Church in Decatur, where he teaches a weekly Sunday school class, as well as Holy Cross Catholic Church. They reside in Atlanta.
