Archbishop Justin Welby at an earlier meeting with President Museveni in February 2020. PHOTO PPU
Archbishop of Canterbury and the most senior Bishop in the Church of England, Justin Welby has said the Church must reconsider its portrayal of Jesus as a white man.
In the light of the Black Lives Matter protests, the archbishop stated during an interview with media on Friday the west in general needed to question the prevailing mindset that depicted Christ as a white man in traditional Christian imagery.
Archbishop Welby, according to the Guardian, said that statues in Canterbury Cathedral would be under review on the back of the worldwide racial inequality campaign “to bring down monuments to controversial figures such as those engaged in the slave trade,” he said.
“We’re going to be looking very carefully and putting them in context and seeing if they all should be there … The question arises. Of course it does,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Welby said: “Some names will have to change. I mean, the church, goodness me, you know, you just go around Canterbury Cathedral, there’s monuments everywhere, or Westminster Abbey, and we’re looking at all that, and some will have to come down. But yes, there can be forgiveness, I hope and pray as we come together, but only if there’s justice.”
“Jesus is portrayed in as many ways as there are cultures, languages and understandings. And I don’t think that throwing out everything we’ve got in the past is the way to do it but I do think saying: ‘That’s not the Jesus who exists, that’s not who we worship,’ it is a reminder of the universality of the God who became fully human,” he said.
