Edward J. Blum: Color of Christ

I thumbed through a stack of Xeroxed images, looking at the multiple faces of Jesus that a friend compiled for her theology paper. She had gone to the library and photocopied profiles from around the globe. I had studied to be a missionary as an undergraduate student, so I was familiar with most of the contextual depictions. Still, this was before magic of Google, before we could summon a bevy of spellbinding images with the stroke of our fingertips, so the experience had a hypnotic effect. Seeing how the cheekbones, chin, eyes, and skin color evolved with each artistic interpretation enchanted me.

Then, I got to an image that I had never seen. It was a crude black-and-white photocopy of Edwina Sandys’s depiction of Jesus on the cross.

Wait. Jesus has breasts, I thought. This is blasphemous.