The idea of a Black Jesus works for me although I’m not African-American. It works because Jesus is about relationships and he meets us where we are. To me, Jesus is like me, his voice sounds similar to mine when I hear him speak to me. Even if all the pictures I see painted portray him as a Westerner with blue eyes and blond hair, that’s not how I picture Jesus.

I read the article below about a Black-Jesus Movie. If the focus is a political message instead of a spiritual one, then, that’s where this movie becomes distorted. What do you think?

Here’s the story:
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Black-Jesus Movie Premieres
Compiled by the DiversityInc staff
© 2005 DiversityInc.com®
January 19, 2006

The South African film “Son of Man” portrays Jesus Christ as a modern African revolutionary and aims to shatter the Western image of a placid savior with fair hair and blue eyes. It is billed as the world’s first black-Jesus movie.

The South African film, which premieres on Sunday at the U.S. Sundance Festival in Utah, transports the life and death of Christ (registration required) from first-century Palestine to a contemporary African state, Reuters reports.

There are some changes. Jesus, instead of being born in a manger, is born in a shanty-town. His mother, Mary�still a virgin�is feisty and has arguments with the angels.

Gun-wielding authorities fear his message of equality and he ends up hanging on a cross.

“We wanted to look at the gospels as if they were written by spindoctors and to strip that away and look at the truth,” director Mark Dornford-May told Reuters in an interview.

The movie, however, shows a Jesus who is more political than religious. “The important thing about the message of Christ was that it is universal. It doesn’t matter what he looked like,” Dornford-May said.

There was a film called “Black Jesus” made in 1968 and starring Woody Strode, but it is described as a political commentary rather than an interpretation of the life of Christ.

Dornford-May, who says he subscribes to Christ’s teachings without necessarily believing he is the son of God, says the Jesus in the film is a divine being who rose from the dead and with his resurrection signals hope for Africa, the world’s poorest continent.
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