White Baby Jesus
Images courtesy of Susanne Johnson. UM Insight composite.
The great educational philosopher John Dewey asserted that “the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that persons learn only the particular thing they’re studying at the time.” And so, apart from what teachers, preachers, and parents say out loud about the birth of Jesus, we need to ask ourselves what message(s) these artifacts are conveying to children about Jesus.
What message(s) are children are learning and internalizing when they see nothing but images and artifacts of the baby Jesus depicted as a Western blue-eyed pasty-white infant?
When I searched on Amazon for individual, dark-skinned figurines of baby Jesus, I couldn’t find much of anything – though there’s a small handful of full nativity sets presenting a dark-skinned holy family. Why should those be used only in communities of color? As an educator, I recommend that congregations conduct a “whiteness audit” of images used (on classroom walls and display tables; printed curriculum materials; hallway art; bulletin boards; images projected during worship) to depict the infant Jesus, and the adult Jesus. Advent and Christmas are a good time to start, given the intense focus of this liturgical season on the birth and identity of Jesus.
Susanne Johnson
Susanne Johnson (Photo Courtesy of Perkins School of Theology)
Dr. Susanne Johnson serves as professor of practical theology at United Methodist-related Perkins School of Theology - Southern Methodist University. This post is republished with permission from her Facebook page. To reproduce this content elsewhere, please contact the author via Facebook.