Christian Headlines Blog Christian Blog and Commentary

Get guidance on Bible study from C.S. Lewis - Free Course!

Christian Talk Show Host Responds to Video about Jesus’ Race

  • Veronica Neffinger

    Veronica Neffinger wrote her first poem at age seven and went on to study English in college, focusing on 18th century literature. When she is not listening to baseball games, enjoying the…

    More
  • Updated Jan 11, 2016

Michael Brown, a Messianic Jewish apologist and host of talk radio show “The Line of Fire” recently responded to Franchesa Ramsay’s video “What Did Jesus REALLY Look Like?”.

In the video for MTV Decoded, Ramsay says that the Bible does not reveal Jesus’ race because Christianity is “universal.”

Ramsay goes on to say that people tend to associate purity with lightness and evil and sin with darkness, which is a possible reason for why Jesus began to be portrayed as white during the Middle Ages.

Brown agreed with some things Ramsay says in her video, but pointed out the flaws in other things.

For one thing, he says, the Bible tells us that Jesus was Jewish. Brown did, however, agree with Ramsay that Christianity is for everyone. 

Brown acknowledged that during the Middle Ages Jesus began to be portrayed as Anglo-European: "A lot of it was the church reflecting itself ethnically, severing itself from its Jewish roots," he explains. 

However, Brown took issue with Ramsay’s point that the work of white missionaries who evangelized people of other races always involved enslavement of those darker-skinned peoples.

Brown reminds his audience that missionaries also did many positive things. He then cites missionary to India William Carey who worked to stop the practice of burning widows after their husbands died. 

"Let's expose white supremacy, where it exists,” says Brown. “Let's expose anti-semitism where it exists. Let's expose attacks on black and others where they exist. Absolutely, let's expose them, but let's not rewrite things in an exaggerated way."

But, Brown concludes, "Jesus, the Messiah, transcends race even though He Himself is Jewish… He is for all.”

Publication date: January 11, 2016