I agree, though. How to fix that seems to be an important recurring theme here. Sites like this also provide part of the solution, though. I’ve been introduced to a number of things here I would never have found outside the radical middle.

I agree that people ought to be able to interpret the appearance of their Savior through their own image. The problem with mass-market representations, as I see it, is the cultural hegemony inherent when powered people’s representations become the primary ones available.

Sheesh. I sound like Henry Louis Gates.

I’ve been reviewing this post in preparation for posting my interview with a Living Scriptures sales manager (which this post inspired) on TLDSC, and a couple of things have occurred to me.
They both come from a team presentation I did in a critical thinking class in college about logical fallacies, for one of which we pointed to the tendency of people to imagine Christ in their own racial image. For this event I prepared a version of a famous painting of Christ, photoshopped so that his skin tone changed throughout the image. Doing that was an interesting exercise in evaluating my own biases. In the class someone (not a Mormon) said that the only way to know what Jesus looked like would be for someone to see him and then tell us about it, and he didn’t know of that ever happening.

You can imagine the discussion that followed, in a class populated largely with Mormons and facilitated by a professor who was both a Mormon and an army Chaplain. Lets just say that it involved some quotes from Joseph Smith.

The professor pointed out that Christians make a big deal out of being created in God’s image, and perhaps they return the favor when they imagine God to look like them. He also said maybe that’s a good thing because it reflects not a shallow understanding of the world, but a deep internalization of man’s relationship with deity.

Honestly, when you’re talking to a group of white Americans about their Heavenly Father and older brother Jesus, do you expect them to intuitively think of either as black, Asian, or even Jewish, even if they know all about the historical aspects? What about when you’re talking to a family in Africa? Do they naturally imagine a white guy?

Maybe the important thing is to let each culture identify in its own way with Christ – thus preserving the universality of his message – and not to force one culture to represent Him in a historically accurate but very temporal way. Even staying within Gospel parameters, I think there is plenty of room for this. There is so much more to be gained from an interpretive portrayal than from one that obsesses over historical details, in my opinion. Of course, many of the representations we see are what they are because of unchallenged preconceptions rather than thoughtful interpretation.

I think Th.’s comment about an ugly Jesus is more relevant than the racial issue in this sense, because it becomes a matter of interpreting Christ’s doctrine, and not his genealogy, only half of which was Jewish/earthly/mortal anyway.

I think we so often see him portrayed as beautiful because people want to demonstrate his divinity, and that’s one way of doing it. Calling LS or Greg Olsen, or whoever else evil because of their choices about how they depict Christ really robs them of their right to use their own understanding and agency in worship.

So to A: Th.’s Q: I think we have a responsibility to allow more diversity in the depiction of Christ, which includes, but does not limit us to, stringent historical visual styles.

Q (serious and not sarcastic): Now that we have a better sense that this world is composed of many disparate cultures, do we have a greater responsibility to be historically accurate?

Yeah, if I liked the product I might be more angry because I would feel wrong buying it but would want to and that would irritate me to no end.

We don’t want the blue-eyed bug-eyed Christ because we believe (know?) that that is not racially accurate.

Actually, not for me. I don’t mind seeing African or Japanese renditions of Jesus. But when one racial reinterpretation becomes dominant I think we have a problem. And I don’t think it’s unfair to call that problem racist in the broadest sense.

would we be having this discussion about ethics if the Living Scriptures were more to our liking?

Yes.

The topic is not Jesus or racism or “fear of commitment” (to what?).

The topic is soliciting business under the cover of the gospel.

Now, whether or not they’re worth x dollars or should or shouldn’t be marketed in a particular way is a matter of personal preference, the ethics of which certainly make for an interesting discussion. I wouldn’t like to have my contact information exploited, but only because I don’t want the hassle of refusing a product that doesn’t interest me. And while I agree that, in principle, the practice is unethical, I don’t think I’d mind so much if it was a Cub Scout using the ward list to sell Scout-o-rama tickets. My point is, would we be having this discussion about ethics if the Living Scriptures were more to our liking?