Humans from the beginning have been born with a selfish nature. In our modern world self is primary. Self fulfillment, self indulgence, self promotion anything that aligns with our self image and our selfish desires. In fact, humans have been convinced that they are at minimum Queens and Kings and ultimately becoming GODS and GODESSES/DIVAS.
From at least the time of NIMROD, humans have turned from the Creator and fashioned gods and goddesses after their likeness that indulged their lusts and their rebellious acts.
God’s plan of salvation for us is to turn to HIM and accept the sacrifice of His son for our salvation. Once reconciled to him, we are called to walk out our lives according to his commands through the power of the Holy Spirit. As we walk our lives we lead others to Christ. We are called to be his witnesses. We are called to walk by the Spirit of God, not looking to build our kingdom, but rather to build the Kingdom of GOD. He promises to get us through whatever life brings our way. He does not promise to take us out of our trials and tribulations because our faith is built when we walk through them and by his power come out on the other end victorious. He does not promise us wealth and prestige, but he does promise that all of our need will be met.
In our industrialized society, we no longer labor in the field for our daily bread. We work in cities for a pay check. Our world is centered on Mammon/Money. Most people focus all their time on getting ahead if not becoming rich and famous. Instead of seeking God’s will for our lives, we chase after our own personal visions and dreams of what we believe will make us ‘Happy”.
Most people today don’t even believe in the TRUE AND LIVING GOD. They pretty much have either rejected “religion” altogether or they are looking to “religions” that promise them those things which they cherish most. Many have turned to WITCHCRAFT. Witchcraft is all about using spirits and magic to change our circumstances to meet our desires. Others have turned to Paganism and Spiritism which is the interaction with spirits in order to gain power and control over their lives. Still others have turned to a form of “Christianity” that is void of the power of GOD. It is a shell of the true FAITH, and is a mockery of all that is truly HOLY.
Today, we are going to look at the newest version of that kind of “religion”
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AI Jesus threatens damnation if viewers ignore his TikTok commandments
AI, Artificial Intelligence, is just that. It’s is fake, and millions of religious IDIOTS will fall for the deception!
Matthew 24:5 “For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.”
A TikTok account, claiming to be ‘Jesus’ returning to Earth, has been giving blessings to believers and threatening damnation to those who don’t comply with his demands online
‘Jesus’ has apparently made his ‘second coming’ via social media — giving blessings and threatening damnation — after a videos claiming to be him surfaced online.
A TikTok account, which has gained more than nine million likes across 70 videos, has been posing as the Biblical figure under the username Daily Believer. The profile shares clips made with artificial intelligence (AI) clips showing the self-declared ‘Jesus’ with long hair, a beard and blue eyes based on the 1940 painting ‘Head of Christ.’
Each clip shows the computer-generated Jesus telling viewers they must share this video with their friends and family and comment “I believe” if they believe in God. But if they do not comply with his demands he tells them they will face “damnation.”
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A TikTok account, claiming to be ‘Jesus’ returning to Earth, has been giving blessings to believers and threatening damnation to those who don’t comply with his demands online.
‘Jesus’ has apparently made his ‘second coming’ via social media — giving blessings and threatening damnation — after a videos claiming to be him surfaced online.
A TikTok account, which has gained more than nine million likes across 70 videos, has been posing as the Biblical figure under the username Daily Believer. The profile shares clips made with artificial intelligence (AI) clips showing the self-declared ‘Jesus’ with long hair, a beard and blue eyes based on the 1940 painting ‘Head of Christ.’
Each clip shows the computer-generated Jesus telling viewers they must share this video with their friends and family and comment “I believe” if they believe in God. But if they do not comply with his demands he tells them they will face “damnation.”
READ MORE: Rapper who ‘knows Bible back to front’ quotes favourite verse – which isn’t even in Bible
“He is someone I know very well, his name is Jesus Christ. He is ready to enter your life, bring protection to your family, and cleanse your heart with His love.”
@believerdaily 🌟Message of Love and Hope🌟 Hi, beloved! Stay here and receive a special message. I invite you to follow me and like this video. Even with your flaws, I am always with you. My love is enough to fill your life. If you’ve come this far, share, like and comment “Amen”. Gratitude. #Love #Hope #Inspiration #Faith #Positivity #Spirituality #Gratitude #Amen
The same video offers a kind of damnation to users who do not share the clip with friends and family, as the virtual Jesus said: “If you reject, remember what He said. ‘If you deny me before me, I will deny you before the Father’,” reciting Matthew 3:10.
However, he’s not all doom and gloom as some of digital Jesus’s videos feature different blessings for various people and occasions and start with him saying, ‘Hey.’ Over 300,000 people commented on one of his videos following his instructions with “I believe”.
He wrote: “I argue that this TikTok phenomenon, in which viewers are promised good luck for sharing, liking and commenting on videos of a computer-generated Jesus, is close to what is known as the prosperity gospel – that is, a Christian belief that God will reward faith with this-worldly comforts, like health and wealth.”
All these Jesuses are long-haired and bearded, recalling artist Warner Sallman’s ubiquitous 1940 painting “Head of Christ.” Some wear the crown of thorns, some look alarmingly like the actor Jared Leto. Nearly all promise a surprise or “good news soon” in exchange for the viewer liking, commenting “Amen” or sharing it with their friends and family. With this digital outreach, the Daily Believer has gained, as of Nov. 13, 2023, 813,200 followers and over 9.2 million likes.
As a scholar of religion in the U.S. and its intersection with popular culture, I have been studying the ways American Christians use media and popular culture to perform religious work and evangelical outreach for the past 13 years. I argue that this TikTok phenomenon, in which viewers are promised good luck for sharing, liking and commenting on videos of a computer-generated Jesus, is close to what is known as the prosperity gospel – that is, a Christian belief that God will reward faith with this-worldly comforts, like health and wealth.
Computer-generated Jesus
@believerdaily 🙏✨ 20 Seconds of Faith and Multiplication 💫❤️ God said that this week there will be many multiplications in your home. I see the little becoming much, what was ending, starting to multiply. Those people who doubt your victory will see that God is with you, fighting on your behalf. Many will be amazed at what God will deliver to you. Have faith and believe! Share this video with three people and see how God will use you to bless their lives and yours as well. Follow me for more daily blessings videos! #god #bible #love #jesuschrist #faith #christian #church #christ #gospel #holyspirit #prayer #tiktok_usa
“Welcome Jesus into Your Home” is among the Daily Believer’s most popular videos, with over 22.2 million subscribers. According to the computer-generated Jesus, if the viewer believes in God, they must share this video with their friends and family and comment “I believe.”
If they do, they will receive a blessing within an hour. If they do not, computer-generated Jesus issues a thinly veiled threat of damnation by quoting Matthew 3:10, which has John the Baptist saying, “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
It is a TikTok chain letter – one whose creator can be monetarily compensated, by TikTok, between 2 cents and 4 cents for every 1,000 views. For example, “Welcome Jesus into Your Home” could have earned the creator $900 from TikTok views alone, with the possibility for additional money earned on sites like Facebook Reels.
It is simple and effective. While the Daily Believer’s views are dwarfed by TikTok megastars like socialite Kylie Jenner and social media personality Khaby Lame, its engagement percentages are much higher, receiving some form of engagement from about one out of every four viewers.
Whether or not there are religious motivations underlying the Daily Believer’s desire for viewer engagement, there are monetary benefits for sure. The TikTok Creator Fund pays creators who have over 10,000 authentic followers based on the number of views, comments and sharing.
Faith equals wealth and health
Religious and monetary motivations are not mutually exclusive. In fact, their union is key to one of the more popular recent developments in American and global Christianity – the prosperity gospel, a subsection of Charismatic Christianity that says God will ensure followers’ material wealth and happiness as long as they believe in God.
The closest nonreligious analogy to the Daily Believer’s content is the chain letter where the recipient is promised good luck for forwarding and curses for breaking the chain. Such letters had their heyday in the mid-20th century as paper letters and in the late 1990s and early 2000s as emails and social media posts.
Two of the United States’ most famous preachers, T.D. Jakes and Joel Osteen, teach that individual faith in God will be rewarded by God in the form of material wealth and health.
However, the Daily Believer further simplifies this formula. Viewers don’t really need to have a specific set of Christian beliefs to participate and benefit. All that they need to do is to say “I believe” and share the content with friends and family.
Turning likes and shares into cash
This lack of denominational-specific beliefs allows for the widest possible engagement with a wider Christian community.
The TikTok videos can appeal to a spectrum of Christian groups that may have theological, ethical and social disagreements.
Additionally, the Daily Believer’s requests for social media engagement is analogous to the prosperity gospel’s idea of tithing. In the prosperity gospel, tithing – the donation of a portion of your income to the church – is framed as “seed faith,” a monetary investment to demonstrate a person’s faith, and lack of faith will be punished as surely as faith is to be rewarded.
Seed faith and engagement with the Daily Believer’s TikTok videos have the same ritualistic function – give a little time, money or effort to get even more material rewards. They also both serve to make the person behind the request wealthier or increase their cultural clout.
By framing these requests as coming directly from the Son of God, not the influencer or content creator, the Daily Believer has made engagement with its social media religious work, which comes with a promise of divine reward in the here and now. It has transformed like-farming – the social media phenomenon of asking for viewer engagement – into the word of God.
Use of Jesus’ image
At the same time, it is difficult to see the Daily Believer’s content as having a missionary or outreach function. It seems aimed at those who would already consider themselves Christian and offers little in the way of persuasion or explanation of why someone should be a Christian.
The Daily Believer is not the only TikTok profile engaged in a type of “smash that like button if you love Jesus” content production. Within the larger phenomena of #ChristianTikTok, there are multiple profiles engaged in theological discussion and doctrinal issues. There are even more profiles that forgo discussion in favor of performing praise and worship.
The use of Jesus’ image as the deliverer of the message is more unique.
But the Daily Believer, with its digital Jesus and its bare-bones gospel of “Believe,” serves as an example of a new expression of an ancient religious motivation – the securing of this-worldly health, wealth and reward in exchange for following the will of the deity or deities.
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What is the prosperity gospel?
The prosperity gospel is one of the most prominent false teaching movements of our day. Prosperity gospel preachers and televangelists have deceived multitudes around the world with a false gospel, teaching that individuals who exercise true faith in Christ will surely attain physical, material, and financial prosperity in this life.
When did it begin?
The Apostolic church had its fair share of false teachers who perverted the truth of the gospel by turning it into a tool for monetary profit or into a way to manipulate God for power (Acts 8:9–24; 19:11–20). Throughout church history, there have been many forms of this sort of false teaching. The modern-day prosperity gospel movement began in the 1950s as a post–World War II Pentecostal movement through the ministry of Oral Roberts, an American televangelist. Roberts’ books helped disseminate the message of the prosperity gospel movement. If You Need Healing Do These Things and The Miracle of Seed-Faith were among Roberts’ more popular works. The movement was carried forward by Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, both of whom led massively influential televangelist ministries in the 1980s. Other key figures in the history of the movement include E.W. Kenyon and Kenneth E. Hagin.
Who are the key figures?
Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, John Hagee, Creflo Dollar, Paula White, Joyce Meyer, and Juanita Bynum are a few of the leading televangelists who have commercialized the teaching of the prosperity gospel in our day. For decades, these men and women have broadcast a false gospel over the radio and on television channels such as the Trinity Broadcast Network (TBN). In this way, they have exported their false teaching to Africa, South America, and Asia as well.
What are the main beliefs?
The prosperity gospel movement has four main beliefs:
- Jesus purchased all the benefits of salvation for this life. Jesus purchased complete physical healing for His people in this life through His death on the cross. By perverting the teaching of Isaiah 53:5 and John 10:10, prosperity gospel preachers assert that Jesus died to take away every sickness in this life and to atone for the “sin” of financial poverty.
- A present-day inheritance. In the Abrahamic covenant, God promised a vast material and financial inheritance for believers in this life. If a person believes in Jesus, he will inherit great possessions and tangible blessings in this life.
- Give to get. Prosperity gospel preachers teach their followers that the way to gain riches is to give more money to the kingdom, especially by giving to their churches and ministries. The quantity of material and financial prosperity one expects to gain is in proportion to what one gives.
- Name it and claim it. Faith and prayer empower people to lay hold of physical and material blessings in this life. Certain leaders in this movement have popularized the term Word of Faith to capture the essence of their teaching. Accordingly, if someone exercises enough faith, he will no longer have to be subject to the crippling effects of sickness and disease. If individuals continue to suffer afflictions or poverty, it is due to their lack of personal faith. When we pray in faith, we compel God to make us prosperous, particularly when we declare that we already possess the desired blessing. Likewise, some teachers discourage their followers from speaking negative words, lest they bring negative things into being.
Why do people believe this form of false teaching?
The false teachers of the prosperity gospel target their hearers’ desires for provision, position, and power. Instead of focusing on Christ, eternity, and the glory of God, they place an emphasis on living one’s “best life now.” Many people in economically depressed communities and in Third World countries follow this teaching because it holds out promises of social empowerment and deliverance from extreme poverty and disease. Others follow the teaching because it justifies greed.
How does it hold up against biblical Christianity?
According to Scripture, physical, material, and financial prosperity are no sure marks of God’s favor, and suffering is no sure mark of His displeasure. The Bible teaches that material prosperity is often a snare (Luke 12:15) and that suffering is often a mark of blessing (Matt. 5:10; 1 Peter 3:14). God’s Word teaches neither that the Christian life is all physical and material prosperity, nor that it is all suffering. Rather, it teaches that there may be times of prosperity and times of suffering in the believer’s life (Phil. 4:12). Scripture warns us not to set our hearts on riches (Ps. 62:10), and it teaches wealthy believers not to trust in their wealth (1 Tim. 6:17).
In contrast to the four main beliefs of the prosperity gospel, Scripture teaches the following:
- In the Apostolic preaching of the cross, God calls people to come to Christ for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus died to atone for the sins of His people (Acts 2:38; 5:31; 10:43; 13:38; 26:18). The focus is never on physical, financial, or material prosperity in this life. While Jesus does secure everlasting blessings—including physical healing—for His people through His death on the cross, believers will come to enjoy the full benefits of the death of Christ only in the resurrection on the last day.
- God promised Abraham that he would inherit the world (Rom. 4:13). This promise was fulfilled in the person and work of the Son of Abraham, Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:16). Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ is a son or daughter of Abraham and coheir of the inheritance promised to him (Gal. 3:29). By the same faith Abraham exercised, we receive the blessings of salvation—justification, adoption, the promised Holy Spirit, and the guarantee of the everlasting inheritance (Gal. 3:7–9). Believers will not fully possess the inheritance until the resurrection on the last day (Heb. 11:39–40; 13:14).
- Believers have the duty and privilege of giving generously to the work of God’s kingdom in this life. God makes His grace abound toward His people when they give generously so that they will be equipped to continue giving generously (2 Cor. 9:8–11). Scripture never teaches us to give in order to gain and lay up treasure for ourselves.
- The Apostle Paul prayed fervently to the Lord for personal healing, only to have Jesus tell him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:7–9). This was not a lack of faith on Paul’s part. God has not promised complete healing in this life. He promises complete healing for individuals only in the resurrection on the last day.
How can I share the gospel with those who hold to this false teaching?
- Focus on Christ’s life and death for the forgiveness of sins. The central message of the gospel is that Jesus Christ died for the sins of His people. Jesus shed His blood on the cross in order to cover the sin of those for whom He died. The gospel reconciles sinners to God through the person and work of Christ. The Apostle Paul explained the message of the cross when he wrote, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21) and “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:13–14).
- Focus on the hope of eternal blessing. The Bible encourages believers to hope in God and to look forward to the eternal inheritance He has reserved for us. The Apostle Peter encouraged suffering believers to remember that they are being preserved by God for “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4). The writer of Hebrews also taught, “Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). The Apostle Paul explained that the sufferings we endure in this life are prerequisites to obtaining the eternal inheritance: “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:16–17).
- Focus on the comfort we receive from sharing in Christ’s sufferings. Suffering is everywhere presented in Scripture as a prerequisite to glory (Rom. 8:17). Jesus was Himself a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). His was a life of reproach, hardship, difficulty, opposition, poverty, loneliness, and suffering (Luke 9:58). His disciples followed in His footsteps. The only one of Jesus’ disciples to fall away was himself a lover of money (John 12:6). God has ordained that His people will suffer for the sake of Christ in this life (Phil. 1:29). He has promised resurrection wholeness, restoration, and abundance in the world to come (Rev. 21:4).
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The “prosperity Gospel” is a lie and perversion of the Gospel. The GOOD NEWS is not that we can become Rich and Famous, or become gods. The GOOD NEWS is that we can be restored to relationship with our CREATOR because HE made a way. He took on flesh and lived among us to show us the way and to open the Gate. Because He came, we have the covering of the blood and the power of the Holy Spirit to walk in right standing with GOD.
Yes, God provides for us. But, GOD is not a Santa Claus or a Genie from a bottle to grant our requests and shower us in gifts. God is not in the bargaining business, where you can get what you want by offering something in exchange. God is not interested in you money, or in any other sacrifice. GOD is looking for people who will love him and walk in relationship with him. Relationship with him requires that there be NO SIN, NO REBELLION. He cannot look upon sin. He cannot be where sin abides. The ONLY way for us to become sinless and sin free is through the acceptance of the GIFT that GOD offers to us. The GIFT of the covering of the BLOOD. His blood.
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265K subscribers
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Because there is no respect for GOD, people have no qualms about mocking, ridiculing and belittling God and His Word. VERY DANGEROUS! Judgement is coming! It is a fearsome thing to stand before and AWESOME GOD! The bible gives warning.
Hebrews 10:31
30 For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
God’s word tells us that we are not to make any image of anything and we are not to bow down to any image, or serve them, or adore them or worship them. There is a reason that God’s word does not record any description of Christ’s appearance. There is no reason for use to create an image of Christ. Once an image is created, the people begin to worship the image instead of the person. Christ is not black, or white, or brown, or red, or yellow. He is GOD. He is God of ALL people. He is not the bodily form that walked the earth. He is SPIRIT. We are to worship Him in spirit and TRUTH.
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Exodus 20 King James Version THE FIRST OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS!
20 And God spake all these words, saying,
2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
‘Head of Christ’ story ignores centuries of art depicting what Jesus looked like: A first-century Jew
Well, this Religion News Service piece sure has an interesting premise. I am talking about a lengthy feature — seen here in the Washington Post — that implies American Christianity is racist because of one popular painting of Jesus Christ.
Never mind that many of us have grown up disliking the painting for its sickly sweet religiosity. Never mind that this is not the iconic image seen in Christian traditions with ancient roots and liturgical art that reveals those roots in the Middle East. There’s a crucial word missing in this piece — “Jewish.”
Even as a child, this particular image repelled me, as it didn’t reflect the lively, infuriating and suffering Jesus I saw in the Bible. There’s an assumption that Americans adore this image.
Now, our modern-day iconoclasts want to get rid of it.
CHICAGO — The first time the Rev. Lettie Moses Carr saw Jesus depicted as black, she was in her 20s.
It felt “weird,” Carr said.
Until that moment, she had always thought Jesus was white.
At least that’s how he appeared when she was growing up. A copy of Warner E. Sallman’s “Head of Christ” painting hung in her home, depicting a gentle Jesus with blue eyes turned heavenward and dark blond hair cascading over his shoulders in waves.
The painting, which has been reproduced a billion times, came to define what the central figure of Christianity looked like for generations of Christians in the United States — and beyond.
“Some in the church,” the reporter says, are calling for the eradication of that painting because it makes Jesus look white with blue eyes.
Folks, haven’t we been here before?
Remember the dust-up in 2013 when Megyn Kelly told us all that Jesus was white?
Here is a lengthy passage from the RNS piece, containing lots of history of this particular image:
The “Head of Christ” has been called the “best-known American artwork of the 20th century.” The New York Times once labeled Sallman the “best-known artist” of the 20th century, although that few recognized his name.
“Sallman, who died in 1968, was a religious painter and illustrator whose most popular picture, ‘Head of Christ,’ achieved a mass popularity that makes Warhol’s soup can seem positively obscure,” William Grimes of the Times wrote in 1994.
The famed image began as a charcoal sketch for the first issue of the Covenant Companion, a youth magazine for a denomination known as the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant.
Sallman, who grew up in the denomination, which is now known as the Evangelical Covenant Church, was a Chicago-based commercial artist. Wanting to appeal to young adults, he gave his Jesus a “very similar feeling to an image of a school or professional photo of the time making it more accessible and familiar to the audience,” said Tai Lipan, gallery director at Indiana’s Anderson University, which has housed the Warner Sallman Collection since the 1980s.
His approach worked.
The image was so popular that the 1940 graduating class of North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago commissioned Sallman to create a painting based on his drawing as their class gift to the school, according to the Evangelical Covenant Church’s official magazine.
OK, so this painting was done 80 years ago in an era when a lot of American Protestant religious art was quite sentimental.
The article explains that the painting became wildly popular, accompanying soldiers into battle during World War II and ending up on prayer cards and was seen in a wide range of churches — Catholic and Protestant, evangelical and mainline, white and black.
Sallman wasn’t the first to depict Jesus as white, Morgan said. The Chicagoan had been inspired by a long tradition of European artists, most notable among them the Frenchman Leon-Augustin Lhermitte.
But against the backdrop of U.S. history, of European Christians colonizing indigenous lands with the blessing of the Doctrine of Discovery and enslaving African people, Morgan said, a universal image of a white Jesus became problematic.
“You simply can’t ignore very Nordic Jesus,” he said.
Jesus was a first-century Jewish man and probably looked like the 21st-century denizens of the Middle East; namely, olive-skinned, dark-haired and with black or brown eyes.
Back in the 1940s, not a whole lot of folks were traveling to Palestine, as the British had been running the place since 1917 and the country was a mix of Jews, Arab Muslims and Armenian Christians. People didn’t travel widely overseas like they do today and certainly not to a backwater like Jerusalem and its environs.
So I think that it’s understandable why Sallman wouldn’t have had a clue as to what the area’s inhabitants looked like. So he drew what he knew, for an American audience.
Eighty years later the result is being seen as a form of white supremacy, as the article goes on to explain.
This week, the activist Shaun King called for statues depicting Jesus as European to come down alongside Confederate monuments, calling the depiction a “form of white supremacy.”
The science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor echoed that sentiment on Twitter.
“Yes, ‘blond blue-eyed jesus’ IS a form of white supremacy,” she tweeted.
Anthea Butler, an associate professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania, has also warned of the damaging impact of depictions of white Jesus.
“Every time you see white Jesus, you see white supremacy,” she said recently on the Religion News Service video series “Becoming Less Racist: Lighting the Path to Anti-Racism.”
Sallman’s Jesus was “the Jesus you saw in all the black Baptist churches,” Butler told RNS in a follow-up interview.
I am glad one academic was quoted. Still, are we are hanging the rest of this story on the whim of a Twitter activist who wants to basically tear down every statue on U.S. soil that he doesn’t like and a science fiction author? Like, why do we care what those two people think?
Fortunately the article does cite artists who have portrayed Jesus as Korean or Maōri or black or any number of other races and ethnicities because of the universality of his message and claim to be God in human flesh.
But nowhere does it say what he really was: a Jewish man from the Middle East. A simple Google search took me to this 2018 piece in TheConversation.com about the brownness of Jesus’ skin.
In a piece earlier this year on the iconography of Jesus through the ages in The Dartmouth, a publication of Dartmouth University, the author notes that not all European artists portrayed Jesus as a white guy. Rembrandt used a Jewish model in Amsterdam for his 1648 “Head of Christ” painting, and French artist Marc Chagall emphasized Jesus’ Jewish appearance during the 1930s in his personal battle against rising anti-Semitism.
The article refers to the “earliest images of Jesus,” but never follows through with any content about centuries of Eastern Orthodox iconography and other older traditions concerning the appearance of Jesus.
The realization that Jesus wasn’t white hasn’t been news for awhile. Check out these essays about what Jesus clearly looked like in Baptist News and in BBC, which explains that Jesus probably had short hair (unlike most film depictions of him) and wore ordinary-colored clothing, not the white robes that filmmakers like to put him in.
Speaking of which, why aren’t these Twitter critics going after our movie industry? Remember Jeffrey Hunter, the American actor who played Jesus in the 1961 film “King of Kings?” (OK, he had brown hair but he also had blue eyes).
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The colour customisation of Jesus is already an established practice, Reverend Justin Welby said “You go into their churches and you don’t see a White Jesus — you see a Black Jesus, or Chinese Jesus, or a Middle Eastern Jesus — which is of course the most accurate. “You see a Fijian Jesus — you see Jesus portrayed in as many ways as there are cultures, languages and understandings.” he added. Source |  |
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Brazilian Swifties Want to Literally Make Taylor Swift as Big as Jesus
Taylor Swift is exactly as big as Jesus—or at least she will be if Brazilian Swifties have their way. Over the course of The Eras Tour, we’ve been following the way each tour stop scrambled to express deference and devotion to the conquering pop star. In the U.S., she was declared mayor of certain cities, she had streets and stadiums named after her, she had fountains lit up in her honor. Now, on the Latin American leg of the tour, Brazil might one-up all of those paltry gestures by projecting a Swift tribute on the statue of Christ the Redeemer.
Christ the Redeemer (or Cristo Redentor) is Rio de Janeiro’s famous monument of Jesus Christ, voted in the early 2000s as one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. The statue has seen lights or projections used for other purposes; in 2020, a projection to make Jesus look like a doctor was displayed on Easter Sunday as a tribute to frontline healthcare workers during the pandemic, and the landmark was lit with pink this past October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. So there’s precedent for projections, but probably not for a visiting concert tour.
The idea proposed by Brazilian fans is to project a version of Swift’s “Junior Jewels” shirt, a costume which first appeared in her “You Belong With Me” music video back in 2009. A fan mock-up of Jesus in the Junior Jewels shirt seems like the stuff of memes, except it’s a real thing that could happen, because the mayor of Rio has expressed his support. “Dear @taylorswift13 fans, I’m going to ask dear Father Omar to see if we can get this honor,” Eduardo Paes responded to the campaign on Twitter/X. “He’s the guy who runs the projections at @cristoredentor! In the meantime: his Instagram is @padreomaroficial.” (“I don’t have tickets for the show @taylorswift13,” he tweeted later. “For your attention, thank you!”)
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Siccing Swifties on poor Father Omar feels unfair, but even the monument’s rector was receptive to the scheme. “@taylorswift fans, we received your comments with great joy and await contact from the singer’s advisors,” Father Omar posted on his Instagram Story, according to USA Today. In an interview with Anthony Roberto Justus, who runs a Brazil-specific Swift fan account on Twitter/X, expressed that they don’t want to “violate Taylor’s copyright” by projecting the Junior Jewels tee. So now Brazilian Swifties have shifted their petitioning back to their idol, begging her to let them worship her. “Taylor please priest Omar email about the Cristo Redentor,” one fan pleaded with sobbing emojis in the replies to a completely unrelated post from the singer. Swift’s team has not responded to The A.V. Club’s inquiry about whether the projection will indeed be approved.
“Jesus is a Swiftie” sounds like a semi-ironic bumper sticker you could get from a niche Etsy shop, but the fact that it could become enshrined upon one of Catholicism’s largest monuments (physically, at least) is a surreal indicator of Swift’s current level of adulation. The monument would be a monument to her fame, which somehow keeps climbing to unprecedented peaks of cultural ubiquitousness. From Midnights to The Eras Tour to The Eras Tour movie, she is the year’s greatest success story and probably the U.S.’s biggest cultural export; her relationship with Travis Kelce, attendance at NFL games, and cheeky lyric changes (“Karma is the guy on the Chiefs”) has only indoctrinated people further into the cult of Swift. “Why am I so happy for these strangers????” commented one new fan on a TikTok following Kelce’s attendance at one of the shows. “I went from ‘Taylor Swift is a success, but just not for me’ to ‘OMG AND THEN HER DAD PUNCHED HIM IN THE ARMS CAUSE HE’S THE GUY ON THE CHIEFS,’” wrote another.
When John Lennon said The Beatles were bigger than Jesus, it was met with intense backlash. But it seems fair to say that in some ways, Swift has become a religion unto herself. Devotees in Argentina camped on the streets for months just to get a good spot at the concert. Fans filled stadiums and theaters to live and relive The Eras Tour like places of worship (Holy Ground, if you will), giving not just their money but all their energy to their fandom. They pore over signs and symbols searching for meaning. Her joys are their joys, her enemies are their enemies, her successes, which are quite literally monumental, are a reflection of the Swifties as much as Swift.
And when the Grammy winner gets to Brazil for the next set of shows on November 17, she may just be greeted with the latest proof of her power in Jesus wearing the faux-high school tee she donned more than a decade ago for a pop song about kids falling in love. Christ the Redeemer “is often used to highlight significant elements of culture,” Justus explained to USA Today. “Christ represents a point of reflection, where we find peace, and is one of the greatest beauties of our country. It’s an honor to host Taylor.” Amen.
Image: Taylor Swift; Christ the Redeemer. Marcelo Endelli/TAS23; Wagner Meier (Getty Images)
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