“White Jesus can’t walk on water, but he can build the hell out a slave ship.” Michael Harriot explains why using religion and faith as a way to govern can be problematic. He discusses the many hypocrisies that are inflicted on the American people daily, including discriminating against the LGBTQ+ community but allowing divorce or racial segregation when the Bible states, “love thy neighbor.”
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Full transcript below.
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Michael Harriot: Maybe you’ve heard about him. Maybe you’ve seen pictures of him. Or maybe you just saw Megyn Kelly talk about him when she said this.
Megyn Kelly: “And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Thana just is white. Jesus was a white man too.”
And that’s why I want to welcome you to theGrio Daily. The only podcast that is willing to admit, yes, Virginia, there is a white Jesus.
I know there are no white people in the Bible. I know you’ve heard about that, but you know, there is a white Jesus. I’m sorry to have to break this to you, but you know, there is a white Jesus, man. I’m shocked to find out myself, but I’ve only recently discovered this. You know, I’ve been reading up on it.
And I’ve come to talk to you guys about it. Cause I, I wanted to be the one to break the news. Cause I didn’t want you to find out from anybody else. You know, I know this is hard to believe, but there is [00:01:00] a white Jesus. And I’m sure you’ve probably heard about some of his miracles. For instance, he couldn’t turn water into wine, you know, white Jesus couldn’t do that.
But white Jesus has performed miracles. For instance. He turned native and indigenous people’s homeland into white people’s real estate. White Jesus can’t walk on water, but he could build a hell lot of a slave ship. And if you’re wondering what I’m talking about, I’m talking about this white Christian version of Jesus that evangelicals and people who hate Black people believe in, you know, white Jesus has a few different standards than, you know, the guy that you probably have read about.
You know, you probably read about a guy that said, love thy neighbor as thyself. White Jesus don’t believe in that. White Jesus loves his neighbor. As long as you ain’t gay, as long as you ain’t Black, as long as you not an immigrant, because, you know, according to Tucker Carlson, remember. Tucker Carlson said white people weren’t [00:02:00] designed to live around immigrants.
Who else did the design except white Jesus? So white Jesus, he ain’t down with that love, that neighbor as that self stuff. He ain’t down with a lot of this stuff that, you know, the regular, real Jesus believes the one you’ve read about. Like for instance, and you can see it even in the modern day politics of elections, especially with the Republican party.
Now here’s the thing. That I always wonder, right? Like I could understand if you believe that because of your religion, I don’t know, homosexuality, being trans, I don’t know, wearing short skirts. I don’t know. You can, I can ride with you. Cause like at some point it’s all about faith, right? So you can believe whatever you want to in your religious practices.
But, if you’re going to use that same biblical authority in politics, then you also have to condemn, for instance, if you’re going to condemn gay teachers, or if you don’t want gay teachers teaching students, or if you don’t want teachers teaching… [00:03:00] About homosexual relationships so that trans people actually exist because that’s against your biblical teachings and that should be taught in the home.
Then you also should object to, for instance, divorce because it says it in the Bible. So is fornication. Right. So why is it that we object to, for instance, gay teachers, but not teachers who’ve had a divorce? That’s an alternative lifestyle. How about teachers who are living in sin? Yeah, that’s cool with white people and white Jesus, you know, even though it’s not in his Bible, that’s cool, apparently, right?
Like people like Lauren Bobert who can support anti LGBTQIA laws, but she just got a divorce, so did Marjorie Taylor Greene, according to white Jesus, they’re just as bad as LGBTQIA people, right? Or, or how about this stuff that white Jesus is about, like. White Jesus and his acolytes say they’re against gender [00:04:00] affirming care because, you know, children are too young to make those life altering decisions about their body.
But if they get pregnant, they should be forced to have the child. White Jesus can make it make sense to me, but all of those are the tenets of white Jesus, right? Like. You’re too young to have premarital sex, but if you make that decision to have premarital sex, then you’re too young to make a decision about terminating the pregnancy.
I don’t know, like it, it’s, it’s hard to figure out why Jesus sometimes, why, like, oh, here’s another one that, um, why Jesus is really adamant about. Like for instance, white Jesus said, you should be able to discriminate against people if you object because of religious purposes, right? Like if you work at a courthouse, you shouldn’t have to marry a gay couple if you’re a Christian.
You shouldn’t have to bake a cake, for instance, that was a famous Supreme court case for a [00:05:00] gay couple. If you object to gay marriage on religious grounds, which is called religious freedom among white Jesus fanatics, but those white Jesusites, they also think that we should be forced to drink out of their Jesus birthday cups and that our kids should have to listen to white Jesus prayers in school and that they should get to control women’s vaginas and their reproductive systems based on their religion.
So only they get freedom of religion. Right, right, right. Like according to white Jesus now. And the point of all of this is, is that when we talk about Christianity, when we talk about religion, what we’re talking about is people’s interpretation of something that existed thousands of years ago, faith, right?
And historically, what we don’t seem to understand is that what we’re talking about, the Jesus that we’re talking about, wasn’t really created when America was created, right? So people think like, you know, you know, of course the not-white Jesus was born in about 0 BC. I think that’s his, uh, his birthday.
I’ll check his birth certificate if we can find it, I’m not a white Jesus birther, but what I’m saying is the thing that we call Christianity and especially use with the King James version of the Bible. The King James version of the Bible was created in the same year that the English showed up in the United States. We like to think of it as a long time ago, but we’re interpreting a book that was written about the same time as the great Charter of Virginia, which says that they came to civilize the savages and bring them into the light of the white world, right? Yes. Those are the same documents King James wrote the same [00:07:00] two documents, the Charter of Virginia, and he commissioned the King James version of the Bible or what we call the authorized King James version of the Bible.
And that Bible has also gone through many changes. There was a Black version, actually, that was created for enslaved people. And it took out stuff like Moses fleeing from Egypt and the Israelites escaping from Egypt, it took out stuff about, you know, slave revolts in the Bible, it took out all of that stuff and gave enslaved people in America, a version called the slave Bible.
It was created by a group called the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. And my point of this is that when we’re talking about people’s rights, when we’re talking about policies and we’re talking about politics, it is a separate thing from your. Religious belief and your faith, there’s nothing wrong with faith.
Faith is all right. But when [00:08:00] you combine what you believe and inflict it on people who might not have those same beliefs, that means that you are inflicting a form of supremacy on other people, because you believe that your thoughts or your belief or your faith is superior to other people’s and it’s a form of white supremacy and it’s manifested in many ways.
It’s manifested in laws is manifested in the striking down of rights, such as the right to determine your own reproduction. It is manifested in paintings like that Sandy blind surfboard abs Jesus, and it is manifested in the idea that what you believe is more important than what I believe, and that what you believe should be able to control what I do.[00:09:00]
Of course, there is another term for that, not white Jesus, but white supremacy. That’s why you have to listen to this podcast. That’s why you got to tell your friends about it. That’s why you got to download the Grio app. That’s why you got to subscribe. And that’s why we always leave you with a Black saying.
And today’s Black saying is, “What would. Black Jesus do?” And the answer is, “Probably not that.” If you like what you heard please give us a five star review download the Grio app subscribe to the show and to share it with everyone you know, please email all questions suggestions and compliments to podcasts@thegrio.com.
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