Finding Jesus to be gay

Finding Jesus to be gay

One day I was phoned out of the blue by a British tabloid reporter who wanted my response, as a pro-gay Christian minister, to a statement made by Elton John. In a magazine interview the pop star—who is British and white and gay and married and a father—had said that Jesus was gay. Or rather, because Jesus so empathized with outcasts and understood intimately where marginalized people were coming from, Elton John found Jesus to be gay.

What was my comment? I am quoted, almost accurately, in the Daily Record (Friday, February 19, 2010, p. 9) as saying, “I think it’s wonderful for anybody, including Elton John, to imagine Jesus as being like them. This is very common, and in the Western world we do it all the time, imagining Jesus to be white when, in fact, he was a man of colour.” Actually I said, “Jesus was a person of color.”

I grew up in the Southern United States surrounded by blond-haired, blue-eyed baby Jesuses. Even Black churches portrayed Jesus as white. I remember from my childhood a print of Rembrandt’s “Head of Christ” with long dark hair, an unkempt beard, and a brooding expression. There’s no way this “long-haired hippie,” as my grandfather would have labeled him back in the 70’s, would be allowed through airport security without close scrutiny these days.

Over the years I have acquired some art books with pictures of Jesus from around the world and through the centuries: colorful paintings of the Christ Child on Austrian glass, Japanese silk, Ethiopian panels, ancient frescos, and modern felt banners. Carvings of Jesus in ivory (11th century Byzantine), wood (20th century Philippines), marble (13th century Italian), and scrimshaw (19th century Native American). Crucifixes made of all types of castable metal, stained glass, gold-leaf iconography, and woven straw. Each face a different color and reflecting a distinct culture.

Around the time that Elton John came out about Jesus being gay, a painting by Marc Chagall was discovered in an auction in Paris by someone from The London Jewish Museum of Art. Made in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War Holocaust the painting shows Jesus as a modern Jewish person, naked and hanging on a cross, with a Nazi officer at the foot of a ladder that’s just been used to carry out the crucifixion. Chagall—who was Jewish, as was Jesus—depicts Jesus with a male face and upper body but with feminine hips and female genitals, symbolizing the genocide of Jewish women and men and girls and boys in Nazi concentration camps.

I find Jesus to be not only a transgender person but also a lesbian woman and a gay man and a bisexual individual, just like the many “homosexuals” persecuted by the Nazis. And, sadly, still persecuted today. Even for just stating the obvious.