[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to that makes Total Sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same.
Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us that makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Hi everyone. I'm so stoked to have grace Jisun Kim on the podcast today. Hi grace.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: Hi. So thankful to have me on. So thank you so much for the invitation.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. I have read you before in seminary, and so when I saw this book come across my way, I was like, oh my goodness, I would really, really like to dig into this topic with you.
So I want to start off maybe by saying this book that we're going to talk about today has kind of a provocative title. So I'm just going to say it and get it out there, and then, and then we can move on from there. But this is called when God became white, dismantling whiteness for a more just Christianity. And so I've got a few questions and they're all really surrounding that term. So I think that'll be maybe where I ask you to get started is what does it mean? Like, what does it mean that God became white? Kind of. I have that in quotes on my, on my notes.
[00:01:53] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a big question to begin the podcast, but let me take a stab at it. I think, you know, the book covers a whole bunch of material, and on Amazon, somehow it got categorized as historical theology and church history.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Oh, interesting.
[00:02:08] Speaker C: So that's not what I had in mind when I was writing it. But I guess the book does cover a lot of the history and christian history and Christianity. So, you know, no one has seen who God looks like. So no one. You and I, people in our churches, faith leaders, no one has seen God. But for some reason, in our own ways of thinking, in the church, in how artists have portrayed God in paintings or in other mediums, it's always been this white male God. So that is something really strange when no one has seen God. So the book itself is exploring when God became white, how and the reasons and why that is being maintained. There are many reasons for this. So the book really delves into it to find out, because I think at the end of the day, how we view God, how we understand God, how our image of who God is really impacts our actions, our theology, how we treat one another, it impacts so much. And I would even say those who aren't even christian, because here in the US, you know, we're not all christians, but the christian kind of culture, Christianity, is there. So whether you be muslim or, you know, non religious, it gets embedded into our ways of thinking. So if this divine figure is a white male, it really impacts so much of our thinking and how we act.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you for that. It is a big question, and I want to go a little bit further than that because one of the images that you mention in the book that is very common is this white Jesus.
And this, actually, I realized only a few years ago, was originally this image came about by a man who is a part of the denomination that I've been a member of this church for many years. And I was like, okay, this is. This is one kind of legacy, you know, but. But interestingly enough, you had a picture of this, of this white Jesus. Everyone kind of knows the one. I'll see if I can find it online and put it. Put it in the show notes. But everyone kind of knows, I think this image in, in homes. My. I'm trying to remember, as I was reading, I was trying to remember if my mexican side of the family had that same image. I feel like we did. They were, like, not even nominally catholic, but it was, you know, there. I know you had a picture in your korean canadian home growing up, and. And. But I want to talk. I'm wondering if, as a theologian, if you can. If you can guide us a little bit further, because there is this image of Jesus as being a white man, which in itself is problematic, just kind of based on, like, what we know about historical Jesus. But you're also talking about God like this, like you said, this divine being as being portrayed or understood as being white. And then there's also, like, this understanding of just someone with white skin or white race, but also, like, the concept of whiteness. So could you walk us through a little bit of that even a little bit further, maybe?
[00:05:56] Speaker C: Yeah. So, you know, the church has said that Jesus is God. So that was the whole council of Chalcedon. And there were other meetings to decide who Jesus is because there were so many heresies and so many ways of viewing Jesus. You know, people, even his disciples, some of them were confused about who Jesus is. But later on, the church decided that he is God. Hes not like God, but that he is God. So if he is God, then our understanding is he kind of embodies who God is on earth. And so if you portray a white male Jesus, then that gets portrayed back to God. So we just think in our own imaginations, in our own thinking, in our own theology, then God must be the same as Jesus, a white male. So when we think about how Jesus became white, it was, you know, there's a lot of factors why Jesus was so he was born in Palestine under the Roman Empire. So if you've been in that area in your own lifetime, you know that people are not white. They're darker skinned.
Olive skin or dark skin, dark hair and brown eyes, not like the fair skin. And some other people have portrayed him as blue eye, blonde hair. So somehow within christian history, you get this change of who Jesus is. So it has a lot to do with power, colonialism and empire building. So as emperors, Constantine, if he is trying to colonize the whole mediterranean area and beyond, and many of them look like the palestinian Jesus, it doesn't make sense because you're trying to, as a Roman who is white, wanting to conquer others, you have to portray Jesus and God as someone that looks like you, not like the ones that you are trying to conquer, because it defeats the whole purpose. You know, if God looks like the ones that you're trying to conquer, why would you want to do that? Why would you want to destroy people that look like Jesus? So you had to make Jesus white and fair and look like you. And then you portray that back onto God and make God white. Then it, by just all these correlations, you're basically saying that the emperor is the closest to God. The Roman Catholic Church has used this argument, too. Like, only men can be ordained because they're closer to God than women. So if you're closer to God, only you can kind of represent God. You can only be the one that preaches and teaches. So that argument has been used in the Roman catholic church to prevent women from being leaders and being ordained, and they still use it. So that's the same kind of reasoning. So the roman emperor, the emperors, and then leaders after that, you know, when the roman empire crumbled, you needed to perpetuate this white male God to legitimize your power and how you treat other people through colonialism, through crusades. You know, the crusades, they killed so many Muslims. Jesus kind of looked like a muslim, you know, the darker skin. But so you can not have your own messiah or your savior or your divine being look like Muslims or those who you are trying to conquer. So that all, you know, this whole understanding of how the book goes into a lot of detail of how we understand race. And then that leads to this understanding of racism and white supremacy and this big notion of whiteness. So that is what's happening when we kind of project God as white and Jesus as white, because that is to legitimize all of these things that white people are able to do under the umbrella of whiteness, that somehow white people are this neutral kind of category. So everyone else is measured against white people because white are neutral. And then by being neutral, you're at the top of the hierarchy. So you do have this whole hierarchy people and the dark you. You are the. The bottom of the hierarchy that you're going to fall under. So there's a lot of repercussions by kind of holding on to this white male God and this white male Jesus. And, you know, I wrote the book to make sense of what is happening in this world. So I'm hoping that many readers who read the book will find it helpful to make sense of why white supremacy, why racism, why all these things exist not only in society, but also in the church.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that your subtitle speaks to that dismantling whiteness for a more just Christianity. And when you were talking about the hierarchy, I'm a mixed woman, so I'm hispanic and white. And I think it was in seminary, I read Quoc Puilan and feminists and postcolonial theology. And it was another one of those places where I was.
Where I started to realize what was kind of happening behind the curtain. And I think you spoke to it. I mentioned two things. This white normativity. And so for me, and I've had to do a lot of dismantling of these beliefs in my own life, because just being raised in a culture that is saturated with white supremacy, I think I know I'm not alone, but began to just. These lies were instilled in me through the culture about myself, and not just through our social culture, but also through religious culture. You know, every time I see not, you know, necessarily every time I see a picture of white Jesus, but whenever this. This is like, this is preached, this is taught, and then I just begin to accept kind of where I fall on the hierarchy, on the ladder, because I'm a woman, because I'm brown, and I must not be in these places. Instead of the truth and realization that I image God just as much as a white man images God just as much as you image God just as much as my child, you know, images God. We image God as well. But this hierarchy, including whiteness, tells us a different story, and it becomes really problematic. So I'm wondering if you might take us to a place in your. Either in your upbringing or in your ministry where you started to where you saw this actively in your life, where.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: The projection of thought. Well, it was just part of my whole upbringing that even if I attended a korean church, a korean immigrant church, the God that we're going to worship is a white male God. So, as you were talking about images, I just want to make sure that the listeners understand that since nobody has seen God, so nobody understands how God looks like. But the Bible is clear that we are created in God's image and that all these metaphors that we use, you know, male, Father, king, lord, they're just metaphors, and metaphors are not the actual thing. So I just want to make sure that the listeners are aware when we say, Father God is not father or king God is not kingdom, just it's their words to point to who God is, to give us a deeper understanding of who God is. And if some of these metaphors are more destructive, then we have to rethink and use the ones that are less destructive. So, you know, I grew up with this white male God. It was reinforced by everything. All the images, all the paintings, in Sunday school, in church. Everyone preached and taught about a white male God. There was no way for me to question it. It was just a given. And so I didn't really question it until much later in my life when I was trying to make sense of why are these forces of oppression continuing? So that was my reality. And I know in many people in the pews today, even if the pastor has never said, God is a white male, the image is already ingrained. How? Because many of our prayers kind of direct us that way. Many of our hymns do, you know, we have hymns like various Lord Jesus or talking about cleansing us and making us white. There's a lot of other words to kind of describe that if you're good, you're white, and if you're bad, you're dark. So our liturgies. So all of these reinforce it. So at the end of the book, I'm really challenging people that we need to come up with hymns that are more inclusive and liturgies that move away from this gendered and racialized language and image of who God is.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Yeah, this was one of my questions on my list was, what do we do about this? Why is it problematic? But also, what do we do about it? And I think to go back to the metaphors for a moment.
One of the metaphors that I too, actually, but one specifically that I think of often are when Jesus compares himself to a mother hen, right, that he wants to pull Jerusalem up under his wings, but like a mother birdhouse. And this is also a metaphor, but it's not one that we concentrate on. We don't focus on that one very much. Or when, you know, there's nursing images like these maternalistic, you know, nursing images of God in the psalms and things like that, those are ones that we don't pull out and focus on those as much as we do the other ones that you're mentioning father and king and those kinds of things. And I think, you know, talking about the gendered part as well that you mentioned, I think how would women's lives be different if we had grown up or we were discipled in the ways of, when we are acting in our feminist ways, we are actually imaging God when we bring our brood in, you know, to safety, when we nurse our children, if we're mothers, you know, if we, those kinds of things, how would that be different in our spiritual formation if we had had those experiences that these caring in this way, loving in this way, nurturing in this way is a very godly thing to do.
And I sometimes wonder that.
[00:18:15] Speaker C: Yeah, so, you know, the church has been very patriarchal right from the beginning. So we have the church fathers, we have all these theologians who are white male Europeans, most of them. So of course they're going to read scripture and interpret scripture from a patriarchal lens. So you're going to only focus on the maleness of God and the maleness of Jesus. So that is just very clear in our whole churches. If we study theology or church history, the historical theology, it's very evident. And nobody really questioned it because women weren't doing theology. Women were not ordained until very recently. So for the last 2000 years, I would say it's only the last 50, 60 years that women were getting ordained and women were able to kind of study, you know, higher up with their PhDs to start teaching and to start researching. So that's a very short history within the long 2000 year history of the catholic, of the christian church. So now that women are theologians and historians and biblical scholars and ministers and I, bishops in some denominations, they are looking at scripture in a new light. And as you mentioned, looking at the feminine images. So I bring those in and, you know, there's plenty of other ones in the Old Testament and New Testament. We just haven't focused on them. So the church really now need to focus on them and make our liturgies and our hymns more inclusive, that we're going to talk about a God who is both masculine and feminine. This is part of our tradition.
It's not something that women just made up. It's already in our scripture, it's in our tradition. So we're just trying to retrieve them and use them so that it'll be more empowering, especially because more women are part of the church than men. There's more women sitting in the pews than men. So if there are more women, it has to make sense to women. So I think it's important. And at the end of the book, I do explore some of the other feminine images that should be used in our everyday language within the church and in our liturgies and in times of worship.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: I feel like this is, all of these questions I'm asking are bigger questions. They could each be their own podcast, they could each be their own book, I'm certain.
But one of the last ones I have is thinking about the patriarchal nature of the church, as you mentioned, that's just really always been this way. And then going back to earlier when you were talking about the roman empire and the emperors kind of making Jesus to look like them, I thought, oh, this feels like a reversal where instead of recognizing our being made in the image of God, we have powerful men making God in their image, where God ends up looking like the ones in power. But I wonder if you will speak to this justice piece, because this isn't actually how we understand God from the scriptures and from the larger tradition. We don't understand God as someone who takes advantage of people because God has power. Or, you know, we, we understand God as being one who, who stands with the oppressed, who fights on their behalf, who comes to rescue the weakness. And that picture of God is really hard to get. You kind of have to squint to get there when you're like, oh, but he looks like this roman empire, you know, this lord, this feudal lord. And so I'm wondering if you could, in the last few minutes that we have, speak to that justice piece and how that differs from the, the power that we've seen. God imaged us.
[00:22:51] Speaker C: So of course we're supposed to be engaging in justice. The Old Testament, New Testament Jesus message is embodied in justice and love, but those in power in the church, that wasn't always the case. Of course there are people who are working for justice and love, but in many cases throughout church history, Christianity was used as a tool to legitimize everything that the leaders were doing, the christian leaders.
Christianity was used to legitimize colonialism, legitimize crusades, legitimize enslavement and legitimize sexism, legitimize genocides. It still continues today. It's not something that just happened. It's still being engaged in today, all in the name of Goddesse. And it's outrageous what we're doing in different parts of the world today.
You know, rather than embracing the message of love and justice, christians in power are turning it around to maintain the status quo, to allow this whiteness to happen so that they will still stay in power. So this is a very problematic thing. It's not a local problem, it's a global problem. So I just hope that your listeners will read the book and be challenged by it.
This has been going on all in the name of God, and we have to stop it. Racism, we think, oh, it's not that bad. It is bad. Racism kills. That's the basis of the whole genocide, basis of colonialism and crusades, wars. So we really need to fight racism in the church and name it as sin.
That's why black people have said black while driving, and then you're murdered by cops or someone else. So racism is dangerous. It kills. It causes so much harm to so many people. So I hope that people who read my book will be challenged, that we have swayed so far away from that good news and have used Christianity and misused it to legitimize the powerful peoples and to allow them to maintain power. So if we do this historical study, everything is more clear. If we don't go back into history, we may be, oh, maybe it's not correct, but if you study the pattern, we know this has been happening. So we really need to stop and re examine our own faith, re examine our own image of God. Mary Daley, who taught at Boston College, said, if God is male, then the male is God.
This is the whole kind of circular thing. It's.
I would add, if God is white male, then the white male is God. So white men continue to pretend to be like God, that they're the closest. I said this at the beginning. They're the closest to who God is. So we better listen to them because they're almost like divinely appointed. And we've seen this with many leaders, political leaders, emperors. We see this in Japan and different parts of the world where they believe, like the Egyptians believe, that the pharaoh was this divine being on earth. They kind of represented God on earth and we've done this with other political leaders. We have said it and then after we project that to them, then they can do whatever they want and get away with it. So we really need to examine our history, rethink and reflect on who God is and really study the Bible and reimagine who God is because that will then change our ways and help us to work towards justice and love.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Thank you so much. I completely agree. Your book does an incredible job. You do an incredible job in your book of giving us context and also, as you mentioned, challenging us for our future. It doesn't have to look like our past did. So thank you so much grace. Again, this has been my conversation with Grace G. Sun Kim with her incredible book when God became dismantling whiteness for a more just Christianity and the link where you can grab a copy of this will be in the show notes. Thank you so much for this conversation.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: Thank you so much Alexis for reading my book and inviting me. This has been a real pleasure of mine and a joy to be on your podcast, so thank you so much.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: The links for all the resources mentioned.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: In today's episode can be found in the show notes, music and podcast production by Seth Busetti. Be sure to give us a review on iTunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also visit
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