Diocese across the country are reviewing how biblical figures should be depicted as part of a drive for “racial justice”.
Clergy have been urged to question whether images of Jesus truly “reflect diversity”.
One diocese has declared that “God is not a white man” and moved to ensure it used “correct images” that better reflected diversity.
This was relayed to the Church’s new racial justice unit and included in a 2024 report into how dioceses are meeting diversity and inclusion targets.
These targets were set in 2021 by the Archbishops’ “anti-racism taskforce”, which advocated for affirmative action for jobs within the Church.
Ensuring use of ‘the correct images’
The Diocese of Southwark’s update on racial justice work stated: “Everything we send out in comms is celebrating diversity – diverse images. God is not a white man; we make sure of the correct images”.
The Diocese of Coventry stated that it has been questioning “the images and artwork, people quoted in the sermons, people who appear in the videos used, depictions of Jesus, God, biblical characters and issues and topics we cover”.
Southwark and Derby dioceses have co-created advice for clergy attempting to improve racial diversity, including a “diversity audit”.
This urges Church authorities to question whether they “reflect diversity in our worship”.
Clergy should question whether there is sufficient diversity in “images and artwork”, the audit states, and in “depictions of Jesus, God, biblical characters”.
Some Christian cultures around the world have depicted Jesus as ethnically similar to themselves.
In Europe, famed images from the 6th-century Byzantine icon of Christ Pantocrator, to Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam to Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, have shown divine figures as white.
The work to diversify such images has already yielded results in some areas, and the Diocese of Chester said that it had been “engaged in a project focused on the global image of Christ, for which they were able to access many images from around the world”.
Some of this work resulted in a 2021 exhibition that included a painting of the Last Supper with a black Jesus above its altar, which had originally been installed at St Albans Cathedral in 2020.
The Diocese of Bristol has also been engaged in this work, and in 2022 replaced a stained glass window dedicated to slave-trader Edward Colston with an image of a non-white Jesus in a Channel migrant boat.
The Church of England has said that there is no top-down insistence that images of the Biblical figures be made more diverse, and that dioceses were taking the initiative.
The ‘Church has failed’
However, dioceses are explicitly responding to a set of objectives put to the Church by the Anti-Racism Taskforce, launched in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell.
The Most Rev Justin Welby said in the immediate aftermath of Black Lives Matter protests that the “Church has failed” on the issue of racism and needed to “repent and take action”.
In a 2021 report called From Lament to Action, this taskforce set out plans to implement “significant cultural and structural change” on issues of racial justice within the Church of England.
Proposals for change include a requirement that shortlists for Church jobs, including bishops, include at least one ethnic minority candidate. It also called for the appointment of full-time, centrally-funded racial justice officers in every diocese.
Dioceses were asked in 2024 to report on their progress against these targets and to share examples of “good practice” that others in the Church could learn from. This included updates on how images were being diversified.
It also included issues such as how to “move away from a white, normative way of working”, and how to counter an “all-white ordained team” with more diverse invited preachers.