Fake Christians All Up in Arms about the Black Jesus TV Show

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There is a new television series about Jesus coming to the Adult Swim network on August 7. Brought to you by Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder, the new show Black Jesus has Jesus living in Compton California and on a “daily mission to spread love and kindness throughout the neighborhood with the help of his small but loyal group of downtrodden followers.”

Watch the trailer:

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Jesus is played by Gerald “Slink” Johnson and as the review at the Christian Post complained yesterday, shows Jesus “talking faith and salvation to his neighbors and spearheading efforts for a community garden. “Black Jesus” also shows the faux messiah dropping four-letter expletives and being accused of “smoking all the f—— weed,” in addition to being shot at and getting carjacked.”

Whoa, faux messiah? Why all the hate?

David A. Rodgers, pastor of the House of Prayer for All Nations Ministries in Chicago, is very angry and not at all in a mood to turn the other cheek for Jesus as Jesus instructed. Instead he has written a letter and posted it on his Facebook page:

We, the Christian community are vehemently opposed and violently offended at this upcoming program soon to air on your channel called, ‘BLACK JESUS.’ The level of disrespect aimed at the depiction of our Lord and Savior is inexcusable. We are hard pressed to find any value in this program, its message or its purpose. As a group of believers, we are prepared to launch a mass campaign and boycott of your channel and any advertisers that are financially profiting from this program. These continued attacks against our Christian values and the degrading imagery of the Lord Jesus Christ, will be met with social media awareness to the entire Christian community and a targeted boycott of your advertisers.

There is no way that this show would be aimed at the Jewish or Muslim community. We are demanding an IMMEDIATE retraction of this show and a PUBLIC APOLOGY to the Christian community at large. We will continue to make our community aware of your blatant disrespect until there is a redemptive shift in the culture of your channel and programming. Please understand that we will not take this lying down. We will fight this and any other program that seeks to demean our values, our Savior and our beliefs. A draft of this letter is being distributed to every church in America.

I suspect Rodgers won’t get far with his protest. The Christian Post writes that as of yesterday at press time the post had “less than 200 shares” and when checked by me this morning it had 195 shares and a whopping 99 “likes.”

He is not alone however. One Million Moms, that organization representing a few thousand moms (but what’s the Religious Right without bombast?) calls Black Jesus “a blasphemous new show” and “makes a mockery of our Lord…the entire program will be based on lies about Christianity.”

Oh, like the Religious Right, you mean, which has pretty much kicked Jesus and his teachings to the curb?

One Millions Moms says,

We need to send a loud and clear message to Adult Swim, its owner Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (a Time Warner Company), and all potential advertisers of “Black Jesus” that this kind of programming is insulting and completely unacceptable. Adult Swim is not ridiculing any other religion currently and wouldn’t dream of mocking Mohammed or Muslims.

To be fair, groups like One Million Moms do a good enough job by themselves of mocking Islam and other religions and are friends with an entire network whose sole focus seems to be mocking everything outside of the Religious Right’s own twisted mockery of Christianity.

If we speak with one voice now, we can keep this program from ever seeing the light of day. Christians must take a stand and not be silent. Networks like Adult Swim continue to mock Christianity, and we will not stand for it. Christians should no longer sit idly by and allow this blasphemy to continue without speaking up in protest. ‘Black Jesus’ is another attempt to distort the truth about Christianity. There is power in numbers!

Except One Million Moms shouldn’t be talking about numbers. Their own Facebook page reveals the sum total of 66,915 likes. Now I’m no math guru, but it seems to me that 66k is a lot less than one million. Maybe they should not stress the numbers thing so much, given their own lack of them. Just sayin’.

There is also a Facebook group dedicated to stopping the show, Boycott the “Black Jesus” TV Show. Numbers are a problem here too. Christian Post counted 600 followers yesterday. I counted 658 this morning.

I should mention here that the Black Jesus Facebook page has 71,688 likes as of my writing, more than any of these critics.

The real problem, I suspect, is what One Million Moms, which is run, you’ll remember, by our bigoted friends at the American Family Association, calls “Jesus as a ‘black guy’ living in the hood,” with the emphasis on “black guy.” Everyone knows, and you can verify this with Megyn Kelly, that Jesus, like Santa, is a white guy with disturbingly Northern European features.

republican_jesusWe all know that the historical Jesus was a Jewish guy from Galilee. But if, as Christianity has insisted, Jesus is God, then certainly he can manifest as a black guy in Compton. Or are they saying Jesus would NOT do such a thing. You know, because of all the black people? We are also all aware that for the Religious Right’s ethnic nationalist set, Jesus has become a sort of white guy’s personal god. You black folks can’t share in his AR-15 totin’ goodness!

It is amusing to watch the Religious Right squirm and rage and ignore Jesus’ teachings as they whine about how a guy they ignore anyway is being portrayed, and about having their beliefs mocked – all the while completely ignoring the fact that they make all their own money off mocking other peoples’ beliefs.

Truly hilarious. I have no doubt Black Jesus will do far more justice to Jesus than any of these critics. At least, unlike the Religious Right, Black Jesus seems to care about people.


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