JESUS HANGING FROM A POPLAR TREE The White Jesus, The Black Christ, and Christ Recrucified

REV. CLAUDE ATCHO

Voltaire famously wrote, “On prétend que Dieu a fait l’homme à son image, mais l’homme le lui a bien rendu,” which means, “It is said that God made man in his image, but it is really man who created God in their image.” In a world in which so many people have grown up with a picture of a White Jesus on their wall, Claudo Atcho invites us to combat the distortions created by that image by turning to the writings of the famous Harlem Renaissance writer Countee Cullen. Cullen’s poems Christ Recrucified and The Black Christ call us to look more carefully at Jesus through the lens of the lynched and despised. How is Jesus to be understood? Join Atcho as we look together at how Jesus has been portrayed and at why the lynching of Jesus can’t be ignored.

Claude Atcho, MTS, is pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Charlottesville. He has taught African American literature at the collegiate level, has written for Christianity Today, Christ & Pop Culture, The Gospel Coalition, and The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, and is the author of Reading Black Books: How African American Literature can make our Faith More Whole and Just.

Thursday, March 9 | 7-8 PM

BLOCKER HALL AUDITORIUM