What do you think?
Rate this book
When God Became White: Dismantling Whiteness for a More Just Christianity
When Western Christians think about God, the default image that comes to mind is usually white and male. How did that happen?
Christianity is rooted in the ancient Near East among people of darker skin. But over time, European Christians cast Jesus in their own image, with art that imagined a fair-skinned Savior in the style of imperial rulers. Grace Ji-Sun Kim explores the historical origins and theological implications of how Jesus became white and God became a white male. The myth of the white male God has had a devastating effect as it enabled Christianity to have a profoundly colonialist posture across the globe. Kim examines the roots of the distortion, its harmful impact on the world, and shows what it looks like to recover the biblical reality of a nonwhite, nongendered God. Rediscovering God as Spirit leads us to a more just faith and a better church and world.
Christianity is rooted in the ancient Near East among people of darker skin. But over time, European Christians cast Jesus in their own image, with art that imagined a fair-skinned Savior in the style of imperial rulers. Grace Ji-Sun Kim explores the historical origins and theological implications of how Jesus became white and God became a white male. The myth of the white male God has had a devastating effect as it enabled Christianity to have a profoundly colonialist posture across the globe. Kim examines the roots of the distortion, its harmful impact on the world, and shows what it looks like to recover the biblical reality of a nonwhite, nongendered God. Rediscovering God as Spirit leads us to a more just faith and a better church and world.
191 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 7, 2024
41 people are currently reading
312 people want to read
About the author
Grace Ji-Sun Kim
42 books34 followersGrace Ji-Sun Kim (PhD, St. Michael's College, University of Toronto) is associate professor of theology at Earlham School of Religion. She is author or editor of thirteen books, including Embracing the Other,Christian Doctrines for Global Gender Justice, and Intercultural Ministry. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 5, 2024
Grace Ji-Sun Kim’s When God Became White: Dismantling Whiteness for a More Just Christianity (IVP: 2024) is an important, timely work that I highly recommend Christian communities to read (and implement). While I offer a critical analysis below, there is so much to positively highlight in this text. Kim’s book is deeply personal and vulnerable, sharing stores from her own Asian-American experience—experiences often ignored in discussions on race that focus on a white/black binary. This lived experience illuminates how race is a fluid concept that is constructed differently in different places (between Canada & the U.S., for example) and by different groups, how microaggressions (which are anything but ‘minor’) have a devastating compounding effect on the self, and how white supremacy is often internalized by people of color. Regarding the latter, Kim in particular describes how the ubiquity of a white Jesus/God in Christian art, particularly Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ” (pp. 7-9, 104-05), led her to subconsciously conclude at a very young age that God is white and whiteness is closest to the divine.
The book provides a concise yet lucid account of numerous issues surrounding whiteness and Christian theology, making it a rich resource, especially for people who are new to this conversation. Kim recounts how race as we know it today was created in order to justify exploitation of labor once the neat Christian/heathen binary could no longer be maintained (21, 53) [on this point, see Cedric Robinson]. She articulates how whiteness is entangled with the legacies of colonialism, patriarchy, and Christian missions. She clearly defines whiteness as an ideology and explains how it functions and its effects. Even more powerfully (and of interest to me given my own research!), she describes whiteness as more than mere mental thoughts or beliefs in dogmas, but rather, as an embodied habit that shapes how we live and move in the world both collectively and individually. She writes, “Racism is not just an overt belief of white superiority but also a complicity to an ideology that there is a racial hierarchy” (83). It “is sometimes so embedded in our society that we fail to detect its presence” (82). “The white, male Jesus … was engrained in my body” (98). Whiteness, in short, shapes our “habits, biases, and ways of being” (171). [I explore these very themes in The Logic of Racial Practice]
Solutions, then, to white supremacy must move beyond mere mental assent to nonracist axioms and on to alternative practices, habits, and rituals. Kim invites readers to imagine the world differently, to utilize nonracist and feminist (or nongendered) images and metaphors for the divine, and points readers to existing liturgies and hymnals that may habituate congregations into inclusive communities. Uniquely drawing on her previous work, Kim introduces the reader to Korean terms and concepts that might allow people of faith to not only break up the hegemony of Greek & Latin (but also German and English) in theology but to positively expand and diversify the Christian imagination.
While there is so much this book has to offer to its readers, I do want to bring some scholarly critique and/or expansion to a few points. Here, I recognize that the book, having been written for a more popular audience, was likely not intended to fully address some of these issues, and anyone who has ever tried to write a concise potted history of the construction of race knows how difficult it is to include everything that seems relevant.
I begin with a handful of minor points and then move on to more substantive issues:
(a) Kim writes that Augustine developed just-war theory “in the fifteenth century” (45). I assume this is just an unfortunate typo, as Augustine lived from 354-430CE.
(b) Kim spends a considerable amount of time discussing Japanese colonialism (47-48, 50-52). As horrifying and of personal relevance that this is, it isn’t clear to me how this material fits in a section on “white Christian history.” Perhaps, we simply have to conclude that not all colonialisms are entangled in whiteness.
(c) Kim is right to highlight the explosive impact Constantine had on Christianity. Perhaps, I’m splicing hairs here but Christianity did not become the “official religion of the Roman Empire in 313CE” (43), though it did become legal. It then became the official religion under Theodosius with the Edict of Thessalonica (381CE), which threatened punishment to all who didn’t fall in line with what was considered orthodox. It is a minor distinction, to be sure, but again important for tracing how Christianity and Empire evolves over time.
(d) The papal bull that popularized the Doctrine of Discovery after Columbus was written by Alexander VI (not Nicholas V) (55). This papal bull is known as Inter Caetera and applied to the so-called “new world” of the Americas. The earlier papal bulls written by Nicholas V were Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455), inspired by Prince Henry’s exploits in Guinea, had to do with the colonization of Africa and enslavement of its people (more below).
(e) In her potted history, Kim writes, “Before the seventeenth century, Europeans did not think of themselves as belonging to a white race” (20). I more or less agree with this: race came into existence during the period of European colonialism. But if that is true, then it’s inaccurate and anachronistic to say Jesus was depicted as “European-looking” and “white” in the 4th century (100), or that “the white male God arose out of Greek philosophy” (136), or that “whiteness has been wedded to Christianity from its beginnings” (109) or speak of “the traditionally, white, imperialistic Jesus that has dominated Christianity for the past two thousand years” (151). What does it mean that “racial stereotyping can be found in the Greek and Roman periods” (54) or that “under the Roman Empire, [Christianity] became white” (70) if whiteness didn’t get articulated until 1000 years after Rome fell? Our language here matters at least for two reasons: (1) We need to try to distinguish between what scholars have called proto-racial concepts (see Naomi Zack and David Goldenberg) in the Greco-Roman world and how these are reimagined in the colonial era when race is imagined, and, (2) it’s to Christians’ benefit to demonstrate that threads of Christianity existed before and outside of (and continue to persist!) the hegemony of white colonialist Christianity.
(f) In a section on the “consequences of colonialism,” Kim uses 1493-1899 as a bench marker for documenting the death toll of European colonialism and puts it at “around fifty million,” particularly highlighting its effect on “the Native American population” (49). These dates are likely linked to the source being cited, yet I fear they obscure the full scale of European colonialism’s horrors. While many scholars begin with Columbus as the starting point of the European colonial era, this erases the fifty years of Spanish and Portuguese murder, enslavement, and land theft that went on in Africa, particularly under Prince Henry the Navigator. Further, this estimate of the Native American population is on the conservative end. McKenna and Pratt estimate that the population of the Americas was at 145 million people in 1491 and within 200 years had declined by nearly 95% percent. Finally, using 1899 as the endpoint erases the continued presence of white Euro colonialism throughout the 20th century—and into the present. Nearly all of Africa was colonized by seven European nations in the so-called “scramble for Africa” beginning in 1884 [see Walter Rodney], which in Congo alone resulted in the death of 10-15 million people under King Leopold II of Belgium. The death toll of victims of British imperialism in India alone during the 20th C is estimated between 60-165 million. We could add the 20,000 victims of American imperialism in the Philippines 1899-1902. Indeed, inasmuch as Theodore Herzl intentionally designed Modern Zionism as a European settler colonialist project, the current death toll of Palestinians under Israel’s apartheid regime should arguably be included.
(g) On antisemitism, Kim writes, “In the 19th century, Jesus was made even whiter with the rise of antisemitism” (103). I’m not entirely sure what the reference to the 19th century refers to, but we can surely locate far older “rises” of antisemitism. Anti-Jewish sentiment was ubiquitous in Medieval Christianity. Indeed, race was arguably invented out of Christian assumptions about Jews and Muslims, as the shift from Anti-Judaism (a claim about having the “wrong” religion) to antisemitism (a claim about having the “wrong” biology) begins in the colonial era. Some benchmarks here include the mass expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 (one week before Columbus set sail), Luther’s “On the Jews and their Lies” (1543), the early widespread colonial suggestion that the indigenous people of the Americas were the so-called “Lost Tribes of Israel,” or the invention of the term ‘Caucasian’ (popularized by Johann Blumenbach in the late 18th C) suggesting that the first humans were white on account of the belief Noah’s Ark landed in the Caucasus mountains. In light of this long history of antisemitism and supersessionism, then, I wonder, do we thwart our own efforts toward inclusion by using Isaiah 53:2 as a description of Jesus (99)? Or by using the term “Old Testament” (why not Hebrew Bible or Tanakh?)—especially on a page when a Jewish scholar is cited (139)?
(h) Kim writes, “by the 1940s, anthropologists decided to simplify all these different categorizations of people and announced that there are only three classifications: Caucasoid (White), Mongoloid (Asian), and Negroid (Black) … There were no longer any distinctions for Saxons, Celts, Southern Italians, or Eastern European Jews. … Since the 1940s, there have been only very minor modifications to classifications” (26). It is correct that a kind streamlining of whiteness occurred in the 1940s (and was further solidified in 1968 when the US immigration quota system was dissolved), but this account oversimplifies the reality on the ground. First, a racial taxonomy of only three classifications is arguably the first taxonomy of race, one based on biblical literalism of Noah’s three sons, Shem, Japheth, and Ham (this can be found explicitly in the 1702 works of Cotton Mather). Second, throughout the 18th-20th centuries, multiple racial taxonomies persisted in simultaneity, notably three (Hegel), four (Linnaeus, Kant) [as a child in Sunday School I sang, “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight”], or five races (Blumenbach, Morton). Whatever taxonomy used was usually employed in a fluid and arbitrary manner. As a result, Jews and Muslims (and Sikhs) were often technically “Caucasian” but treated as second class citizens – notably Muslims were barred from US citizenship until 1944. The 1930 US Census had 5 racial categories (Native American, Asian, Negro, Mexican, White). The 1940 & 1950 US Census had 4, removing “Mexican.” The 1960, census had 5 (adding Hawaiian). Since 1970, the US Census has included “Hispanic” as an “ethnicity” category, which has effectively functioned as a sixth racial category, all while the number of people checking multiple racial boxes has increased. In 2030, a category for the MENA region will be added. And this is just in the U.S. In short, the social construction of race, and its taxonomies, continues to evolve.
(i) Kim claims the creation of “white” and “black” as racial terms begins with the slave laws in the Caribbean in 1680 (23-24), and then concludes, “Before the late 1600s, Europeans did not use the term Black to reference any group of people” (24). While these slave laws are integral, we can push the timeline further back, which helps to explain the evolution of the concept of race, especially if we play closer attention to Spanish and Portuguese colonialism. In 1630, in the Virginia colonies a European Christian man, Hugh Davis, is punished for “defiling his body in lying with a negro,” revealing what may be the first anti-miscegenation law and a legal distinction between Christian Europeans and Black slaves. Throughout the Virginia colonial era, then, “Christian” and “white” were used interchangeably, whereas “negros” were presumed to be “heathen” and “slaves.” Over a century before in 1518, based on the erroneous advice of Bartolome de las Casas (who ironically was a champion of indigenous human rights) who reasoned that the dying Taino natives could be replaced by imported Black slaves who were not susceptible to disease, Emperor Charles V initiated a large-scale transatlantic slave trade by permitting “four thousand negro slaves … direct from the isles of Guinea” to be sent to the Americas. Columbus described himself as white in one of his later voyages. And in 1450, Prince Henry’s biographer de Zurara, in his The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, spoke of Guinea as “the land of the Negroes” (sometimes conflated with the “Moors” or “Saracens”) over a dozen times and speaks of the people Henry enslaved as “less white like mulattoes; others again were as black as Ethiops.” It is arguably this text that ushers in the long gestational period that will result in the concept of race (see Willie James Jennings). Furthermore, race arguably develops out of a belief of “hereditary heathenism” (see Rebecca Goetz), held by both Spanish Catholics and British Anglicans, believing that European parents produced Christian offspring, and Black and Indigenous people produced heathens. This begins with the proto-racist language of “purity of blood” [limpieza de sangre] whereby Jews (Marranos) and Muslims (Moriscos) who converted to Christianity, were under constant surveillance by the Spanish Inquisition under the assumption that they had not fully converted (see Grosfoguel). This was first transferred to the new world by Columbus who, as Nelson Maldonaldo-Torres points out, claims the Taino people are a “people without religion,” hence suggesting they don’t even reach the status of Jews and Muslims and had no souls. Then, as conquistadores had children with the indigenous people of the Americas, the Spanish term used for one’s questionable religious lineage was raza (race). In other words, a child born of a Christian with a Muslim, Jewish, or “heathen” parent was deemed not fully Christian (see Joshi, for example). This is important for many reasons, but notably because race always had religious connotations and the separation between whiteness and Christianity was never fully severed. “White” and “Christian” continued to be used as synonyms even in Supreme Court cases on citizenship well into the 20th century, and in the social imaginary, they continue to be used interchangeably (notice how support for Christian Nationalism almost always converges with support for white supremacist talking points).
In conclusion, When God Became White is an excellent introduction to the complicated history of race and the profound impact it has had on not only Christian theology, but the entire global community. I hope it is given a wide reading and inspires readers to go further into not merely understanding the legacy of whiteness but of actively decolonizing their faith. - Dr. Brock Bahler
The book provides a concise yet lucid account of numerous issues surrounding whiteness and Christian theology, making it a rich resource, especially for people who are new to this conversation. Kim recounts how race as we know it today was created in order to justify exploitation of labor once the neat Christian/heathen binary could no longer be maintained (21, 53) [on this point, see Cedric Robinson]. She articulates how whiteness is entangled with the legacies of colonialism, patriarchy, and Christian missions. She clearly defines whiteness as an ideology and explains how it functions and its effects. Even more powerfully (and of interest to me given my own research!), she describes whiteness as more than mere mental thoughts or beliefs in dogmas, but rather, as an embodied habit that shapes how we live and move in the world both collectively and individually. She writes, “Racism is not just an overt belief of white superiority but also a complicity to an ideology that there is a racial hierarchy” (83). It “is sometimes so embedded in our society that we fail to detect its presence” (82). “The white, male Jesus … was engrained in my body” (98). Whiteness, in short, shapes our “habits, biases, and ways of being” (171). [I explore these very themes in The Logic of Racial Practice]
Solutions, then, to white supremacy must move beyond mere mental assent to nonracist axioms and on to alternative practices, habits, and rituals. Kim invites readers to imagine the world differently, to utilize nonracist and feminist (or nongendered) images and metaphors for the divine, and points readers to existing liturgies and hymnals that may habituate congregations into inclusive communities. Uniquely drawing on her previous work, Kim introduces the reader to Korean terms and concepts that might allow people of faith to not only break up the hegemony of Greek & Latin (but also German and English) in theology but to positively expand and diversify the Christian imagination.
While there is so much this book has to offer to its readers, I do want to bring some scholarly critique and/or expansion to a few points. Here, I recognize that the book, having been written for a more popular audience, was likely not intended to fully address some of these issues, and anyone who has ever tried to write a concise potted history of the construction of race knows how difficult it is to include everything that seems relevant.
I begin with a handful of minor points and then move on to more substantive issues:
(a) Kim writes that Augustine developed just-war theory “in the fifteenth century” (45). I assume this is just an unfortunate typo, as Augustine lived from 354-430CE.
(b) Kim spends a considerable amount of time discussing Japanese colonialism (47-48, 50-52). As horrifying and of personal relevance that this is, it isn’t clear to me how this material fits in a section on “white Christian history.” Perhaps, we simply have to conclude that not all colonialisms are entangled in whiteness.
(c) Kim is right to highlight the explosive impact Constantine had on Christianity. Perhaps, I’m splicing hairs here but Christianity did not become the “official religion of the Roman Empire in 313CE” (43), though it did become legal. It then became the official religion under Theodosius with the Edict of Thessalonica (381CE), which threatened punishment to all who didn’t fall in line with what was considered orthodox. It is a minor distinction, to be sure, but again important for tracing how Christianity and Empire evolves over time.
(d) The papal bull that popularized the Doctrine of Discovery after Columbus was written by Alexander VI (not Nicholas V) (55). This papal bull is known as Inter Caetera and applied to the so-called “new world” of the Americas. The earlier papal bulls written by Nicholas V were Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455), inspired by Prince Henry’s exploits in Guinea, had to do with the colonization of Africa and enslavement of its people (more below).
(e) In her potted history, Kim writes, “Before the seventeenth century, Europeans did not think of themselves as belonging to a white race” (20). I more or less agree with this: race came into existence during the period of European colonialism. But if that is true, then it’s inaccurate and anachronistic to say Jesus was depicted as “European-looking” and “white” in the 4th century (100), or that “the white male God arose out of Greek philosophy” (136), or that “whiteness has been wedded to Christianity from its beginnings” (109) or speak of “the traditionally, white, imperialistic Jesus that has dominated Christianity for the past two thousand years” (151). What does it mean that “racial stereotyping can be found in the Greek and Roman periods” (54) or that “under the Roman Empire, [Christianity] became white” (70) if whiteness didn’t get articulated until 1000 years after Rome fell? Our language here matters at least for two reasons: (1) We need to try to distinguish between what scholars have called proto-racial concepts (see Naomi Zack and David Goldenberg) in the Greco-Roman world and how these are reimagined in the colonial era when race is imagined, and, (2) it’s to Christians’ benefit to demonstrate that threads of Christianity existed before and outside of (and continue to persist!) the hegemony of white colonialist Christianity.
(f) In a section on the “consequences of colonialism,” Kim uses 1493-1899 as a bench marker for documenting the death toll of European colonialism and puts it at “around fifty million,” particularly highlighting its effect on “the Native American population” (49). These dates are likely linked to the source being cited, yet I fear they obscure the full scale of European colonialism’s horrors. While many scholars begin with Columbus as the starting point of the European colonial era, this erases the fifty years of Spanish and Portuguese murder, enslavement, and land theft that went on in Africa, particularly under Prince Henry the Navigator. Further, this estimate of the Native American population is on the conservative end. McKenna and Pratt estimate that the population of the Americas was at 145 million people in 1491 and within 200 years had declined by nearly 95% percent. Finally, using 1899 as the endpoint erases the continued presence of white Euro colonialism throughout the 20th century—and into the present. Nearly all of Africa was colonized by seven European nations in the so-called “scramble for Africa” beginning in 1884 [see Walter Rodney], which in Congo alone resulted in the death of 10-15 million people under King Leopold II of Belgium. The death toll of victims of British imperialism in India alone during the 20th C is estimated between 60-165 million. We could add the 20,000 victims of American imperialism in the Philippines 1899-1902. Indeed, inasmuch as Theodore Herzl intentionally designed Modern Zionism as a European settler colonialist project, the current death toll of Palestinians under Israel’s apartheid regime should arguably be included.
(g) On antisemitism, Kim writes, “In the 19th century, Jesus was made even whiter with the rise of antisemitism” (103). I’m not entirely sure what the reference to the 19th century refers to, but we can surely locate far older “rises” of antisemitism. Anti-Jewish sentiment was ubiquitous in Medieval Christianity. Indeed, race was arguably invented out of Christian assumptions about Jews and Muslims, as the shift from Anti-Judaism (a claim about having the “wrong” religion) to antisemitism (a claim about having the “wrong” biology) begins in the colonial era. Some benchmarks here include the mass expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 (one week before Columbus set sail), Luther’s “On the Jews and their Lies” (1543), the early widespread colonial suggestion that the indigenous people of the Americas were the so-called “Lost Tribes of Israel,” or the invention of the term ‘Caucasian’ (popularized by Johann Blumenbach in the late 18th C) suggesting that the first humans were white on account of the belief Noah’s Ark landed in the Caucasus mountains. In light of this long history of antisemitism and supersessionism, then, I wonder, do we thwart our own efforts toward inclusion by using Isaiah 53:2 as a description of Jesus (99)? Or by using the term “Old Testament” (why not Hebrew Bible or Tanakh?)—especially on a page when a Jewish scholar is cited (139)?
(h) Kim writes, “by the 1940s, anthropologists decided to simplify all these different categorizations of people and announced that there are only three classifications: Caucasoid (White), Mongoloid (Asian), and Negroid (Black) … There were no longer any distinctions for Saxons, Celts, Southern Italians, or Eastern European Jews. … Since the 1940s, there have been only very minor modifications to classifications” (26). It is correct that a kind streamlining of whiteness occurred in the 1940s (and was further solidified in 1968 when the US immigration quota system was dissolved), but this account oversimplifies the reality on the ground. First, a racial taxonomy of only three classifications is arguably the first taxonomy of race, one based on biblical literalism of Noah’s three sons, Shem, Japheth, and Ham (this can be found explicitly in the 1702 works of Cotton Mather). Second, throughout the 18th-20th centuries, multiple racial taxonomies persisted in simultaneity, notably three (Hegel), four (Linnaeus, Kant) [as a child in Sunday School I sang, “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight”], or five races (Blumenbach, Morton). Whatever taxonomy used was usually employed in a fluid and arbitrary manner. As a result, Jews and Muslims (and Sikhs) were often technically “Caucasian” but treated as second class citizens – notably Muslims were barred from US citizenship until 1944. The 1930 US Census had 5 racial categories (Native American, Asian, Negro, Mexican, White). The 1940 & 1950 US Census had 4, removing “Mexican.” The 1960, census had 5 (adding Hawaiian). Since 1970, the US Census has included “Hispanic” as an “ethnicity” category, which has effectively functioned as a sixth racial category, all while the number of people checking multiple racial boxes has increased. In 2030, a category for the MENA region will be added. And this is just in the U.S. In short, the social construction of race, and its taxonomies, continues to evolve.
(i) Kim claims the creation of “white” and “black” as racial terms begins with the slave laws in the Caribbean in 1680 (23-24), and then concludes, “Before the late 1600s, Europeans did not use the term Black to reference any group of people” (24). While these slave laws are integral, we can push the timeline further back, which helps to explain the evolution of the concept of race, especially if we play closer attention to Spanish and Portuguese colonialism. In 1630, in the Virginia colonies a European Christian man, Hugh Davis, is punished for “defiling his body in lying with a negro,” revealing what may be the first anti-miscegenation law and a legal distinction between Christian Europeans and Black slaves. Throughout the Virginia colonial era, then, “Christian” and “white” were used interchangeably, whereas “negros” were presumed to be “heathen” and “slaves.” Over a century before in 1518, based on the erroneous advice of Bartolome de las Casas (who ironically was a champion of indigenous human rights) who reasoned that the dying Taino natives could be replaced by imported Black slaves who were not susceptible to disease, Emperor Charles V initiated a large-scale transatlantic slave trade by permitting “four thousand negro slaves … direct from the isles of Guinea” to be sent to the Americas. Columbus described himself as white in one of his later voyages. And in 1450, Prince Henry’s biographer de Zurara, in his The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, spoke of Guinea as “the land of the Negroes” (sometimes conflated with the “Moors” or “Saracens”) over a dozen times and speaks of the people Henry enslaved as “less white like mulattoes; others again were as black as Ethiops.” It is arguably this text that ushers in the long gestational period that will result in the concept of race (see Willie James Jennings). Furthermore, race arguably develops out of a belief of “hereditary heathenism” (see Rebecca Goetz), held by both Spanish Catholics and British Anglicans, believing that European parents produced Christian offspring, and Black and Indigenous people produced heathens. This begins with the proto-racist language of “purity of blood” [limpieza de sangre] whereby Jews (Marranos) and Muslims (Moriscos) who converted to Christianity, were under constant surveillance by the Spanish Inquisition under the assumption that they had not fully converted (see Grosfoguel). This was first transferred to the new world by Columbus who, as Nelson Maldonaldo-Torres points out, claims the Taino people are a “people without religion,” hence suggesting they don’t even reach the status of Jews and Muslims and had no souls. Then, as conquistadores had children with the indigenous people of the Americas, the Spanish term used for one’s questionable religious lineage was raza (race). In other words, a child born of a Christian with a Muslim, Jewish, or “heathen” parent was deemed not fully Christian (see Joshi, for example). This is important for many reasons, but notably because race always had religious connotations and the separation between whiteness and Christianity was never fully severed. “White” and “Christian” continued to be used as synonyms even in Supreme Court cases on citizenship well into the 20th century, and in the social imaginary, they continue to be used interchangeably (notice how support for Christian Nationalism almost always converges with support for white supremacist talking points).
In conclusion, When God Became White is an excellent introduction to the complicated history of race and the profound impact it has had on not only Christian theology, but the entire global community. I hope it is given a wide reading and inspires readers to go further into not merely understanding the legacy of whiteness but of actively decolonizing their faith. - Dr. Brock Bahler
March 23, 2025
Did you grow up with a white flannel-graph Jesus like I did? Did you picture God to be an old white man? How we envision God matters, and in this book, Kim explains the history behind our current picture of a white male god. She unflinchingly unpacks the harm and damage this picture of a white male god has done, weaving in parts of her own story. I particularly loved the biblical imagery of God she offers instead.
This may be a challenging or uncomfortable read, especially in our polarized culture, but it is well worth the read!
This may be a challenging or uncomfortable read, especially in our polarized culture, but it is well worth the read!
November 30, 2024
Ohhh boy.
I really wanted to like this book. I think the concept is wonderful, but unfortunately I think that writing was okay and biased.
Let me start by saying, authors are allowed to be biased, BUT not when the bias seems to hide evidence. Example: when presenting evidence (from the Bible) that God is male, Kim consistently tried to disprove it or undermine the impact. But, when Kim presented evidence that God is female, the argument was wonderfully written, clear, and all-encompassing.
Secondly, the book was all over. Kim would bring in stories from their childhood, that were of little relevance, and harmed the overall narrative. Kim would swing back and forth between arguing the maleness and whiteness of God. Again, both of these points are fair (I grew up with a non-gendered God 😂), but the way the book was written made it hard to follow the argument and invalidated Kims point.
Finally, Kim would jump to conclusions left and write, repeating themselves over and over again, but the evidence wasn’t supportive. Example (from chapter 8, page 129): “women stay in the kitchen and cook long hours while men sit in meetings and make decisions and are waited on hand and foot. This form of sexism and patriarchy is legitimized and reinforced by a white male God who ordered the universe and also the church under the patriarchy.” Like what?? Both points can be valid but they do not relate.
TLDR: great idea for a book, but the authors own biases left much to be desired
I really wanted to like this book. I think the concept is wonderful, but unfortunately I think that writing was okay and biased.
Let me start by saying, authors are allowed to be biased, BUT not when the bias seems to hide evidence. Example: when presenting evidence (from the Bible) that God is male, Kim consistently tried to disprove it or undermine the impact. But, when Kim presented evidence that God is female, the argument was wonderfully written, clear, and all-encompassing.
Secondly, the book was all over. Kim would bring in stories from their childhood, that were of little relevance, and harmed the overall narrative. Kim would swing back and forth between arguing the maleness and whiteness of God. Again, both of these points are fair (I grew up with a non-gendered God 😂), but the way the book was written made it hard to follow the argument and invalidated Kims point.
Finally, Kim would jump to conclusions left and write, repeating themselves over and over again, but the evidence wasn’t supportive. Example (from chapter 8, page 129): “women stay in the kitchen and cook long hours while men sit in meetings and make decisions and are waited on hand and foot. This form of sexism and patriarchy is legitimized and reinforced by a white male God who ordered the universe and also the church under the patriarchy.” Like what?? Both points can be valid but they do not relate.
TLDR: great idea for a book, but the authors own biases left much to be desired
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 26, 2024
Summary: A mix of history, memoir, and theology to discuss the problem of God being portrayed as White and how this has communicated Whiteness (an ideology of racial hierarchy).
I have been looking forward to reading When God Became White since I heard it announced. I have only read her Intersectional Theology, but I own three of her books and I hope to read at least two of them this year. (Invisible, The Homebrew Christianity Guide to the Holy Spirit, Healing Our Broken Humanity). There are several reasons why I was looking forward to When God Became White. First, I wanted to explore the concept of Whiteness from a more theological perspective. Emerson and Bracey’s Religion of Whiteness explores it from a Sociology of Religion perspective, and I am familiar with its historical development from authors like Ibrahm Kendi and philosophical development of whiteness from authors like George Yancy. There are others working on theological development of the concept of Whiteness, but I expected (and found) that Grace Ji-Sun Kim broke out of the Black/White paradigm of discussing Whiteness and I knew from listening to a number of interviews and her writing that she would bring a gender critique as well.
The strength of When God Became White is its exploration of her own story and the way the Asian experience more broadly. The discussion of Whiteness is often limited to the White/Black binary. Throughout the book she discusses Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ thats her mother kept in an honored place in their home above the couch (Color of Christ by Harvey and Blum has a lengthy discussion of the history and impact of Sallman’s painting.)
Part of what Grace Ji-Sun Kim is grappling with is the ways that her Korean cultural bias toward obedience impacted the ways her biases about her faith in ways that she was unable to explore more deeply until well into her adult years. The memoir aspects of the book matters because she is recounting the ways the presentation of Jesus and God the Father as both male and white negatively impacted her faith There will be people who want to argue with her experience, but her experience isn’t unique, there are many who have a similar impact.
Central to the concept of the book is the idea of race and Whiteness.
People who have not explored the development of the concept of race often do not realize that the notion of race was developed slowly along with the reality of colonization.
It is not just that the concept of race is relatively new in world history, race as a concept was developed alongside Whiteness. Whiteness is an ideological concept not just that racial categories exist, but that there is internal to the concept of race a hierarchy of people within those racial categories. “White people are viewed as the norm, and everyone else is one or more steps away from the normative in society.” (p26)
The development of the concept of Whiteness had a historical context, the development of colonialism and capitalism.
From this basic exploration of the concept and development of Whiteness, she lays out the central problem, “Decolonization is a spiritual matter just as it is a physical, mental, social, and political one. Hence, we need to decolonize Christianity from its whiteness if anything is to change.” (p60) The next several chapters explore how Whiteness has impacted how we think of the mission of Christianity and the practice of Christianity. The reality that so many Christians (White and non-White) have absorbed the concept of Whiteness in regard to Christianity means that harm to both White and non-White people is pervasive because so many cannot separate Christianity from Whiteness.
There are places I would quibble and I think there are also places where she shifts the concept of Whiteness to include all hierarchy or suggests that Whiteness was present long prior to the 15th-17th century. In some sense I can agree to this because Whiteness is a tool of hierarchy, and not the entirety of hierarchy. In all cases, ontological hierarchy is contrary to Christianity, even if some believe it is central to Christianity. This impacts not just how we experience Christianity, but even things like basic translation methods.
Toward the end of the book Grace Ji-Sun Kim explores Korean concepts of Chi, Han, Jeong, and other ideas can help extricate Whiteness from Christianity.
The last chapter in particular where she explores a way forward, particularly in regard to language and the liturgy. I am going to put a long quote, stitched together to give a sense of the way forward.
While I have a few minor quibbles, I think that When God Became White is a helpful theological approach to bringing understanding and healing into Christianity.
I have about 50 public highlights and notes that you can view on Goodreads.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/when-god-became-white/
I have been looking forward to reading When God Became White since I heard it announced. I have only read her Intersectional Theology, but I own three of her books and I hope to read at least two of them this year. (Invisible, The Homebrew Christianity Guide to the Holy Spirit, Healing Our Broken Humanity). There are several reasons why I was looking forward to When God Became White. First, I wanted to explore the concept of Whiteness from a more theological perspective. Emerson and Bracey’s Religion of Whiteness explores it from a Sociology of Religion perspective, and I am familiar with its historical development from authors like Ibrahm Kendi and philosophical development of whiteness from authors like George Yancy. There are others working on theological development of the concept of Whiteness, but I expected (and found) that Grace Ji-Sun Kim broke out of the Black/White paradigm of discussing Whiteness and I knew from listening to a number of interviews and her writing that she would bring a gender critique as well.
The strength of When God Became White is its exploration of her own story and the way the Asian experience more broadly. The discussion of Whiteness is often limited to the White/Black binary. Throughout the book she discusses Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ thats her mother kept in an honored place in their home above the couch (Color of Christ by Harvey and Blum has a lengthy discussion of the history and impact of Sallman’s painting.)
“The white Jesus on our wall was a depiction to me of how God looked as well. I pictured God as an old white man, just as everyone else did. There was no reason to question that notion. It was everywhere: in paintings, stained-glass windows, and storybooks. I never questioned it. I didn’t even think twice about whether Jesus was white or not. It was not in my consciousness to question anything that was taught by my mother or the church. Both pushed a white Jesus, and I just took it as the truth.”
“What I didn’t know then that I know now is how influential that picture was on my own theology and faith development. That image of a white Jesus was imprinted on my brain and body so that I could not even question whether Jesus actually looked like that. It was a given, as it was the most famous picture of Jesus. I went to visit family in Korea twice during my youth, and even my family members there had the same picture of the white Jesus in their homes. The Korean churches also had the same picture of white Jesus. Furthermore, when I traveled to India during my seminary years, all the churches that I visited had this same white Jesus picture. This confirmed to me that this must be the real Jesus, as it is universally understood to be the image of Christ. I just took it for granted that Sallman’s Head of Christ must be the real thing.” (P8)
Part of what Grace Ji-Sun Kim is grappling with is the ways that her Korean cultural bias toward obedience impacted the ways her biases about her faith in ways that she was unable to explore more deeply until well into her adult years. The memoir aspects of the book matters because she is recounting the ways the presentation of Jesus and God the Father as both male and white negatively impacted her faith There will be people who want to argue with her experience, but her experience isn’t unique, there are many who have a similar impact.
“As the center of Christianity, God being white implies that whites are the center of humanity and that God’s concerns and God’s desires center on white people at the expense of people of color. This has damaging consequences for people of color who experience grave injustices due to racism, discrimination, and xenophobia.” P13
Central to the concept of the book is the idea of race and Whiteness.
“The notion of race is based not on biology but on social meanings that are created and re-created due to changing contexts. The concept of race was created mainly by Europeans in the sixteenth century and is based on socially constructed beliefs about the inherent superiority and inferiority of groups of people.” p19
People who have not explored the development of the concept of race often do not realize that the notion of race was developed slowly along with the reality of colonization.
“Before the seventeenth century, Europeans did not think of themselves as belonging to a white race. Instead, they viewed themselves as belonging to different parts or regions in Europe and had a very different perception of race and racialization. But once this concept of white race was shown to be advantageous to Europeans and enslavers, it began to reshape and redefine their world….Before the late 1600s, Europeans did not use the term Black to reference any group of people. However, with the racialization of enslavement around 1680, many looked for a term to differentiate between the enslaved and the enslavers. Thus the terms white and Black were used to represent and differentiate racial categories.” (p20-24)
It is not just that the concept of race is relatively new in world history, race as a concept was developed alongside Whiteness. Whiteness is an ideological concept not just that racial categories exist, but that there is internal to the concept of race a hierarchy of people within those racial categories. “White people are viewed as the norm, and everyone else is one or more steps away from the normative in society.” (p26)
The development of the concept of Whiteness had a historical context, the development of colonialism and capitalism.
“White Christianity and missiology are intertwined with colonialism, and it has had devastating effects all over the world. Whiteness is the root of much colonialism around the globe, and there are four deadly weapons employed in white Christian conquests: genocide, enslavement, removal, and rape. These weapons divide people, separating them from land, people, story, culture, and identity. These weapons serve colonizers in gaining more land and low-cost or no-cost labor to grow wealth.” (p48)
From this basic exploration of the concept and development of Whiteness, she lays out the central problem, “Decolonization is a spiritual matter just as it is a physical, mental, social, and political one. Hence, we need to decolonize Christianity from its whiteness if anything is to change.” (p60) The next several chapters explore how Whiteness has impacted how we think of the mission of Christianity and the practice of Christianity. The reality that so many Christians (White and non-White) have absorbed the concept of Whiteness in regard to Christianity means that harm to both White and non-White people is pervasive because so many cannot separate Christianity from Whiteness.
There are places I would quibble and I think there are also places where she shifts the concept of Whiteness to include all hierarchy or suggests that Whiteness was present long prior to the 15th-17th century. In some sense I can agree to this because Whiteness is a tool of hierarchy, and not the entirety of hierarchy. In all cases, ontological hierarchy is contrary to Christianity, even if some believe it is central to Christianity. This impacts not just how we experience Christianity, but even things like basic translation methods.
Toward the end of the book Grace Ji-Sun Kim explores Korean concepts of Chi, Han, Jeong, and other ideas can help extricate Whiteness from Christianity.
The last chapter in particular where she explores a way forward, particularly in regard to language and the liturgy. I am going to put a long quote, stitched together to give a sense of the way forward.
For most of the church’s history, our prayers, hymns, and liturgies have been written by white European men. The language used in our church worship imagines, describes, and reinforces a white male God. From the beginning to the end of worship, we praise, read about, and pray to a white male God…The white male language used throughout our religious practice reinforces our perceptions and beliefs that white and male is superior to nonwhite and female. We memorize prayers, hymns, and creeds during childhood that become embedded in our thoughts, hearts, and behaviors that end up carried into adulthood. These white male liturgies have become part of our being and greatly influence our perception of God…We know that God is neither white nor male. That was merely a notion of God constructed by white male theologians. God is Spirit and, as a spiritual entity, cannot have gender or race, and this should be reflected in the liturgical languages that we use within the church. It is paramount that we rethink and re-create our liturgical language about God..in Korea, the concept of ou-ri, translated as “our,” is far more important than the individual. “Ourness” is a concept that has built up the Korean community with an emphasis on being connected to each other to protect and help others. Ou-ri in the Korean language is often used as a personal pronoun. So instead of saying “my family,” in Korea, we say “ou-ri family.” Instead of saying “my spouse,” we say “ou-ri spouse,” even though you are married to only one spouse. This different outlook and emphasis in life challenges us to become different individuals within the community, to prioritize the needs of the community. We need to adopt an ou-ri-ness in our theological journey so we can fight racism and overcome the other divisive beliefs we face as people of God. All people are invited to the banquet of God where we can dance, rejoice, and be merry in the presence of God. It is the ou-ri-ness of God’s love that we should be embodying as Christians.” (p168)
While I have a few minor quibbles, I think that When God Became White is a helpful theological approach to bringing understanding and healing into Christianity.
I have about 50 public highlights and notes that you can view on Goodreads.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/when-god-became-white/
September 13, 2025
Living in white spaces as a nonwhite person is exhausting.
From the early Christian beginnings under the Roman Empire to the conservative Christian right of today, a white male god has been at the center.
Before the late 1600’sEuropeans did not use the term Black to reference any group of people.
In the 1940’s anthropologists decided to simplify the different categorizations of people into 3 classifications: White, Asian and Black.
Irish, Italians, Jews and Greeks were classified as inferior and at times not even classified as white. It was not until the 1970’s that they were considered white.
In the United States colors are mentioned to determine differences. In Africa blacks are not referred to as black. In Asia people are not considered yellow.
White supremacy dismembers, separates and eliminates the memory and history of peoples of European descent.
The church was born and bred within a Greco Roman philosophy. White conquest and colonialism extended throughout the world.
The Doctrine of Discovery is a 15th-century concept rooted in papal decrees and international law that granted European powers the right to claim sovereignty over lands not inhabited by Christians, effectively dispossessing Indigenous peoples of their land and rights.
In the 1823 U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. McIntosh, Chief Justice John Marshall incorporated the doctrine into U.S. law, asserting that European nations held absolute title to New World lands
Under this legal framework, Indigenous peoples were considered to have only a right of occupancy, not full property rights or ownership, a principle that still affects Indigenous rights today.
From the early Christian beginnings under the Roman Empire to the conservative Christian right of today, a white male god has been at the center.
Before the late 1600’sEuropeans did not use the term Black to reference any group of people.
In the 1940’s anthropologists decided to simplify the different categorizations of people into 3 classifications: White, Asian and Black.
Irish, Italians, Jews and Greeks were classified as inferior and at times not even classified as white. It was not until the 1970’s that they were considered white.
In the United States colors are mentioned to determine differences. In Africa blacks are not referred to as black. In Asia people are not considered yellow.
White supremacy dismembers, separates and eliminates the memory and history of peoples of European descent.
The church was born and bred within a Greco Roman philosophy. White conquest and colonialism extended throughout the world.
The Doctrine of Discovery is a 15th-century concept rooted in papal decrees and international law that granted European powers the right to claim sovereignty over lands not inhabited by Christians, effectively dispossessing Indigenous peoples of their land and rights.
In the 1823 U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. McIntosh, Chief Justice John Marshall incorporated the doctrine into U.S. law, asserting that European nations held absolute title to New World lands
Under this legal framework, Indigenous peoples were considered to have only a right of occupancy, not full property rights or ownership, a principle that still affects Indigenous rights today.
August 24, 2024
(Please note that this is a duplicate of my review submitted to Amazon.)
Being confronted by a narrative of the long, multi-generational chain of racism, patriarchy, and misogyny that has victimized many in the history of the Church is difficult enough. Add the personal experiences of the author and the many instances of othering she and her family have faced throughout their lives to this, however, and it takes the discomfort to a much deeper level. The Rev. Dr. Grace Ji-Sun Kim has woven together a powerful combination of memoir and theological review in this book, one that also includes steps that can be taken to make the Church more welcoming and inclusive. A warning to those who have experienced victimization, repression, and abuse at the hands of organized religion: this may be triggering. A warning as well to those who either think there have been no problems in the history of Christianity or refuse to consider how conquest and mission work have caused significant harm to people around the world: this will definitely be triggering. Dr. Kim has used her long career as a public theologian and teacher, woven it together with her own personal - and painful - experiences, and come up with a valuable addition to the dialogue on how to make the Church truly representative, welcoming, and inclusive. A must read for anyone who wants to learn more about where the Church has been and where it is and for those seeking a glimpse of the hope of where it can go.
Being confronted by a narrative of the long, multi-generational chain of racism, patriarchy, and misogyny that has victimized many in the history of the Church is difficult enough. Add the personal experiences of the author and the many instances of othering she and her family have faced throughout their lives to this, however, and it takes the discomfort to a much deeper level. The Rev. Dr. Grace Ji-Sun Kim has woven together a powerful combination of memoir and theological review in this book, one that also includes steps that can be taken to make the Church more welcoming and inclusive. A warning to those who have experienced victimization, repression, and abuse at the hands of organized religion: this may be triggering. A warning as well to those who either think there have been no problems in the history of Christianity or refuse to consider how conquest and mission work have caused significant harm to people around the world: this will definitely be triggering. Dr. Kim has used her long career as a public theologian and teacher, woven it together with her own personal - and painful - experiences, and come up with a valuable addition to the dialogue on how to make the Church truly representative, welcoming, and inclusive. A must read for anyone who wants to learn more about where the Church has been and where it is and for those seeking a glimpse of the hope of where it can go.
November 6, 2024
Amazon says:
Christianity is rooted in the ancient Near East among people of darker skin. But over time, European Christians cast Jesus in their own image, with art that imagined a fair-skinned Savior in the style of imperial rulers. Grace Ji-Sun Kim explores the historical origins and theological implications of how Jesus became white and God became a white male. The myth of the white male God has had a devastating effect as it enabled Christianity to have a profoundly colonialist posture across the globe. Kim examines the roots of the distortion, its harmful impact on the world, and shows what it looks like to recover the biblical reality of a nonwhite, nongendered God. Rediscovering God as Spirit leads us to a more just faither and a better church and world.
This book was excellent. I had picked this book up at a bookstore in Boston and decided I wanted to check it out. The author talks about the history of God and Jesus becoming white over the course of time and how that has affected not only her life but other people of color. She weaves personal memoir among theology and paints a picture of how we got here and where we go from here. She invisions a church that is inclusive and representative of all people and how we get there. I can think of a lot of people who should read this book. Glad I found this one.
Stars: 4.5
Christianity is rooted in the ancient Near East among people of darker skin. But over time, European Christians cast Jesus in their own image, with art that imagined a fair-skinned Savior in the style of imperial rulers. Grace Ji-Sun Kim explores the historical origins and theological implications of how Jesus became white and God became a white male. The myth of the white male God has had a devastating effect as it enabled Christianity to have a profoundly colonialist posture across the globe. Kim examines the roots of the distortion, its harmful impact on the world, and shows what it looks like to recover the biblical reality of a nonwhite, nongendered God. Rediscovering God as Spirit leads us to a more just faither and a better church and world.
This book was excellent. I had picked this book up at a bookstore in Boston and decided I wanted to check it out. The author talks about the history of God and Jesus becoming white over the course of time and how that has affected not only her life but other people of color. She weaves personal memoir among theology and paints a picture of how we got here and where we go from here. She invisions a church that is inclusive and representative of all people and how we get there. I can think of a lot of people who should read this book. Glad I found this one.
Stars: 4.5
June 8, 2025
Overall this is an awesome and helpful book, and I would give 5 stars were it not for her use (as an example of white-centric syncretism) of the long debunked - even by responsible atheists - assertion that Easter is derivative of Eostre:
A legitimate example of white-centric syncretism would, of course, vitiate this criticism.
A representative example of the debunking of such nonsense: https://historyforatheists.com/2017/0...
“Additionally, when we come together to celebrate Easter, we must not ignore its pagan roots and practices. The inclusion of Easter eggs is a pagan practice that has become a staple image during Easter. Easter started out as a celebration of the spring equinox, a time when all of nature awakens from winter and the cycle of renewal begins anew. Anglo-Saxon pagans celebrated this rebirth by invoking Eostre or Ostara, the goddess of spring and fertility. Pagans decorated eggs to celebrate rebirth and gift them to family and friends. This does not have anything to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the tomb. But it all eventually became part of white Christian Easter celebrations, which is an example of syncretism. When white Christians engage in syncretism it is never understood to be syncretism.”
A legitimate example of white-centric syncretism would, of course, vitiate this criticism.
A representative example of the debunking of such nonsense: https://historyforatheists.com/2017/0...
August 1, 2024
Through the centuries, every culture and race that has created artwork of Jesus has rendered Him in such a way as to resemble their culture and race; they’ve done the same thing with God. There is nothing inherently wrong with doing so; Jesus identifies with us, and we identify with Him. I grew up in the South as a child and attended a church where a copy of Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ” was hanging in the foyer. While I walked past it, every time I entered or exited the building, never did I believe for a minute that Jesus was white or that God was a white male. I knew this because my minister preached the Bible in its historical context and pictured God in His theological context. This is the key to understanding God, not the dismantling of some pre-supposed “whiteness” that has been somehow superimposed on the Divine.
Race, at its core, is a social construct, not a Biblical one. God created man, man created race, and has been using it to divide themselves ever since. When you define yourself by race, race will be the lens through which you view everything, and everything will be about race, even our view and understanding of God. To secure an objective understanding of God, what we know of Him must come from the only authoritative source available to us: Scripture! Any Christian who has even a rudimentary knowledge of Scripture and its historical context knows that Jesus isn’t white, and that God isn’t a white male. Though clearly well-intentioned, this book is a hot mess; its content is scattered to the point of making it difficult to follow, and worse, its theology is sadly tainted by the pernicious poison of critical theory.
I’ll admit that when I first saw the advertisement for this book, my initial reaction, based on the title, was that it was just another in a long line of recent publications that encourage the reader to engage with Scripture through the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT). This abhorrent Marxist concept opposes the teaching of Scripture, particularly the teachings of Jesus. My initial thought was indeed correct... CRT has divided our world into two camps—the “victim” and the “victimizer.” CRT Interprets truth through the lens of man-made labels; our own eyes are the final arbiter of right and wrong (Judges 21:25). Biblical Christianity interprets truth through the lens of the Word of God – God has spoken, and His Truth is the only Truth (Hebrews 1:1).
I'll end with one final thought...
The late great Dr. E.V. Hill was once asked if he thought Jesus was Caucasian as depicted in paintings. This was his reply:
“I don't know anything about a white Jesus... I know about Christ, a Savior named Jesus. I don't know what color He is. He was born in the brown Middle East; He fled to black Africa; and He was in heaven before the gospel got to white Europe. So, I don't know what color He is... I do know one thing: if you bow at the altar with color on your mind, you'll get up with color on your mind. Go back again - and keep going back until you no longer look at His color, but at His greatness and His power - His power to save!"
Race, at its core, is a social construct, not a Biblical one. God created man, man created race, and has been using it to divide themselves ever since. When you define yourself by race, race will be the lens through which you view everything, and everything will be about race, even our view and understanding of God. To secure an objective understanding of God, what we know of Him must come from the only authoritative source available to us: Scripture! Any Christian who has even a rudimentary knowledge of Scripture and its historical context knows that Jesus isn’t white, and that God isn’t a white male. Though clearly well-intentioned, this book is a hot mess; its content is scattered to the point of making it difficult to follow, and worse, its theology is sadly tainted by the pernicious poison of critical theory.
I’ll admit that when I first saw the advertisement for this book, my initial reaction, based on the title, was that it was just another in a long line of recent publications that encourage the reader to engage with Scripture through the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT). This abhorrent Marxist concept opposes the teaching of Scripture, particularly the teachings of Jesus. My initial thought was indeed correct... CRT has divided our world into two camps—the “victim” and the “victimizer.” CRT Interprets truth through the lens of man-made labels; our own eyes are the final arbiter of right and wrong (Judges 21:25). Biblical Christianity interprets truth through the lens of the Word of God – God has spoken, and His Truth is the only Truth (Hebrews 1:1).
I'll end with one final thought...
The late great Dr. E.V. Hill was once asked if he thought Jesus was Caucasian as depicted in paintings. This was his reply:
“I don't know anything about a white Jesus... I know about Christ, a Savior named Jesus. I don't know what color He is. He was born in the brown Middle East; He fled to black Africa; and He was in heaven before the gospel got to white Europe. So, I don't know what color He is... I do know one thing: if you bow at the altar with color on your mind, you'll get up with color on your mind. Go back again - and keep going back until you no longer look at His color, but at His greatness and His power - His power to save!"
June 21, 2024
This is a rich book of theology and storytelling that does a lot of work while staying interesting, accessible, and brief. Kim traces the history of how Christianity - its vision of God, its portrayal of Jesus, its culture and theology and missiology - became bound up with a preference for whiteness. She acknowledges the great harm this did to her own spiritual and psychological development as a Korean Christian in Canada and the United States. And she provides direction and resources for a healthier, liberating faith in God who is neither white nor male but loving, omnipresent, life-giving Spirit and redeemer to all people and even to the faith that bears the name of Christ.
January 6, 2025
I really appreciate Kim's unique perspective and background, especially within a discipline that so often is dominated by very status quo voices. I think I would have perhaps appreciated it more if Kim had gone into more specifics in church history between Early Christianity and the co-opting of Christianity by the Roman Empire power structure, but then again that may well be a bit beyond the scope that Kim was aiming for.
It is a little repetitive in places, but in this day in age where a lot of people don't close read the texts they claim to be central to their faith/belief system(s), some repetition is probably a necessary evil.
It is a little repetitive in places, but in this day in age where a lot of people don't close read the texts they claim to be central to their faith/belief system(s), some repetition is probably a necessary evil.
February 1, 2025
Powerful and informative read! Grace Ji-Sun Kim's understanding of the damage whiteness and racism was, and is doing to the Christian faith is written from an authentic and realistic perspective. This text should be included in congregational education ministries, seminaries, book studies, and spiritual formation. "The new possibilites and new hopes for a better church, community, and world are within our grasp if wee are willing to reframe the God of our past and envision the kingdom of God where we finally treat everyone as created in the image of God and as worthy, beautiful, and loved."- page 174.
October 31, 2025
I love the theme of the book. I walked away with a better understanding of how Christianity has been used as a tool form racism, misogyny, and overall oppression.
I wish the author would have integrated more of her background and personal narrative to keep me reading, however. In the latter chapters, there is a heavy assumption that the reader is Christian. I am an atheist (who my parents desperately tried but ultimately failed to indoctrinate into Christianity). So I wasn’t motivated to read about how to better worship. Or create church community, etc. Some more personal stories would have made these parts more relatable for those of us who are not Christian.
I wish the author would have integrated more of her background and personal narrative to keep me reading, however. In the latter chapters, there is a heavy assumption that the reader is Christian. I am an atheist (who my parents desperately tried but ultimately failed to indoctrinate into Christianity). So I wasn’t motivated to read about how to better worship. Or create church community, etc. Some more personal stories would have made these parts more relatable for those of us who are not Christian.
February 1, 2025
There were certain parts of this book that were difficult to read because I had not heard or read about the treatment of Korean people during the Korean War. But as with all atrocities, it may be difficult to read, but it is important to remember and learn from the mistakes of the past. The author gives us a clear path moving forward of how to truly live as Jesus did, and how to embrace a non-white, non-gendered God in all cultures. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone, but especially evangelical Christians.
October 11, 2025
Important concept but poorly executed. A lot of very big statements that aren’t backed up. A lot of anger, which, though justified, doesn’t help an academic work. There is also no balance. While racism doesn’t need balance - we should say it’s just wrong, things like missionaries do need balance - they were not all evil colonialists with ill intent. Overall, I wish the topic was handled much better
September 16, 2024
Hard for me to rate, because while I agree with her on moving away from a white, patriarchal image of God (I mean really, any gender and race we assign God is for our own minds and ways of thinking,) I really didn't care for the writing style of this book and felt like it was too repetitive within each chapter. Better editing would have helped.
November 10, 2024
This book is a good introduction to Christian theology and whiteness for those new to the subject. As someone already familiar with the topic, I most appreciated Kim's autobiographical reflections. I think Kim could have said more about the relationship of whiteness to antisemitism.
September 3, 2025
This was a pretty good read, but I would not recommend this to anyone who hasn’t questioned “White God” theology. I would recommend starting with The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby, or Star Spangled Jesus by April Ajoy.
July 15, 2024
An excellent book.
September 7, 2024
A difficult book for me to read. It could make an interesting group study at a church small group.
October 21, 2024
While I don't agree with everything in this book, the majority of this book is so. good. I highly recommend you read this. It really opens your eyes and gives you a new perspective.
December 23, 2024
Excellent!! I highly recommend it.
February 14, 2025
I wish I liked this book more. The content was great but I just didn’t like her writing/I didn’t enjoy it.
June 11, 2025
I am very sympathetic to the thesis. However, I wish some parts dove deeper into the history, and some of the assertions the intended audience may find controversial could have used more evidence.
June 28, 2025
I agree with the author's thesis--that many American and European Christianities imagine God as a white male, thus rendering much of their theology both racist and misogynistic--but the book is often repetitive and occasionally leans a bit light on substantive argument. When God Became White also relies quite heavily on the idea that, beneath later accretions, there's a "pure" Christianity whose only aims were to promote the author's understanding of liberation. Although it can certainly be said that much early Christian theology promoted a kind of equality before God, it's unlikely that this "equality" is anything modern, progressive people would describe as unilaterally positive given that much early Christian theology also viewed God as a male colonizer, whose in-breaking kingdom would upset the status quo of the world through divine violence.
Christianity must be redeemed, not merely rediscovered.
Christianity must be redeemed, not merely rediscovered.
December 9, 2025
This was an interesting read and there were some points that I did agree with overall but the author was way too negative against Christianity: there was some good from Christianity and she didn't even speak on those topics. She comes off as angry when I listened to this as an audiobook. As a note: I do not believe that God is a white individual with blonde hair and blue eyes.
The audiobook was read by Hannah Choi.
The audiobook was read by Hannah Choi.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 15, 2024
There were things I liked about this book. But overall I found it very tedious and negative. I appreciate being reminded that "white" is not a term that actually applies to a physical subset of humans, but a social construct whose meaning has changed over time. But it also seemed distinctly biased. Biased to a particular Christian perspective. For example, for evidence of what Jesus actually looked like, it sites Isaiah, a biblical passage written before Jesus time. A prophecy, rather than history. Also biased in other ways looking at Christian history. I've no argument with her claim that some whites promoted the idea of a white Jesus and a white God for biased, selfish, manipulative reasons. But she allows no room for the possibility that some of those white European Christians of history were simply, with lack of knowledge to the contrary, depicting Jesus as they are, with no ignoble motives.
Most of the book was negative and critical. Finally, the end portion gives a path forward, and different way of seeing God and being Christian. It would have been better if these ideas were mixed in throughout the book.
Most of the book was negative and critical. Finally, the end portion gives a path forward, and different way of seeing God and being Christian. It would have been better if these ideas were mixed in throughout the book.
June 6, 2024
Wow. I appreciated this read at a time in life where I am exploring my spirit more and more. As an African American woman who spent her adolescence and teens in an evangelical white church, I struggled A LOT and this books puts a lot of what I have been feeling and known into the right words.
The concepts are a little bit repetitive, but I very much appreciate the sense of calm about God this book left me with, as opposed to the anxiety that has been caused throughout life.
Highly recommend this read, even if you don't buy into all the concepts! I learned a lot! I don't think I have ever added so many highlights to a book.
The concepts are a little bit repetitive, but I very much appreciate the sense of calm about God this book left me with, as opposed to the anxiety that has been caused throughout life.
Highly recommend this read, even if you don't buy into all the concepts! I learned a lot! I don't think I have ever added so many highlights to a book.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews