Overnight, we noted a certain Mr Sean King, aka “Talcum X” who has perhaps 1.1 million Twitter followers:
I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down.
They are a form of white supremacy.
Always have been.
In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went?
EGYPT!
Not Denmark.
Tear them down . . . .
Yes.
All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down.
They are a gross form white supremacy.
Created as tools of oppression.
Racist propaganda.They should all come down.
Of course, immediately, Egypt c. 7 – 4 BC was cosmopolitan, especially its capital of that time, Alexandria (which had a large Jewish quarter . . . Jews may have been 10% of the Roman Empire).
Similarly, here is a Roman statue of Cleopatra, mid C1 BC . . . about the time of her visit to Rome, last Queen of Egypt (by then a Roman client state):
No, Egypt was quite cosmopolitan. And indeed, a point made by objectors in Mr King’s Twitter thread was to post this, showing the racial diversity of Ancient Egypt. Though, of course, hair colour is subject to discolouration and the blue eyes claim is in some cases dubious. Mind you, I have cousins with very African features and sapphire blue eyes, given St Elizabeth, Jamaica’s notorious tri-continental racial mashup so blue eyes in some cases would not be implausible:
Similarly, another commenter posted various holy family portrayals, including:
Also:
Here is a very Medieval scene from the C14 Morgan Bible MS:
In that light, let us now ponder the only sculpture Michelangelo signed, his awesome Pieta, with a forever young Mary holding the body of her son across her lap as she mourns:
Then, there is Poland’s famous (and once defaced by Hussite raiders) Black Madonna, originally a Byzantine Icon:
The point is obvious, people often portrayed Jesus, the Holy Family and other Biblical figures in light of their own culture.
And duly, in our scientific, digitally besotted age, we have tried a digital reconstruction of Jesus as a typical C1 Palestinian Jew:
I suspect, it will not only be BA77 who will prefer this digital painting based on a shroud image:
And, here is a digital fade:
And of course, here is one of the Rose Windows of Notre Dame:
Why bother?
Because, our art and monuments reflect who we are and what we aspire to be. Just so, the besmirching, branding, defacing, deliberate destruction and replacement of great art and key historic monuments is a symbolic raping of a culture and the souls of its people, meant to scar the soul.
That’s why Mao sicced his Red Guards on Chinese treasures, even desecrating graves and bodies given honourable burial. It is why today’s culture form marxist heirs of said Red Guards target cultural achievements and monuments, smear them with one sided or outright slanderous graffiti and use that as an excuse to burn, deface, tear down.
For example, is this even near a responsible summary of the man who — warts and all — led Britain’s lonely stand for what he termed “Christian Civilisation” against Hitler’s triumphant Panzers, Stukas and Messerschmitts in that awful summer now eighty years distant, 1940?
This is rage-driven Civilisation replacement that they intend.
But those on the streets likely don’t understand the need for cultural buttresses to sustain a sound Constitutional Democracy, in their burning zeal to be rid of what they see as an evil civilisation with effectively no redeeming virtues.
So, let us remind of the good governance challenge and what triggering anarchic chaos is liable to trigger, a tumble into the vortex of tyranny:
Likewise, let us refresh ourselves on one of the crown jewels of our civilisational inheritance, our natural law heritage:
We can readily identify at least seven inescapable first duties of reason. Inescapable, as they are so antecedent to reasoning that even the objector implicitly appeals to them; i.e. they are self-evident. Duties, to truth, to right reason, to prudence, to sound conscience, to neighbour, so also to fairness and justice etc. Such built in law is not invented by parliaments or courts, nor can these principles and duties be abolished by such. (Cf. Cicero in De Legibus, c. 50 BC.) Indeed, it is on this framework that we can set out to soundly understand and duly balance rights, freedoms and duties; which is justice. The legitimate main task of government, then, is to uphold and defend the civil peace of justice through sound community order reflecting the built in, intelligible law of our nature. Where, as my right implies your duty a true right is a binding moral claim to be respected in life, liberty, honestly aquired property, innocent reputation etc. To so justly claim a right, one must therefore demonstrably be in the right. Thus, too, we may compose sound civil law informed by that built-in law of our responsibly, rationally free morally governed nature; from such, we may identify what is unsound or false thus to be reformed or replaced even though enacted under the colour and solemn ceremonies of law.
For, as Cicero reminded us, c 50 BC, in De Legibus: “Law. . . is the highest reason, implanted in nature, which prescribes those things which ought to be done, and forbids the contrary” and again, of how “the voice of conscience is a law, that moral prudence is a law, whose operation is to urge us to good actions, and restrain us from evil ones.”
That core heritage was endorsed by the Apostle Paul, even as he gives a form of the Golden Rule and explains in brief how conscience instructs and how love sums up law:
Rom 2: 14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them . . . .
Rom 13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. [ESV]
Themes like these would be built up and integrated into core thought, e.g. by The Angelic Doctor, St Thomas Aquinas:
So, when rage-driven radicals brand Christian art as intentionally oppressive racism tantamount to Nazism (which was neo-pagan heresy, strictly) and demand its despoliation, they destabilise more than they imagine.
It is time to correct such imbalance and blinding ill-advised rage lest we wreck what we cannot easily recover, our civilisation. Never mind, warts and all. END