Many people reject the idea of following Christ not because of what He truly taught or who He claimed to be, God, but because, in the 20th century, the saying “Christianity is a white man’s religion” resurfaced in the mainstream. So, is Christianity a white man’s religion? I would say no, but I would first like to address why so many people differ in their answers to this question. 

Here’s the rundown: We’ve been taught that European people bought Africans and shipped them over to America to enslave them, which is true. We are often taught that slave owners created a “Slave Bible”, specifically created and read to enslave Africans, to promote submissiveness and justify slavery. And this historical reality indeed took place. Furthermore, many have painted portraits of Jesus and His disciples, depicting them as white during the 18th and 19th centuries, and most still portray Jesus in this way. Given that these are indeed facts, this caused most to conclude that Christianity must be the white man’s religion, right? Absolutely wrong, and let’s break down why that is the case.

To begin with, “Select Parts of the Holy Bible, for the use of the Negro Slaves, in the British West-India Islands”, universally known as the Slave Bible, was created by an organization called the Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves. But this Slave Bible created was not a true, clear representation of Scripture and was indeed biased in order to promote slavery. The Slave Bible’s sole purpose was to misrepresent Scripture to mislead the enslaved people when read to them; it was a redaction of the Holy Bible, not a true depiction of Scripture. This redaction included roughly 90% of the Old Testament and 50% of the New Testament, leaving only 232 chapters out of the Bible’s 1,189. Now, if the Bible promoted slavery, then why would enslavers feel the need to redact more than half of Scripture?

This Slave Bible did not include the Exodus of Israel from Egypt (Exodus 3:7-8, 5:1, etc), the condemnation of Human trafficking that can be found in Exodus 21:6 and Deut 24:7, warnings against unpaid labor (Jer 22:13, Isaiah 58:6), or the radical ideal of equality (Galatians 3:28, Acts 17:26), which Scripture was one of the first of its kind to introduce in its time period. So this Slave Bible created does not equate to what Scripture actually teaches. Rather, it proves more so that if the true Bible were actually read and used correctly in its entirety, it would have been a tool to empower enslaved people over their enslavers. 

Then there is also misinformation about the ethnicity of Jesus, where many today believe Jesus is of a European race and Christianity supposedly originated in Europe. Both are false. Christianity originated in the Middle East, in modern-day Israel. In those times, and even today, people from that region have darker skin tones and are not considered white or European.

Open up your Bible, and you’ll also see where Moses, Paul, and Jesus were mistaken for being of an Egyptian race. In Exodus 2:19, it says concerning Moses, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds…”  In Acts 21:38, a commander speaking to Paul states, “Aren’t you the Egyptian who started a revolt some time ago…?” And in Matthew 21:38, referring to Jesus, it says, “After they were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Get up! Take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. For Herod is about to search for the child to kill him.” ¹⁴ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night, and escaped to Egypt. ¹⁵ He stayed there until Herod’s death, so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled: Out of Egypt I called my Son.”  This Scripture about Jesus is important because if Jesus was hiding in Egypt, the only way he could successfully hide there was if he also looked like an Egyptian.

The significance of these biblical figures being mistaken for Egyptians lies in the fact that ancient Egyptians were widely recognized as African. Because Moses in the Old Testament, along with Jesus and Paul in the New Testament, was identified as, or mistaken for, an Egyptian, this suggests that key figures in Scripture were African or had an African appearance, rather than a European one. 

So, back to the originating question, is Christianity a white man’s religion? Not at all. Why do people still say that then? It’s simple. Most are ill-informed and don’t allow for Jesus to be the standard by which we should base Christianity. Christianity cannot be defined by the people who have misrepresented it, politicized it, or used it for their own purposes. Christ Himself must define it. Jesus was not European, nor was Christianity born in Europe. The Christian faith is founded on a Jewish Messiah born in the Middle East, mistaken for an African, who ministered among the people of His time and commissioned His followers to take the gospel to the nations. Before Christianity ever became associated with European empires, white churches, or Western culture, it was already a faith spreading throughout the Middle East and Africa.