Christian figures and symbols have increasingly become the subject of debate as protesters across the country demand a reckoning on racial justice, pulling down statues and criticizing controversial figures along the way.
Christianity, like nearly every long-standing institution in the United States, has a complicated history with racism, prompting several leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement to call for its symbols to be adjusted or removed. In some cities, protesters have taken matters into their own hands, pulling down statues or taking over churches.
Protesters on Monday occupied the exterior of St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House, refashioning it as the “Black House Autonomous Zone,” a reference to the police-free zone in Seattle, Washington. The church’s exterior was vandalized, the second time the building has been defaced since protesters burned its basement in early June. Several protesters told the Washington Examiner that the zone was their way of scoring restitution for slave owners who were Episcopalian.
The BHAZ was a short-lived phenomenon: Police cleared it out early Tuesday morning after President Trump tweeted that there will “never” be an autonomous zone in the city.
In other cities, the damage done to public Christian fixtures was more permanent. Protesters in California this weekend pulled down and defaced statues of Junipero Serra, a Spanish priest whom Pope Francis canonized as a Catholic saint in 2015. Serra has long been a figure of controversy in the state, with his detractors calling him a colonizer and his defenders saying that he was one of the main people who combated the cruelties of Spanish colonizers.
After a statue of Serra was knocked down in San Francisco, Catholic Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone issued a statement defending the priest and saying that the protests, which he believes began as sincere calls for racial justice after the death of George Floyd, have been “hijacked by some into a movement of violence, looting, and vandalism.”
“The memorialization of historic figures merits an honest and fair discussion as to how and to whom such honor should be given,” Cordileone said. “But here, there was no such rational discussion; it was mob rule, a troubling phenomenon that seems to be repeating itself throughout the country.”
The Spanish Embassy also defended Serra in a tweet thread, asking that “our rich shared history be protected, always with the utmost respect for the debates currently taking place.”
The toppling of the Serra statues provoked many others within Christian communities to predict that protesters will continue to attack Christian symbols.
“Statues of Jesus are next,” American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp tweeted Sunday. “It won’t end. Pray for the USA.”
Shaun King, a civil rights activist and prominent figure in the Black Lives Matter movement, on Monday tweeted that taking down statues of Jesus would be acceptable so long as they are statues that depict Jesus as white.
“Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down,” he tweeted. “They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been.”
King’s tweet went viral, provoking a daylong discussion over whether statues depicting Jesus as white should be removed from public areas.
But at the same time, as many commentators discuss the merits of removing religious statuary, religious ministers who express unpopular positions on race and religion have been silenced.
The Archdiocese of Boston last week asked for the resignation of Daniel Moloney, a priest who had served as chaplain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2015. Moloney sent an email to students in which he wrote that Floyd had “not lived a virtuous life” and that it was not clear that his death in police custody was racially motivated.
Moloney added, however, that Christians should take a moment to treat other people with “charity,” arguing that charging others with racism will not bring about healing.
“People are unfriending each other and canceling each other,” he wrote. “I hate this. Racism is a sin.”
In a statement regarding his resignation, the Archdiocese said that Moloney’s opinions “do not reflect the positions of the Archdiocese.” Moloney was unavailable for comment.
Earlier in June, Charles Pope, a popular priest on Capitol Hill, became the subject of a cancel movement after he led a religious procession to the Emancipation Memorial. There, Pope read President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and prayed for racial healing.
The event was documented by the Catholic blogger Dawn Goldstein, who criticized Pope for not wearing a mask as well as for visiting the memorial, which has been the subject of controversy for its depiction of Lincoln freeing a slave.
After the criticism, Pope became the subject of online attacks and locked his Twitter account.
