George Papavgeris told us:

It is no accident that the Christian "God" is traditionally shown as white and male, which is pathetic to say the least, when one considers that all major religions were founded by dark-skinned people!


A few comments on that:

The "and male" has nothing to do with the asserted dark-skinned founders, so probably shouldn't appear in the subject sentence. And if by "the Christian 'God'" you mean Jesus, he WAS male, was he not? How else would you portray him?

And "all major religions were founded by dark-skinned people"? Jesus and Paul were both semites, and nothing I've read in the Bible suggests that they were particularly dark-skinned. And those are the two Great Figures in the founding of Christianity. The same comments on skin color apply, as far as I can tell, to Mary Magdalen, Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, and the other apostles, along with Jesus's brother James, who was the leader of that section of early Christianity which saw Christianity's mission as properly intended and to be limited to Jews.

But the major growth of Christianity, largely created by Paul, occurred with little loss of time with the expansion to the Gentiles, who were very largely Hellenic populations. Yes, there's the Copts. The Coptic church is one of the oldest Christian movements, but they are the few remnants of the original, "old" Egyptian population, not the Arab and other later "invaders" of Egypt, mainly dark-skinned. I don't know for sure, but I don't believe the Copts are/were particularly dark skinned.

Dave Oesterreich