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With Race in Mind, Christians Reconsider Language of Dark and Light at Advent

Maybe it was because she had a toddler at the time, but all of the images of darkness in Scripture read to Selnick like a children’s book — the kind of book she wants her two children to read.

“God’s Holy Darkness" by Sharei Green and Beckah Selnick. Courtesy image

“God’s Holy Darkness” by Sharei Green and Beckah Selnick. Courtesy image

When Selnick approached Green with the idea for “God’s Holy Darkness,” knowing it was a story she as a white woman couldn’t tell by herself, Green said she tried to think of what she would’ve needed to read when she was a young Black girl.

Even now as an adult, Green said, seeing God depicted with dark, flowing locks by the book’s illustrator, ELCA Program Director for African Descent Ministries Nikki Faison, moves her to tears. It makes her believe, she said, “I, too, am made in the image of God.”

“It’s one thing to do the work to believe it as an adult. It’s another thing to see it,” Green said.

Even with those positive associations with darkness, Faison said, there are other images and themes Christians can draw on during the season of Advent. It’s a time of waiting, a time of preparation, a celebration of God appearing in a human body.

“If we only choose to talk about darkness during Advent, we are lazy theologians,” she said.

Last year, Reyes-Chow abandoned the imagery altogether at the congregation he was pastoring, First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto. With everything happening in the world at the time, he didn’t want to perpetuate the idea that darkness was bad in any way, he said.

“Once you choose to see that dark and darkness and lightness are perceived in a certain way, I think you can’t go back,” he said.

This Advent, he’s taking a further step. A decade into urging his fellow Christians not to center whiteness in their observance of Advent, Reyes-Chow blogged earlier this week that he realized he was doing that very thing.

Literally.

When he pulled out his Advent wreath this year, he realized he had placed the traditional white candle at its center — “the LAST one, the BEST one, the MOST IMPORTANT ONE,” the one symbolizing Jesus, whose birth Christians celebrate at Christmas, he wrote.

Inspired by a conversation with the Rev. Carlton David Johnson, associate director for theology, formation and evangelism at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), who mentioned placing a black candle at the center of his Advent wreath, Reyes-Chow replaced his with one that is dark brown and urged others to consider what might happen if they did the same in their churches.

Some churchgoers may object that the Christ candle should be white when Scripture describes Jesus as the “light of the world,” he wrote. But it makes sense to him, he continued, when Jesus himself — who Christians believe was born thousands of years ago in what is now the West Bank — would have been dark-skinned.

“The thing is, the light is not generated by the color of the candle but from the light that that candle gives to the world,” Reyes-Chow wrote.

“Candles of all colors can be a light to the world, even black and brown ones.”

This article originally appeared here