Black Jesus Superstar

After keeping us on tenterhooks for almost two milennia, looking at the sky while awaiting his return, it turns out that Jesus, the Messiah, has deigned to come back, just as he had promised.

He walks among us, long-haired, wearing his old tunic and worn-out sandals. There’s only a slight difference from his previous appearance, a slight detail — now Jesus is black.

Relax, it’s not the eve of the Final Judgment; you don’t have to repent in a hurry. I’m simply talking about the new TV series by Aaron McGruder that premiered last Thursday (Aug. 7) at 11 p.m. EDT, on “Adult Swim,” a night-time bloc for adults on Cartoon Network.

McGruder is the creator of the comic strip “The Boondocks” and its later adaptation to a TV cartoon series.

The new series is titled “Black Jesus” and features the Jesus Christ I have just described, played by Gerald “Slink” Johnson, an imposing black man with a kindly face. In addition to preaching peace and love, the black Jesus lives in Compton, a Los Angeles slum, where he drinks alcohol, smokes marijuana and uses bad words.

Everything seems to indicate that we’re dealing with a madman who, the same way that Don Quixote lost himself in books about chivalry, has taken the Bible all too seriously.

This has not prevented a lot of people everywhere to light torches and ask for the producers’ heads, even before the series went on the air and after seeing a trailer that lasted little over one minute.

The first ones were the ultra-Puritanical Caucasians of the American Family Association, the same folks who were scared by “Shark Tale” — a DreamWorks film about a vegetarian shark — because, according to them, it promoted “the acceptance of homosexual rights among children.”

They also protested in November 2006 when Keith Ellison, the nation’s first Muslim Congressman, took the oath by placing his hand on the Koran, not the Bible.

This time, the AFA struck through its distaff side, the immaculate ladies of One Million Moms, who, of course, are fewer than a million. On their website, they issued a statement demanding that the series be withdrawn because, in addition to showing a wrong image of Jesus, it uses obscene language, depicts violence and uses the name of the Lord in vain.

“This is blasphemy!” they cried, inflamed. “This mockery is not only similar to ‘South Park’ and ‘Family Guy’ but also worse, because the whole program is based on lies about Christianity.”

Among the very healthy concerns shown by these ladies is the boycott they organized in 2012 against the JCPenney store chain because it hired as its spokesperson Ellen DeGeneres, who is openly homosexual. In other words, they are people with a lot of free time on their hands.

That’s not all. Several members of the black community have also asked that the series be canceled, paradoxically for reasons similar to those of the AFA.

Oresa Napper Williams, an activist in the black Christian community of Brooklyn, N.Y., is organizing a national campaign to boycott the series.

Meanwhile, the Rev. Paul Scott, founder of the Messianic Afrikan [sic] Nation, told the BBC that “the representation that ‘Black Jesus’ makes of Jesus Christ is a disgrace to the people who in recent decades have given their lives to promote the image of a black Messiah.”

Just so you’ll understand, the Messianic Afrikan Nation is a group that advocates the scientific, irrefutable and evident fact that Jesus (they call him Yeshua; Jesus was the name given by the white slave traders) was black, not as traditionally depicted by Western Christian iconography, i.e., blonde, with blue eyes.

Apparently, Jesus was born in Galilee, in Israel’s northern region. In other words, it is very unlikely that the carpenter’s son resembled Martin Luther King Jr.

Anyway, what bothers these Afro-Americans — more concerned with the size of Jesus’ nose and the length of his dreadlocks than his words — is that the show portrays a black Messiah as a resident of a ghetto, reinforcing, in their opinion, negative stereotypes. As if the Jesus they worship, the other one, never lived among the poor.

Anywhere else the series would be received as what it really is: a comedy to while away the time and, with a bit of luck, laugh a couple of times. But if in this country you mix religion, race, and a couple of jokes, you’ve activated the perfect bomb.

This is well known by Aaron McGruder, who previously has had problems with both white ultra-conservatives and the black community over his jokes on “The Boondocks” and some of his public statements. That’s odd, if you consider that McGruder, in addition to being black, has a diploma in Afro-American studies from the University of Maryland.

Needless to say, I find this post-modern Jesus Christ brilliant. I don’t care if he’s a madman or the true Messiah; after all, they’re not too far apart, the one from the other. We’ll have to watch more episodes to decide if the series is worth following.

So far, he has performed his first miracle. He didn’t turn water into wine but was even more practical: he saw to it that black and white fundamentalists, without previous intent, joined hands for the same cause. Until today, that hadn’t been accomplished even by God.