Images of Jesus

As part of our cultural work, students led an initiative to explore how Jesus is represented around the school. There were many icons around the schools site, with the vast majority portraying Jesus as a white European.

These students undertook research into the history of religious imagery and found images that represent the Oaklands Community. They discovered how the historic depiction of Christ was used to uphold notions of white supremacy.   On a number of occasions prominent scholars and the Archbishop of Canterbury have called to reconsider Jesus’ portrayal as a white man.

The historical evidence suggests Jesus likely had the brown eyes and skin of other first-century Jews from Galilee, a region in biblical Israel. But no one knows exactly what Jesus looked like. There are no known images of Jesus from his lifetime, and while the Old Testament Kings Saul and David are explicitly called tall and handsome in the Bible, there is little indication of Jesus’ appearance in the Old or New Testaments.

Eventually ten images of Jesus were found including a very powerful one of Doubting Thomas which were framed and put up in the Oscar Romero Hall Foyer.