Does God have an afro?: New T-shirts Say God is Female, and Has an Afro!

New T-shirts Say God is Female, and Has an Afro!

Recently, @myhaircrush on Instagram developed t-shirts and shared them with her followers to see which they preferred and which they would wear.  After posting the images for her shirts, a lively online debate ensued.  Why?  Because the shirts read, “I Met God, She Has an Afro,” and “I Met God, She’s Natural.”

Some of her followers were ready to do a shout’n dance down the church aisle holding an Afro pick, and others thought @myhaircruch was going straight to hell with gasoline drawers on.

I think God is something we shouldn’t play with. I’m sure your next project will be it, but I’m sorry this is offensive.

I usually feel more offensive when I walk into church and see a white Jesus with silky blonde hair. I think this statement is probably closer to the actual description of my God in the bible. Thanks for sharing your thoughts but I don’t buy into the white god propaganda.

Is God a White Male?

The shirts are definitely a risky project for @myhaircrush.  They challenge the patriarchal view that God is male, not female. This is controversial for many people since most Christian subscribe to biblical text, which describes God as our Father.  In addition, we have been bombarded with images of God (and Jesus since he was the human embodiment of God) as not only male, but as a White male who therefore could not possibly have an Afro.  In the book, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and The Saga of Race in America, the author Edward J. Blum conducted research on how America deliberately modified the image of Jesus Christ from a Jewish man to be more Nordic appearing in order to further White supremacy.  This modification took place over decades of time and through various methods including art, TV, advertisements, and the educational system.  Ultimately, it solidified the inaccurate image of a White Jesus in America.

Those images are in direct contradiction to the @myhaircrush t-shirts, which challenge us to think differently about what we have been told to believe most of our lives.

Is God a Black Woman?

Despite this clear attempt to whitewash God and Jesus, we can simply look to the Bible to tell us the truth.  Genesis 1:27 reads:

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

If we are created in God’s image, then God must look like each and every one of us.  That means God can most certainly have an Afro and be female!  Some comments on Instagram read:

If I was made in God’s image and his likeness…God would be [a] black woman with a fro…

I’m African and we say MOTHER/Father God. Because nothing can exist without its opposite but I’m not teaching.

For me, that is the end of the argument. Period, point blank! Just read the bible and the “proof” is there.  We are created in God’s image, so God must look like all of us.

Does God have an Afro?

Even with scriptures like the one above, there is still a clear struggle for people to believe this could possibly be true, that God or Jesus looks like Black people.  That is because there is something deeper at play within our minds.  We have been programmed to believe that only certain images are okay and right – mostly images depicting whiteness. Attorney, Lurie Daniel Favors, writes on her blog Afro State of Mind:

Default belief systems are powerful things and they literally shape our expectations of the interactions we have with the world around us.When you grow up in a world that still holds to the common “wisdom” that one group of people are inferior and another group of people are superior, your default value setting is programmed according to that belief.

Therefore, when our default value system says that whiteness is superior, we automatically attach anything good to whiteness.  Since “God is good,” God must be White, right? The problem with this is that it also sends the message that anything that does not replicate that view is seen as wrong – namely anything that represents Blackness. As the [racist] saying goes, “If it ain’t White, it ain’t right.”  By default, this applies to Black hair.  If kinky hair represents Blackness, it is inherently wrong, so how could God or Jesus be connected with something we have been convinced is bad when we know God to be holy, pure, and just.  This is why it is hard for people to see God with an Afro.

What we know about Jesus is that he was Jewish, which meant he most likely had dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes.  Biblical scriptures in both Revelations and Daniel describe Jesus as having bronze arms, legs, and feet with hair like wool.  I don’t know about you, but a man with bronze skin and hair like wool, sounds like a Black man to me.

This connects us back to the earlier verse from Genesis 1:27 confirming that we are created in God’s image.  If Jesus is the embodiment of God and is created in God’s image, than we can assume this is a version of what God looks like.  Therefore, we CAN say that God has kinky hair, which can be fluffed, patted, and picked into a big nappy Afro!

I believe God has no specific shape or form.  Even scriptures like Exodus 33:20 clearly say that no one can look upon God’s face and live, so no one knows what God looks like.  This creates another layer to unpack when it comes to the politics of God’s appearance. If we do not know what God looks like, then why are we debating this?  I believe that God is all-powerful and can be whatever we need God to be.  So if I need God to be a fly Black woman rockin’ an Afro with a pick hanging from the side, let it be.

I’ll be buying my t-shirt soon.  I think I will go with the one that reads, “I Met God, She’s Natural.”

What do you think ladies? Will you be adding these tees to your Global Couture 🙂 collection?

[Contributor, Jane Lorraine, created Honoring Our HAIRitage as a platform to tell our own story, re-frame the negative messages about natural hair, and spread a more positive view of African American beauty by starting with understanding our history.]