St Mary Redcliffe, the main Church of England parish church for the Redcliffe district of the city of Bristol held a stained-glass contest to replace four panes of Victorian glass commemorating the notorious Edward Colston.

Colston was a 17th century slave trader and Tory member of Parliament. He used his fortunes to support and endow schools, houses for the poor, almshouses, hospitals, and churches in Bristol, London, and elsewhere.

During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, a statue of Colston was famously torn down and thrown into Bristol Harbour.

St Mary Redcliffe then noticed that they had Colston's name commemorated in four panes of Victorian glass in their church.

The panes had been donated in 1895 by Colston's family.

The panes were removed and replaced with clear glass, and the church announced a contest for new stained glass to replace them.

The winner of the contest, Ealish Swift, submitted four panes. He says,

"Jesus is depicted as multiple ethnicities to counter the Anglo-centric narrative of ‘white Jesus'."

Here they are with their descriptions:

The first panel depicts a Bristol ship traversing the raging seas of the Middle Passage during the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and references the story of Jesus calming the storm.

The second panel celebrates the Bristol Bus Boycott, which paved the way for the Race Relations Act of 1965, with Jesus as a fellow protester and radical.

The third panel portrays the current refugee crisis, and Jesus as a child refugee fleeing to Egypt.

The final panel shows a diverse group of ‘neighbours' facing the future in a display of hope and togetherness

I guess the role the real Jesus played in ending the slave trade or bringing about the Civil Rights movement means very little to these folks. Without the faith of people like William Wilberforce, the slave trade wouldn't have ended in the first place.

Give me the real Jesus any day.