During the middle of the Civil Rights movement, Mormons placed an 11-foot-tall white Jesus with an exposed powerful chest at the center of Salt Lake City. Christus, as he was originally called, was raised in 1966, but he was based upon an old Danish statue from 1821. Since '66, Christus has become a staple of Mormon iconography placed primarily in "welcome centers" all throughout the nation. He became even more poignant of a symbol after 1978, the year Mormon leadership lifted its bans on people of color from the priesthood. Blacks, Pacific Islanders and others were technically welcome in the church, but they first had to pass by the powerful white Christus.
In 2008, Jeremiah Wright's sermons about a black Jesus killed by white Romans (and its obvious analogues to present-day politics) nearly derailed his former parishioner Barack Obama's candidacy. The white Jesus of Mitt Romney's Mormon culture, by contrast, has raised no cultural firestorm. It is hardly even noticed.
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