Jesuits join the woke parade? Magazine’s comparison of George Floyd to JESUS sparks wave of mockery

An article likening the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis cop to the death of Jesus Christ on the cross has gone viral for all the wrong reasons, eliciting a chorus of mockery – and outrage from Christians.

Floyd’s death, which kicked off months of historic unrest across the US after the excruciating eight-minute video took social media by storm, was no mere lynching; it was a crucifixion, according to America Magazine, which styles itself as the “leading Catholic journal of opinion in the United States.”

The outlet attempted to draw several parallels between Floyd’s on-camera demise and the death of the best-known religious figure in the western world in an article published on Thursday. It opined that the ancient equivalent of police would have carried out Jesus’ crucifixion, and noted that both men apparently suffered from thirst in the moments before death. 

“Both Jesus and George Floyd were repeatedly mocked by their killers,” the writer observed, adding that both called out for a parent (Jesus his divine father, and Floyd his mother) before dying – practically twins! 

Other comparisons were even more forced: “The cause of death of a person crucified on a raised cross was usually asphyxiation,” the writer noted, adding “the body’s weight hanging from the nails over a period of time makes it impossible to breathe,” before quoting the now-ubiquitous final words of Floyd: “I can’t breathe.”

Purple prose about how the “crucifixion of a black man on a street-corner Golgotha” answers all questions about how “racial oppression infests our history, our culture and our institutions” left some howling, while others tried their hand at similarly unhinged comparisons.

Unsurprisingly, the piece left many Christians with a bad taste in their mouths, with some even calling it blasphemous.

Many attempted to remind the Jesuits that Floyd was no saint before he was “martyred.”

Others tried to one-up the magazine’s literal canonization of the slain security guard.

And a few noted that, with reality like this, the bar had been raised for satire forever.

Amazingly, this isn’t the first time America Magazine’s staff have compared Floyd to Jesus. The publication’s editor has been doing it for at least a month, and one eye-watering Twitter ratio (1,800 disbelieving comments to just 80 “likes”) is unlikely to deter him.

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