Christianity is the white man’s religion, and “Jesus is the only way” was how the white man said so. The charge usually comes in roughly that form, with a history lesson attached. The faith reached many Black people through slave ships and mission stations backed by empire. On this account, the claim that Jesus is the only way was the theology of conquest: declare every other people’s faith false, and their land, labor and gods are open for the taking. An honest and loving person, the argument concludes, should set the claim down with the rest of the colonial baggage.
The earliest record does not support that account of where the claim began. Africans, Syrians, Persians and others held that salvation comes only through Jesus centuries before Europe had an empire, and many held it while Rome was persecuting them. Saying Jesus is the only way is historically honest, because Jesus said it of himself and the non-Western church confessed it early. Whether saying it is fair and loving is a separate matter, and on that point the charge raises something real: how the claim is held, by whom, and in whose service.
Five witnesses from Jude 3 Project conversations help separate the claim from the culture that sometimes carried it: