WARREN, R.I. — A nearly 150-year-old stained-glass church window that depicts a dark-skinned Jesus Christ interacting with women in New Testament scenes has stirred up questions about race, Rhode Island's role in the slave trade and the place of women in 19th century New England society.
The window installed at the long-closed St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Warren in 1878 is the oldest known public example of stained glass on which Christ is depicted as a person of color that one expert has seen.
A detail of a nearly 150-year-old stained-glass window depicts Christ speaking to a Samaritan woman, shown May 1 in the now-closed St. Mark's Episcopal church in Warren, R.I.
“This window is unique and highly unusual,” said Virginia Raguin, a professor of humanities emerita at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and an expert on the history of stained-glass art. “I have never seen this iconography for that time.”
The 12-foot-tall, 5-foot-wide window depicts two biblical passages in which women, also painted with dark skin, appear as equals to Christ. One shows Christ in conversation with Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus, from the Gospel of Luke. The other shows Christ speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well from the Gospel of John.
People are also reading…
The window made by the Henry E. Sharp studio in New York had largely been forgotten until a few years ago, when Hadley Arnold and her family bought the 4,000-square-foot Greek Revival church building, which opened in 1830 and closed in 2010, to convert into their home.
Holy Cross professor and stained-glass expert Virginia Raguin speaks May 1 to middle school students near a nearly 150-year-old stained-glass window that depicts Christ speaking to a Samaritan woman in the now-closed St. Mark's Episcopal church in Warren, R.I.
When four stained-glass windows were removed in 2020 to be replaced with clear glass, Arnold took a closer look. It was a cold winter's day with the sunlight shining at just the right angle and she was stunned by what she saw in one of them: The human figures had dark skin.
“The skin tones were nothing like the white Christ you usually see,” said Arnold, who teaches architectural design in California after growing up in Rhode Island and earning an art history degree from Harvard University.
The window has now been scrutinized by scholars, historians and experts trying to determine the motivations of the artist, the church and the woman who commissioned the window in memory of her two aunts, both of whom married into families that had been involved in the slave trade.
“Is this repudiation? Is this congratulations? Is this a secret sign?” said Arnold.
Raguin and other experts confirmed that the skin tones — in black and brown paint on milky white glass that was fired in an oven to set the image — were original and deliberate. The piece shows some signs of aging but remains in very good condition, she said.
But does it depict a Black Jesus? Arnold doesn't feel comfortable using that term, preferring to say it depicts Christ as a person of color, probably Middle Eastern, which she says would make sense, given where the Galilean Jewish preacher was from.
Others think it's open to interpretation.
“To me, being of African American and Native American heritage, I think that it could represent both people," said Linda A’Vant-Deishinni, the former executive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society. She now runs the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence’s St. Martin de Porres Center, which provides services to older residents.
“The first time I saw it, it just kind of just blew me away,” A’Vant-Deishinni said.
Warren’s economy had been based on the building and outfitting of ships, some used in the slave trade, according to the town history. And although there are records of enslaved people in town before the Civil War, the racial makeup of St. Mark’s was likely mostly if not all white.
The window was commissioned by a Mary P. Carr in honor of two women, apparently her late aunts, whose names appear on the glass, Arnold said. Mrs. H. Gibbs and Mrs. R. B. DeWolf were sisters, and both married into families involved in the slave trade. The DeWolf family made a fortune as one of the nation's leading slave-trading families; Gibbs married a sea captain who worked for the DeWolfs.
Both women had been listed as donors to the American Colonization Society, founded to support the migration of freed slaves to Liberia in Africa. The controversial effort was overwhelmingly rejected by Black people in America, leading many former supporters to become abolitionists instead. DeWolf also left money in her will to found another church in accord with egalitarian principles, according to the research.
Another clue is the timing, Arnold said. The window was commissioned at a critical juncture of U.S. history when supporters of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and their Southern Democrat opponents agreed to settle the 1876 presidential election with what is known as the Compromise of 1877, which essentially ended Reconstruction-era efforts to grant and protect the legal rights of formerly enslaved Black people.
The now-closed St. Mark's Episcopal church rests near grass and an iron fence May 1 in Warren, R.I.
The window also is remarkable because it shows Christ interacting with woman as equals, Raguin said: “Both stories were selected to profile equality."
Arnold hopes to find a museum, college or other institution that can preserve and display the window for academic study and public appreciation.
“I think this belongs in the public trust," she said. "I don’t believe that it was ever intended to be a privately owned object.”
How St. Francis created the Nativity scene, with a miraculous event in 1223
Nativity scenes have been displayed for hundreds of years
The earliest biblical descriptions do not mention the presence of any barnyard animals, that are part of Nativity displays today. Oscar Llerena/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND
Around the Christmas season, it is common to see a display of the Nativity scene: a small manger with the baby Jesus and his family, shepherds, the three wise men believed to have visited Jesus after his birth and several barnyard animals.
One might ask, what are the origins of this tradition?
Biblical descriptions offer details of birth
The earliest biblical descriptions, the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, written between A.D. 80 and 100, offer details of Jesus’ birth, including that he was born in Bethlehem during the reign of King Herod.
The Gospel of Luke says that when the shepherds went to Bethlehem, they “found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.” Matthew tells the story of the three wise men, or Magi, who “fell down” in worship and offered gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
But as my research on the relationship between the New Testament and the development of popular Christian traditions shows, the earliest biblical descriptions do not mention the presence of any animals. Animals first start to appear in religious texts around the seventh century.
A series of early Christian stories that informed popular religious devotion, including what’s known as the Infancy Gospel of Matthew, attempted to fill in the gap between Christ’s infancy and the beginning of his public ministry. This text was the first to mention the presence of animals at Jesus’ birth. It described how the “most blessed Mary went forth out of the cave and entering a stable, placed the child in the stall, and the ox and the ass adored Him.”
This description, subsequently cited in several medieval Christian texts, created the Christmas story popular today.
St. Francis of Assisi credited with first nativity scene
St. Francis of Assisi preparing the Christmas crib at Greccio. Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, Assisi, Italy
But the Nativity scene now recreated in town squares and churches worldwide was originally conceived by St. Francis of Assisi.
Much of what scholars know about Francis comes from “Life of St. Francis,” written by the 13th-century theologian and philosopher St. Bonaventure.
Francis was born into a merchant family in the Umbrian town of Assisi, in modern-day Italy, around 1181. But Francis rejected his family wealth early in his life and cast off his garments in the public square.
In 1209, he founded the mendicant order of the Franciscans, a religious group that dedicated themselves to works of charity. Today, Franciscans minister by serving the material and spiritual needs of the poor and socially marginalized.
According to Bonaventure, Francis in 1223 sought permission from Pope Honorious III to do something “for the kindling of devotion” to the birth of Christ. As part of his preparations, Francis “made ready a manger, and bade hay, together with an ox and an ass,” in the small Italian town of Greccio.
One witness, among the crowd that gathered for this event, reported that Francis included a carved doll which cried tears of joy and “seemed to be awakened from sleep when the blessed Father Francis embraced Him in both arms.”
This miracle of the crying doll moved all who were present, Bonaventure writes. But Francis made another miracle happen, too: The hay that the child lay in healed sick animals and protected people from disease.
Nativity imagery proliferates in art
The Nativity story continued to expand within Christian devotional culture well after Francis’ death. In 1291, Pope Nicholas IV, the first Franciscan pope, ordered that a permanent Nativity scene be erected at Santa Maria Maggiore, the largest church dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Rome.
Nativity imagery dominated Renaissance art.
This first living Nativity scene – which was famously depicted by Italian Renaissance painter Giotto di Bondone in the Arena Chapel of Padua, Italy – ushered in a new tradition of staging the birth of Christ.
In the tondo, a circular painting of the Adoration of the Magi by 15th-century painters Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, not only are there sheep, a donkey, a cow and an ox, there is even a colorful peacock that peers over the top of the manger to catch a glimpse of Jesus.
Nativity scenes take a political turn
Seen is a new art installation dubbed "Scar of Bethlehem" by the artist Banksy.
After the birth of Jesus, King Herod, feeling as though his power was threatened by Jesus, ordered the execution of all boys under two years old. Jesus, Mary and Joseph were forced to flee to Egypt.
In an acknowledgment that Jesus, Mary and Joseph were refugees themselves, in recent years, some churches have used their Nativity scenes as a form of political activism to comment on the need for immigrant justice. Specifically, these “protest nativities” have criticized President Donald Trump’s 2018 executive order on family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border.
For example, in 2018, a church in Dedham, Massachusetts, placed baby Jesus, representing immigrant children, in a cage. This year, at Claremont United Methodist Church in California, Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus have all been placed in separate barbed-wire cages in their outdoor Nativity scene.
These displays, which call attention to the plight of immigrants and asylum seekers, bring the Christian tradition into the 21st century.
Vanessa Corcoran does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
