On the Arts: Proclaiming the Realm of God
Deborah Sokolove
Deborah Sokolove recently retired as the director of the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary, where she is now professor emerita of Art and Worship.
Christian worship has always had political implications, whether for or against the current rulers. This is not to say that everything has been seen through a partisan lens, but rather that how Jesus is depicted in both words and images reflects what Christian communities believe about the connection between what he says and does and the relationship between the powerful and those who are sick, poor, or otherwise without power.
Early stories about Jesus show him, like the prophets before him, on the side of women, foreigners, and other marginalized people. This is as clear in the visual images that have accompanied Christian gatherings and adorned Christian burial sites from at least the second century onward as it is in the Gospel records and other books of the New Testament. Indeed, one of the most common early symbols is an abstracted, linear depiction of a fish (icthys in Greek), which believers understood as an acronym for the Greek words meaning “Jesus Christ Son of God.” Since “Son of God” was one of the titles of the Roman emperor, this simple image was, among other things, a political claim that the crucified and risen Christ is sovereign over all human rulers.
Following a long tradition in which inscriptions, murals, mosaics, and stained-glass windows speak even when the preacher is silent, images in bulletins or on screens today often proclaim the upside-down world of the parables, in which beggars are invited to sit in the front row and workers who arrive late in the day are paid the same wage as those who started work early in the morning. The visual theme for Advent 2023 in my church was Benjamin Wildflower’s print Magnificat,1 in which the artist depicts an angry woman raising her fist against injustice while crowned and robed in stars. As she stands with one booted foot on a skull and the other subduing a serpent, she is surrounded by a mandorla, which identifies her with Our Lady of Guadalupe, a vision of Mary, the mother of Jesus, that originated in Mexico and has become central to the self-understanding of many people from South and Central America. The mandorla that surrounds her in Wildflower’s print is adorned with words from Mary’s impassioned prayer in Luke 1:46–55, “Fill the hungry, lift the lowly” and “Cast down the mighty, send the rich away.”
Benjamin Wildflower, Magnificat, benwildflower.com
Living in accordance with the ethos depicted in his art, Wildflower gives permission to use his downloaded images freely in church bulletins and PowerPoint presentations. As the FAQ on his website states,
You are welcome to use these images for not-for-profit purposes. Pay if/what you wish. Please include my name somewhere, e.g. “cover image by Benjamin Wildflower” or a caption below the image that says, “Magnificat by Benjamin Wildflower.” I’m not picky about how you credit me, but please do credit me so people who like the art can find more of it and buy it from me.2
Like Wildflower’s Magnificat, the works of other artists who depict biblical characters in contemporary situations often preach the gospel of compassion for prisoners, strangers, and outcasts. In Advent 2024, we used Kelly Latimore’s Dorothy Day and the Holy Family as the visual theme. Painted in 2021, this narrative image is set in a modern city street illuminated by a full moon, a few stars, and the lighted windows of multi-story apartment buildings. In the foreground, a grey-haired woman gestures towards an open door over which hangs a sign saying, “Mary House, The Catholic Worker.” The golden light pouring from the door creates a welcoming path for a dark-skinned man and a lighter-skinned woman holding a toddler, all dressed in well-worn, hooded, winter coats. While the painting is in a modern style, the artist nods to the icon tradition by placing halos around the heads of all the figures, with the Greek monogram identifying the child as Christ.
Kelly Latimore, Dorothy Day and the Holy Family of the Streets, kellylatimoreicons.com
On his website, Latimore offers a quotation from Dorothy Day, who said she wanted to change the world to make it easier “for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do” by working for better conditions and crying out for the rights of both the worthy and the unworthy poor. Latimore adds,
Let us remember the poor, the sick, the dying, the grieving, the unemployed, those unable to pay rent this week, the homeless, those persecuted simply because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, creed, or nationality, the unjustly imprisoned, the refugee, and the immigrant. To dismiss the image of God in anyone is a complete denial of the incarnation.3
Another artist whose works for the church ask viewers to reconsider their preconceptions about the biblical stories is Margaret Adams Parker. In her sculpture Mary as Prophet, Parker shows Mary and Elizabeth as two pregnant women, one young and one old, as a reminder of the powerlessness, courage, and compassion of these two biblical characters. Commissioned by Virginia Theological Seminary as a connecting link between the ruins of the 1881 chapel that burned to the ground in 2010 and the new chapel consecrated in 2015, Mary as Prophet, invites viewers to recall that Mary and Elizabeth were ordinary women who were caught up in the political and social concerns of their day. On her website, Parker notes,
Depicted as African women, Mary and Elizabeth embody the Seminary’s ties with churches in Africa and reflect the composition of the Anglican Communion. . . . The Archbishop of Canterbury, consecrating the sculpture, remarked that he sees these same women in refugee camps and other areas of conflict and deprivation.4
Margaret Adams Parker, Mary as Prophet, Virginia Theological Seminary, Photo credit: B. Cayce Ramey
While this sculpture is outside the chapel rather than within its walls, its reminder of the church’s mission to care for outsiders and for people in need finds echoes in the preaching from the pulpit and in the hearts and minds of all who view it on their way into worship. I was honored to be present at the service in which the new chapel and the sculpture were consecrated, and recall that when Archbishop Justin Welby gave the sermon, he spoke of justice and mercy, saying that hope-filled people who find forgiveness for their own failings can “transform a world in which otherwise darkness seems to extinguish light, fear surrounds and despair-filled suffering encompasses the weakest and the poorest.”5
Like the early, profoundly political symbols of the people who remembered the stories about Jesus, many artworks that are used in Christian worship today continue to proclaim that the upside-down world of the parables and the prophets is the true realm of God.
Notes
1. Benjamin Wildflower, Magnificat, https://benwildflower.com/products/magnificat-print/.
2. Benjamin Wildflower, https://benwildflower.com/pages/faq/.
3. Kelly Latimore, Dorothy Day and the Holy Family of the Streets, https://kellylatimoreicons.com/products/dorothy-day-and-the-holy-family-of-the-streets/.
4. Margaret Adams Parker, Mary as Prophet, https://www.margaretadamsparker.com/ShowWork.
5. “Archbishop Preaches at Virginia Theological Seminary,” October 13, 2015, https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/archbishop-preaches-virginia-theological-seminary/.
