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, per the AP. “This window is unique and highly unusual,” said Virginia Raguin of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. “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. 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 church building, which opened in 1830 and closed in 2010, to convert into their home. “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.
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.
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The window was commissioned by a Mary P. Carr in honor of two women, apparently her late aunts, whose names appear on the glass. Mrs. H. Gibbs and Mrs. R. B. DeWolf were sisters, and both married into families involved in the slave trade. What was Carr trying to say about Gibbs' and DeWolf's links to slavery? “We don’t know, but it would appear that she is honoring people of conscience however imperfect their actions or their effectiveness may have been,” Arnold said. “I don't think it would be there otherwise." The window also is remarkable because it shows Christ interacting with woman as equals, Raguin said: “Both stories were selected to profile equality."
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