Our Lady of Czestochowa
Posted on 05/14/2023 11:24:54 AM PDT by Olog-hai
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.
“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 (3.7 meters by 1.5 meters) 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 was commissioned by a Mary P. Carr in honor of two women, apparently her late aunts, whose names appear on the glass, (Hadley) 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. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
Jesus probably looked like an Arab with medium dark skin.
I don’t see anywhere in the Gospels or any of the other New Testament letters where this was important.
But people want to be stuck on stupid.
What is the controversy? Who cares if he had dark skin?
i see it as egyptian color...not african
If the sisters had married into a samurai family and commissioned an artist to have Jesus look Japanese would we be having this discussion?
If one is obsessed with how Jesus appeared we know this from Isaiah 53 and hue of skin isn’t mentioned...
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
read the organization these two women support...wants blacks to go back to africa...
AP trying to cause a controversy where none exists.
Donated honor of her aunts.
Reminds of the funny bit in The Bishop’s Wife where the acerbic donor insists that St. George be portayed in the likeness of her late husband and David Niven asms, “And who should the dragon resemble?”
If the sisters had married into a Japanese samurai family and commissioned an artist to have Jesus look Japanese would we be having this discussion?
Logic leans a lot farther toward darker skin and black hair rather than light skinned and blonde hair.
I don’t care what skin tone Jesus has. He is my Savior.
sounds like the ladies had some big bucks...assuming they are black....seems to say they want them back in africa
The genetics of those who reside in the Middle East has changed a great deal in the last 2000 years. Look at the demographic changes that have taken place in areas around this country in just the last few decades. It is unlikely that Jesus looked like an Arab or a black man. He likely looked like someone of Jewish ancestry since that is what he is actually known to be. Put a beard and long hair on Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Rudd, or Adam Sandler if you want to imagine a more accurate likeness.
That’s right!
“What is the controversy? Who cares if he had dark skin?”
That is brilliant, thank you... The hypocrisy is absolutely deafening.
It really does not matter at all...
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