The Owner Of A Stained-Glass Window Depicting A Black Christ Believes It Will Help Social Justice

When Hadley Arnold was a little girl in Rhode Island, she knew about St. Mark’s church, which stood in the town’s historic district. She wasn’t a parishioner but admired the Russell-Warren-designed Greek Revival structure.

“I had never been inside, so I knew nothing about St. Marks,” Arnold said in a phone interview.

After the church was decommissioned, Arnold and her husband bought the building to renovate and use as their second home.

In 2020, Arnold was working in the building and looked closely at the stained-glass windows.

“This one was clearly very unusual,” she explained. “[The window] presented as a mystery, a question, an invitation. I became convinced I was looking at something extraordinary.”

The window, which is 5 feet wide and 12 feet tall, portrayed Jesus with dark brown skin, and the two women in it, Mary and Martha, also had dark skin.

Arnold thought, ‘This is beautiful. Is it possible it was intentional, or it’s changed over time?’

She decided to call an expert. A museum recommended Virginia Raguin who teaches at Holy Cross and has studied stained-glass in America and Europe.

In June 2022 Raguin arrived to analyze the window. There was construction work underway that day and scaffolding in the building.

“She climbed right up on that scaffolding, and she literally spun around and said, ‘This is original and intentional,’” Arnold recalled.

There were so many questions and still are about a stained-glass window depicting a Black Jesus in a small town in a former church that had a very small number of African American congregants.

The Black Jesus at St. Mark’s

Research linked the window to a wealthy white widow, Mary P. Carr, who commissioned it in 1877.  Carr donated the window to the church in honor of two other affluent White women who lived in Warren – one of whom married into a family whose wealth was tied to the slave trade.

Arnold said she has wondered, “‘What was she [Carr] trying to say? What was going on in this parish? What were these women up to?’”

And while she has questions, Arnold is certain Carr had “an idea about social justice.”

Rev. Robert Charles Scott, a theologian and pastor of St. Paul Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, has seen photos of the stained-glass window.

He said, “I am intrigued by the myriad of contradictory truths this stained-glass picture and its placement offer us. First and foremost, it is probably one of the truest depictions of the biblical, historical Christ as being a person of color.”

The portrayal of a Black Jesus in a predominately white church for close to 150 years is only part of the story. Both Arnold, who now owns the window, and Scott view Carr’s commission during the Reconstruction era in American history as her statement acknowledging the “full equality and full dignity” of Black Americans. Even today Carr’s view of Jesus as a Black man is considered progressive.

“There are some African American churches which have pictures of a Black Christ. However, most have the ‘typical’ white Jesus with blond hair and blue eyes. Unfortunately, some African American Christians have issues with a Black Jesus because of a colonized theology … which promotes false superiority of the white race.”

The next steps

The news of the rare discovery has yielded national interest and a “tremendous amount of conversations” with museums and art curators.

“It means they see something unique and powerful,” Arnold said. “I would love to see this window have the profound effect on many others like it’s had on me.”

As she explores the options for its new home, renovating the former church has been put on hold. Like Martha and Mary who are depicted in the Bible and the stained-glass as sisters who had different priorities, Arnold understands the pull of two interests.

While she would enjoy focusing solely on her new residence, there is other work to do.

“I’m going to miss them – their beauty … some of us look at Martha and all of the hard work when you’d really love to sit down and have a great conversation with Jesus [like Mary], but you’ve got to get stuff done,”

And in 2023 Hadley Arnold’s task of shepherding a stained-glass window with a message of equality into the country’s consciousness seems to mirror Mary Carr’s goal when she commissioned it.