By George Clifford
Raffaellino Del Garbo’s painting, “Resurrection of Christ,” hangs in the Academia Gallery in Florence, Italy. Painted about 1500-05, this piece depicts the risen Christ’s empty tomb and beatific face, the soldiers’ faces and arms, Mary’s face and attire, and the surrounding scenery in early16th century Italian imagery foreign to first century Palestine.
On the one hand, the painting seems a giant non-sequitur. Jesus and Mary were both first century Palestinian Jews; the soldiers, perhaps ancestors of sixteenth century Italians, were certainly first century Roman legionnaires; the surrounding area and tomb were in the environs of Jerusalem, not Florence.
On the other hand, paintings that translate biblical scenes and events into the painter’s locale and historical period remain a popular genre because of our need to make the Bible and its stories contemporary. Mid-twentieth century American art portraying a black Jesus echoed this aim. Making the Bible contemporary is important because one function of much Christian art is to invite the viewer (or listener, reader, etc.) to enter into the biblical story, to there encounter God, and through a dialectical process to experience an inner transformation.
The controversy that swirled around portrayals of a black Jesus illustrates how the powerful – in this case Caucasians – can misuse Christianity, seeking to force the marginalized and disempowered to accept the image of Christ, along with its associated theology, sanctioned by the powerful. By controlling what constitutes acceptable art, the powerful attempt to protect their privileged status, ensuring that for whatever experience the art may be a catalyst, the experience will reinforce or at least not undermine the elite’s dominance. Thanks be to God, the Episcopal Church has largely progressed beyond the era in its history when it unofficially and yet powerfully promoted Caucasian dominance.
Like oil paints or watercolors, theological language and liturgical actions are artistic mediums. Christian religious discourse and worship sketch pictures, inviting hearers to enter into the biblical story, to there encounter God, and through a dialectical process to experience inner transformation. At its best, Christian worship, for example, is a drama that invites participants to enter into the Jesus story. Couching the drama in contemporary language, as preachers through the centuries have discovered, makes the story feel more relevant, more inviting to those present. Rafaellino Del Garbo understood this. The artists who portrayed Jesus as a black man understood this.
William Young understood this when he wrote his novel, The Shack, casting God as a black woman. While certainly not great literature and arguably reflecting poor theology, this bestseller did not unleash a torrent, or even trickle, of criticism for Young portraying God as either black or a woman. Admittedly, the pervasive masculine terms for God found in the Book of Common Prayer, much theological discourse, and too many sermons underscore the distance we have yet to travel before fully dethroning masculine dominance from Christianity.
The Episcopal Church sits at a crossroads. The Church, on several fronts, must choose between a static, centuries-old portrayal of Jesus and the Bible, a perspective increasingly remote from twenty-first century American life, and a dynamic portrayal of Jesus, retelling his story in images and language relevant and comprehensible to post-moderns. Cutting-edge challenges exist not only with respect to human sexuality but also at other points at which theology collides with advances in science.
Will the Episcopal Church succumb to fundamentalist pressures from within and without the Anglican Communion to become a Church that seeks creedal uniformity? The cost of choosing that direction is to concretize Jesus’ charisma, the vital Spirit of the living God. This displaces risky personal encounters that can lead to life-giving transformation with safe and standardized creedal orthodoxy. Such formulas are like good Christian art: appropriate to a particular moment in the spatio-temporal matrix and not eternally definitive.
Alternatively, will the Episcopal Church continue down the risky but exciting and dynamic path that is consistent with our time-honored Anglican tradition: praying together, living in unity in spite of theological and ethical diversity, preserving an openness through our linguistic and liturgical art to God’s ongoing revelation? One cost of choosing this direction is that the Episcopal Church may not move, as it strives to be faithful to the mind of Christ, in concert with other members of the Anglican Communion. A potential cost of choosing this direction is that the Episcopal Church may misunderstand what God is saying and move in a wrong direction. True discipleship always entails that risk. Thanks be to God we serve a loving, forgiving God who is bigger than any possible mistake we might make.
Choose this day whom you will serve: the dead, institutionalized idol of time-bound religion or the living God that no earthly artistic image, regardless of the medium, can faithfully depict? That choice confronts the Episcopal Church at its 2009 General Convention in Anaheim. I pray that the Episcopal Church will wisely avoid unnecessary votes, harmful posturing, the temptation to reject the new in favor of the time-bound, and the temptation to reject fresh insights into the depth of God’s all-embracing love for ephemeral firework
The Rev. Dr. George Clifford, Diocese of North Carolina, served as a Navy chaplain for twenty-four years He taught philosophy at the U. S. Naval Academy and ethics at the Postgraduate School. He blogs at Ethical Musings.