Liberation in White and Black

In 1998, I first walked through the doors of The Church of the Advocate (Episcopal), in North Philadelphia and found myself facing a mural that illustrates Exodus 12:29, “The Lord smote the first born of Egypt…(KJV).”  At the time, I was living and working in contexts where I was frequently the only White person present and I considered myself quite comfortable.  When I saw the painting of a fierce Black man in broken shackles driving a dagger towards the throat of a ghastly White face, I felt unsafe.  I did not want to be identified with that White face by anyone who might identify with the Black liberator.  White guilt and fear die hard sometimes.  However, I and the friend who had brought me there were the only ones in the vast space and I was both too enthralled and too proud to jump back in the car and leave.  As I learned more about the way that the other thirteen murals connected biblical narrative with the story of African American history (trans-Atlantic slave trade, the suffering of plantation slavery, the abolition movement, segregation, civil rights, Black Nationalism, urban riots) I became more fascinated, but it was years before I returned and began to understand the historical and political context of the Episcopal Church or Philadelphia with regard to race and art.

In the meantime, while taking a walk in Valley Forge Park in the Philadelphia suburbs, I happened upon Washington Memorial Chapel (also Episcopal) and entered.  It was initially just as disturbing for me, but in a different way.   The stained glass and carvings of the church told stories populated with far more uniformed White men with muskets and bayonets than biblical figures in robes.  The stories of English Protestantism, colonial North America and the Revolutionary founding of the United States (by George Washington in particular) superseded the stories I expected to find visualized in Christian churches.  This time my trans-national Christian multiculturalism and pacifism were offended by what appeared to me to be militaristic White nationalism in the place of worship. 

Shortly thereafter, the Church of the Advocate came back to mind and I realized that these places were in a sense having a sort of visual conversation, or perhaps an iconomachy (image war) about the meaning of the Christian faith, the Bible, America and freedom or liberation.