Finding Jesus in Stained Glass Windows: A Rebuttal of The Chosen's Claim

Introduction: Jenkins Takes Aim at Statues and Stained Glass Windows

Jenkins' frequently expressed intention to break stereotypes of Jesus as "statues" and "stained glass windows" triggers all those images of COVID-ridden 2020, when we watched what felt like half the nation march from coast to coast to protest George Floyd's horrific murder. Burnings, breaking of glass, looting, and the pulling down of our nation's most iconic statues filled the news night after night, while we sat dumbfounded in housebound helplessness. Historic churches were smashed and torched even in our nation's capital, and we were supposed to believe this was somehow a good thing, for all of these otherwise beautifully meaningful sites in actuality represented oppressive "white" evil. I watched in amazement as zealous young rioters even pulled down statues of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. I thought of what Reverend Hale says before the arrest of saintly Rebecca Nurse in Arthur Miller's tragedy, The Crucible: "Believe me, Mr. Nurse, if Rebecca Nurse be tainted, then nothing's left to stop the whole green world from burning."

Whether Jenkins has an actual list of ideas he wants to eradicate from the sacred consciousness remains unknown, but his aim seems clear, as noted: to break stereotypes of Jesus which he likens to statues and stained glass windows. What this means, however, is unclear. Rather than cast innuendoes that indict the whole of organized religion, Jenkins should specify the stereotypes he wishes to break--unless, of course, the obvious is true: that he aims to break those stereotypes he assumes are found in statutes and stained glass windows all around the world. But that would require an assumption on Jenkins' part that the ideas and images found within sacred art across the centuries are themselves stereotypes and that the seed of this "bad fruit" has pollinated across the generations. I wouldn't see a problem if Jenkins had said he wished to break all stereotypes of Jesus, especially if the tool he is using to break them is the Sword of the Spirit, God's Word.

But the fact that Jenkins intends to break centuries of supposed stereotypes by creating a show that is 95% fiction suggests at the very least that he believes stereotypes of Jesus have been formed, not apart from corporate worship, but because of it. Why else would he liken these stereotypes to statues and stained glass windows? And why else would he assume that his own fiction is required to break them? Without a doubt, I have seen enough of The Chosen to question whether the so-called stereotypes Jenkins targets actually need to come down. It seems to me that the very thing Jenkins would wish to abolish--formalized views of Jesus as majestic, holy, and divine--are, in fact, the very truths our culture needs most. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that we need more, not less, of religious art. Suppose we say that the role of beauty in formal worship has been notoriously downplayed in recent times and that the failure to engage one's awed imagination in the house of God has in itself caused the formation of stereotypes of Jesus--stereotypes unworthy of our majestic Lord.

The Unsurpassed Beauty of A Real Stained Glass Window

Just this Sunday morning, my attention was riveted to the enormous, single-arched stained glass window that shines above the baptistry at my church. I couldn't take my eyes from the glare as I stared at the sunlight streaming through the brilliant colors in Christ's red and white robes. I studied the window carefully. Christ's right hand stretches out to me, while His left hand suggests reserve. Why would this be? Why was Christ not portrayed with both arms outstretched, as artists typically do? When I found out later that this window is called Christ the Teacher, its message became clear. It captures a forgotten truth, a truth Solomon perceives when he personifies Wisdom in Proverbs 1:24, "I have called, and you refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded." Wisdom calls, but it doesn't coerce. I have to listen, and I have to respond. How can one window, towering thirty to forty feet over my pastor preaching below, say all this in a timeless gesture of Christ's? True art is never a stereotype but speaks a sermon all its own. And I'm not sure I heard every word my pastor preached as I pondered this window's message for the first time.

The Role of Religious Art in True Worship

In contrast to those rioters who got carried away in the George Floyd protests, shouldn't we examine the truth behind the "stained glass windows" we feel called upon to break? Whether Jenkins intends a literal connection between religious art and stereotypes, his larger point is obviously that people too often see Jesus in the same way they see religious art: as two dimensional. But it is begging the question to assume that people see art as stereotypical simply because it is two dimensional. It also does not follow that it is religious art that makes people see Jesus stereotypically, if, indeed, they do. For one thing, a stained glass window in particular defies stereotypes because it is constantly changing in the light. The pattern in the window not only awakens with the light but expands with every viewing.

The window, therefore, presents the object lesson of its own design: like the soul created in the image of God, it is incomplete without the light for which it was designed! But supposing the window does reinforce an image in the consciousness of the soul, what makes that image a stereotype rather than a truth? Yes, it is possible that if I see a great stained glass window of Jesus, every time I think of Jesus, I see Him as He is in that window. Wouldn't that be the purpose of the pattern in the window? Suppose all I knew of Christ in the Middle Ages was that He carried lambs in His bosom, so I cry out to Him in my pain. Is there any harm whatsoever in that? Rather than presenting a stereotype, the window creates a vignette, the very concept upon which art itself is built.

Religious art has played a significant role in worship across the centuries and not only in the great cathedrals of Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Although this role has not been without idolatry, which must be shunned, if we were to say that worship contains no visual element, that is not true. In fact, the prototype of all sacred art in the Judeo-Christian world is arguably the Jewish tabernacle in the wilderness, after which the Jewish Temple was later fashioned. The Lord commanded Moses to fashion the tabernacle "according to the pattern," as referenced in Exodus 25:9 and 40 and also in Hebrews 8:5. For an emerging nation breaking its physical, spiritual, and psychological shackles formed during centuries of slavery, this tabernacle not only awakened a national consciousness of their new identity but also engrained a new loyalty to their heavenly Deliverer. To formalize this sense in the imagination pointed not only to a new earthly destiny but to eternity itself.

Visual art will play a significant and symbolic role during the millennial reign of Christ, for which the Temple will be rebuilt. God's Word closes with a visual feast for the holy imagination with a description of the bejeweled New Jerusalem as the Bride of Christ. With such beauty our Lord begins and ends His Word to His people, with Paradise revisited and Heaven gained. In light of this, we see that worshiping the Lord in the beauty of holiness (Psalm 96:9) is not inconsistent with worshiping Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). True beauty as seen in the great stained glass windows of cathedrals past--called with good reason "the poor man's Bible"--will not form stereotypes but point to the beauty of truth itself. After all, our God created a beautiful world. It would seem obvious that, whatever Jenkins means when he links stereotypes with stained glass windows, his analogy is false. And when we reverse-engineer his assumptions, we find them stereotypical in themselves.