African American spirituals

Playlist: Funeral Songs: The Christian Hope of Life After Death

April 28, 2026April 28, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones10 Comments

Death is hard. No matter your religion and its consolations, whether you’re the one dying or you’re saying goodbye to someone who is or has, it’s often a painful ordeal.

For the Christian, death holds a tension. It’s something to grieve, as Jesus did at the grave of his friend Lazarus; it was not part of God’s original design and so in that sense is not “natural,” even though it’s inevitable. We can and should mourn its power to (at least temporarily) sever. But death can also be something to celebrate if the deceased was in Christ, since as the apostle Paul wrote, “to be absent from the body [is] to be at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8), in a state of blissful rest.

Christians regard death as an entrance to the dwelling-place of God that we call heaven or paradise. Contrary to popular conception, that heaven is not our eternal home—not really. It’s a temporary holding place for the souls of the Christian departed, who await the general resurrection, at which time our souls will be reunited with our bodies and heaven will be remade and brought down to a new earth, where we will dwell forever, as whole, embodied persons, vibrant and active, with God. That, as the New Testament scholar and theologian N. T. Wright has been reiterating for decades, is our ultimate hope: not an ethereal existence in the skies, but physical resurrection, cosmic renewal, and God making his forever home with us here. The joining of heaven and earth—God’s space and ours—in a lasting embrace.

When my paternal grandpa passed away in May 2017, I began building a private Spotify playlist of songs about death to help me move through that loss. I’ve been adding to it for the past nine years, and now I want to make it public.

I hesitated for a while on whether to share the list, because I worry that overall, it does promote a lopsided hope, a truncated view of what eternal life looks like. Wright’s Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church was paradigm-shifting for me, and I’ve wrestled with its implications on the theologies we articulate, including through song, at funerals. Wright decries how Platonism, with its degrading of bodies and of the created order in general, has infected whole swaths of Christian thinking, misleading people into supposing that Christians are meant to devalue this present world and our material selves; that our goal is to escape them both.

The early Christian hope was not, Wright declares, to be rescued from this world, but to be rescued with and for it: that is, that the world itself, people included, would be liberated from its present state of corruption and decay. They centered this hope firmly on the resurrection. They talked very little about “going to heaven” when they died; instead, they emphasized the promise of the dead being raised on the last day to image God in a new bodily existence in a newly remade world. If they did refer to heaven as a postmortem destination, Wright says, those early Christians seemed to regard it as a temporary stage on the way to the eventual resurrection of the body.

Wright laments that so many Christian songs look forward chiefly to “life after death” (the intermediate state, entered immediately after one’s death, in which one’s soul resides in heaven while one’s body remains “asleep” in the grave) instead of “life after life after death” (the eschaton; the resurrection; the descent of the New Jerusalem; the new heavens and new earth), which is God’s whole telos. This glut of songs that focus on the prelude to eternal life as the biblical authors envisioned it has contributed to many Christians’ ignorance of the two-step narrative of life after death, with step two being what we should really be singing about.

I get what Wright is saying. But I think he sometimes overstates his points. He hates the phrase “going to heaven,” preferring instead “heaven coming to earth”—and yet “going to heaven” does accurately describe what the Christian soul does at the moment of bodily death. He also disparages lyrical expressions like “way beyond the blue,” “a faraway strand,” “up over yonder,” “the great beyond,” anything that suggests otherworldly distance . . . but again, if what is being described is that interim place of souls where God’s throne currently is, which is outside the space-time continuum but for which the Bible uses directional “up” language, such descriptions seem to me to be appropriate.

And the word heaven, I feel, can also encompass the final reality: the marriage of heaven and earth. I see the word as shorthand for “where God is.” Of course, Wright is correct that heaven-as-stopover (out there and we as incorporeal) and heaven-as-new-creation (right here and we gloriously corporeal) often get muddled in our songs, and that greater theological precision might be warranted. But we also have to consider the limits of sung verse—especially particular forms, like the spiritual, which is meant to be simple and repetitive so as to be transmitted orally—to convey nuanced ideas or to express all aspects of a given theme.

Wright also eschews the “just passing through” spirituality that infuses much hymnody, folksong, and preaching—the idea that earth is not our home; heaven is. That idea, he claims, treats the world as irrelevant at best and evil at worst, when in fact, God loves the world and wants to and indeed will redeem it, not evacuate us from it. This earth will be transformed one day into our eternal habitation.

I do agree that there’s a dangerous strand of escapist theology that has arisen in Christianity, which nurtures aspirations to flee the world, to regard is as mere dross and so to care nothing for its welfare. But I also don’t automatically dismiss hymns that describe this present life as “night,” for example, or that mention “earth’s vain shadows”—Wright negatively references both in Surprised by Hope. This present world is incomplete. It’s groaning for redemption, and we in it. We see through a glass darkly. We often stumble. We’re tempted to pursue pleasures or glories that are ultimately empty. Pain, toil, and fragmentation are part of the human experience. I think it’s right that we don’t feel entirely at home here, even as we anticipate God’s future purposes for the world—healing, transforming—through concrete actions, living as new-creation people. The apostle Paul says we’re citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20), which is in part where the concept of “our heavenly home” comes from. The kingdom of heaven is the place from which Christ reigns. And yes, one day that will be earth, but right now, it’s not.

In the grand scheme of things, our mortal existence is short—so the idea of us being transient between this life and the next is not, I think, out of step with the biblical view, many passages of which comment on life’s brevity and the fleetingness of the flesh, which fades like grass.

While Wright stresses the continuity between earth as it is now and earth as it will be, there is also—and he does concede this—discontinuity. The earth will be itself and yet radically new when God re-creates it. It will be somehow both familiar and other. The same is true of our bodies, which—hallelujah!—God redeems along with our souls. (We are saved not as souls but as wholes, Wright quips.) These bodies we have now are good, yes, but they also break down and can be burdensome—hence why so many Christian songs of death express a yearning to cast off the body. Even the apostle Paul, in Romans 7:24, bemoans, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Like Wright, though, I do wish there were more songs that coupled that desire with the anticipation of a renewed body, as Paul does, instead of suggesting that a bodiless existence is the consummate state. As Wright argues, a focus on the soul’s immortality, on leaving the body behind, is a distraction from the supreme hope of the resurrection.

The funeral song that theologians, both professional and armchair, love to hate on most for its supposed Gnosticism is the Southern gospel classic “I’ll Fly Away” by Albert E. Brumley. They object to its anti-this-worldly stance that celebrates the soul’s breaking free “like a bird from prison bars has flown” (“no more cold iron shackles at my feet”), which implies that this world or this body, or both, is a prison keeping our true self captive. But is that sentiment not in some ways consonant with Romans 8:19–21, which says that “the creation waits with eager longing . . . [to] be set free from its bondage to decay and . . . obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God”?

I see how the metaphor of the body as a prison can be problematic, but imagine it from the perspective of a person in advanced age, losing their vision, hearing, speech, reason, memory, strength, dexterity, mobility, bowel control, appetite, and so on. Or someone with chronic illness, or a debilitating disease, or on life support. That’s not at all to say such people should just die, or that they bear God’s image any less—but for them, life in the body is an immense struggle, and if they long to leave it to be with God, that’s not sinful or misguided. Many faithful Christians throughout history have prayed that God would take them or their loved one out of this life, out of their suffering.

The refrain “I’ll fly away” is actually mentioned in two biblical psalms:

My heart is in anguish within me;
    the terrors of death have fallen upon me.

Fear and trembling come upon me,
    and horror overwhelms me.

And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove!
    I would fly away and be at rest;

truly, I would flee far away;
    I would lodge in the wilderness; Selah

I would hurry to find a shelter for myself
    from the raging wind and tempest.”

—Psalm 55:4–8

For all our days pass away under your wrath;
    our years come to an end like a sigh.
The days of our life are seventy years
    or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;
even then their span is only toil and trouble;
    they are soon gone, and we fly away.

—Psalm 90:9–10

I wouldn’t program “I’ll Fly Away” for a Sunday morning worship service, but I happen to think it’s a great funeral song—I’ve included three different versions on my playlist, first from the movie soundtrack that in 2000 popularized it for a new generation—expressing an exuberant sense of release from suffering and joy in meeting God. I’d leave it to the preacher, and a fuller song set, to place it in context of the greater Christian hope of the resurrection of the body and the renewal of this world.

SONGWRITERS: To you I extend the challenge of expanding the repertoire of Christian music about last things, composing songs that capture the grander biblical vision of God’s intent for what he’s made. Give us new songs that anticipate the merging of heaven and earth! That trace the line of new creation from Jesus’s resurrection to our own. That celebrate not so much our going to live with Jesus when we die as Jesus’s coming to live with us when he brings his kingdom project to full fruition. Help us to see the goodness of our bodies and the world and to treasure God’s promise to redeem both; enlarge our concern about final destinies to encompass the whole cosmos, reorienting our hope around being raised to life in God’s new heaven and new earth. Remind us that our labor on earth is not in vain but will last into God’s future. Draw together Genesis 1–2, Isaiah 65, Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Peter 3:13, and Revelation 21–22.

In his engagement with Wright’s Surprised by Hope and what it means for funeral reform, John L. Drury suggests “we can still talk about grandpa going to heaven and being with Jesus. We just need to also talk about grandpa coming back with Jesus to reign with us in the new heavens and the new earth.” He advises that “one must also transform the language describing the present state of the person to express its interim character. We can still say they have gone to a better place, but we must then immediately modify this by saying that they will one day enter the best place of all, the new creation. We can still say they have entered into rest, but we must then immediately modify this by saying they are resting in the sense of waiting, waiting for the final act in God’s story.”

Why have I spent so long discussing Wright in this article that is supposed to be introducing a playlist of funeral songs? Because his teachings on eschatology, which includes the subject of heaven, have been vastly influential, not just for me but within Protestantism at large.

No doubt he will object to some of the entries on my “Funeral Songs” playlist. In building it, I eliminated some egregious offenders, but I feel comfortable putting forward these remaining songs. Even if some refer primarily to the deceased’s temporary residence “on high” or temporarily immaterial state—rather than their final, physical state in restored creation, i.e., the new heavens and the new earth—there’s still value in celebrating this initial phase of postmortem life they’ve entered. At funerals, it’s good and right to look forward to the consummation of all things, but it’s also good to assure those who grieve that their late beloved is presently in a place of rest, joy, and refreshment. It’s “home” insofar as home is where God is.

Consider the different metaphors for death represented in the playlist: Crossing the Jordan River into the promised land. Summiting a mountain. Culminating a pilgrimage. Laying down a burden. A valley. A sunset, to be followed by dawn. Death as a mode of transport, by train, chariot, or even airplane! The safe arrival of one’s ship, after a turbulent journey, into harbor. Death is conceptualized in terms of homegoing, meeting Jesus face-to-face, reunion with family, freedom, happiness, repose, healing, inheritance, victory, glory. It’s a threshold into an indescribable new reality.

Some songs incorporate descriptions of heaven or the New Jerusalem drawn from scripture, which have unfortunately become hackneyed: pearly gates and gold-paved roads (Rev. 21:21), mansions (John 14:1–3), harps (Rev. 5:8; 15:2), angelic choirs, white robes (Rev. 7:9–14) and gleaming crowns (Rev. 2:10). Concentrated mainly in the book of Revelation, these details were the writer John’s attempts to convey something of the beauty, purity, perfection, and grandeur he saw in his heavenly visions.

The playlist opens and closes with “I Bid You Goodnight,” aka “The Christian’s Good Night” or “Sleep On, Beloved,” a hymn for the lowering down of caskets written in 1871 by Sarah Doudney, with music, in 1884, by Ira David Sankey. (View the sheet music.) It was sung at the funeral of the preacher Charles Spurgeon in 1892. It later made its way to the Bahamas, where it was adapted and recorded in 1958 and 1965 by Joseph Spence and the Pinder Family. Spence’s sister, Edith Pinder, sings lead, ad-libbing a number of calls in the latter half, such as “One of these mornings, bright, early, and soon,” “Walkin’ through the valley of the shadow of death,” “His rod and staff shall comfort me,” “Goodness and mercy shall follow me on,” “John Divine said, ‘I saw the sign,’” and “Gonna walk in Jerusalem just like John.”

The Spence-Pinder recordings became the basis of subsequent folk versions in the US, such as the one that the Grateful Dead often closed their concerts with, and my two favorites: by Kent Gustavson (below) and Sweet Honey in the Rock. These all utilize only the first verse of Doudney’s original seven.

Lay down, my dear brother [sister, mother, father], lay down and take your rest
Won’t you lay your head down upon your Savior’s breast
I love you, but Jesus loves you the best
I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight

The hymn wishes the departed a pleasant sleep before their eternal waking at the resurrection.

Since I shared one of my mom’s funeral picks above (“I’ll Fly Away”), now let me share one of my dad’s: “Peace in the Valley,” written by the Black gospel songwriter and musician Thomas A. Dorsey. Watching reruns of The Ed Sullivan Show, my dad would call me and my brother to the TV whenever Elvis’s performance of this song came on from the January 6, 1957, episode. As he would regale us every time: “The producers didn’t want him to sing a gospel song on national television. They just wanted his rock and roll. But he insisted. It was his mom’s favorite song. He said he wouldn’t do the show if they didn’t let him sing it.”

The Ed Sullivan performance leaves out the second verse, likely for time—it’s included in Elvis’s studio recording released a few months later—but its imagery provides a fuller picture of peace, drawing on the description of the messianic kingdom in Isaiah 11:

Well, the bear will be gentle, and the wolves will be tame
And the lion shall lie down by the lamb, oh yes
And the beasts from the wild shall be led by a child
And I’ll be changed, changed from this creature that I am, oh yes

Dorsey wrote the song as world tensions were mounting in the late 1930s, just prior to World War II. Traveling by train through Indiana, he observed horses, cows, and sheep grazing together in a small valley and wondered why humans across nations couldn’t live peaceably with one another, as these animal species were, sharing the grass. This was also a time of racial terror in America, of lynchings and other acts of anti-Black violence. “Peace in the Valley” asserts that the violence of the world will one day be undone, when creation is made new.

I like the Lower Lights’ rendition.

Another famous gospel song by Dorsey is “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” Hearing it makes me emotional because a dear elderly friend from my church, who has since passed away, often requested it in worship. Here’s a gorgeous arrangement by Arnold Sevier, performed by the Aeolians of Oakwood University:

The genres of gospel, blues, and spirituals are heavily represented in the playlist, all birthed out of the African American experience.

The spiritual “Trouble of the World,” or “Soon-a Will Be Done,” is another song that sounded from my family television set many a time in my childhood, during my dad’s at least once-yearly watch of the 1959 film Imitation of Life. The funeral scene, which features Mahalia Jackson singing this solemn yet triumphant song that originated on Southern plantations during the era of slavery, always got him weeping:

While songs like this convey weariness, others burst with jubilation, like “Joy” by Ruthie Foster, from her 2002 album Runaway Soul:

“When I Get Home,” a traditional revival hymn performed by Elizabeth Mitchell with Dan Zanes, is more gently joyous. They based their version on a 1958 recording by Elizabeth Cotten, who recalled the song from her youth in North Carolina:

For a Christocentric song, consider Andy Zipf’s rendition of “Immanuel’s Land,” aka “The Sands of Time Are Sinking.” The hymn was written by Anne Cousins in 1854 and is traditionally sung to the tune RUTHERFORD, composed by Chrétien Urhan in 1834. Zipf sings three of its nineteen stanzas.

Oh! Christ, he is the fountain,
The deep sweet well of love!
The streams on earth I’ve tasted,
More deep I’ll drink above:
There, to an ocean fullness,
His mercy doth expand,
And glory—glory dwelleth
In Immanuel’s land.

Oh! I am my Belovèd’s,
And my Belovèd’s mine!
He brings a poor, vile sinner
Into his house of wine:
I stand upon his merit,
I know no other stand,
Not e’en where glory dwelleth
In Immanuel’s land.

The bride eyes not her garment,
But her dear bridegroom’s face;
I will not gaze at glory,
But on my King of grace;
Not at the crown he giveth,
But on his piercèd hand:
The Lamb is all the glory
Of Immanuel’s land.

There are also a few choral pieces on the playlist, including “Goin’ Home,” an adaptation of the English horn melody from the second (Largo) movement of Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony by one of Dvořák’s students in America, William Arms Fisher, who also added lyrics. Though Fisher says the composition was inspired by African American spirituals, it’s not Christian-specific, but it is compatible with Christian belief, its speaker “just goin’ home . . . through an open door,” to where friends and family are waiting; “nothin’ lost, all’s gain. . . . Real life’s just begun.” The arrangement sung by VOCES8 in the following video is by Jim Clements.

The Silkroad Ensemble, renowned for its unique cross-cultural collaborations, recorded the song in Mandarin and English, featuring Abigail Washburn on lead vocals and banjo, Wu Tong on backing vocals and sheng, Yo-Yo Ma on cello, Johnny Gandelsman on violin, and Kinan Azmeh on clarinet.

As for songs of the end that consider the natural world, I recommend “Over the River” by Jon Foreman, the lead vocalist of Switchfoot. It’s from his 2008 solo album Limbs and Branches:

Hush, hush, hush, hush
Hush, hush, hush, hush

I heard a sound come from the ground
All of the trees are a-buzz
Talking in tongues, talking with lungs
Talking of freedom

All of the earth is soon to give birth
Look at the mountains alive
Birds and the bees, insects and leaves
All of us longing, longing for home
Home, home is somewhere I’ve never known

Refrain:
Over the river
Over the river
I’ve set my hope
Over the river
Over the river
I’ll find my hope in You, You

Death, where is your sting?
Your signet ring?
Where is your power?
Why all this war?
Death to the score
Nations are fading

Kingdom of light, setting us right
Finally human
Give me a tongue
It will be done
Inside I’m longing, longing for love
Love, love is something I’ve never known

Thoughtful lyrics are also a hallmark of the folk trio Ordinary Time, who have several songs on the playlist, two with original words and one that sets a passage, lightly adapted, from the final chapter of Augustine’s City of God, titled “All Shall Be Amen Alleluia.”

All shall be Amen, Alleluia
We shall rest and we shall see
All shall be Amen, Alleluia
We shall see and we shall know
We shall know and we shall love
We shall love and we shall praise
All shall be Amen, Alleluia
Behold our end which is no end

For songs on the playlist that I’ve previously featured on the blog, see:

Moreover, there are many hymns that build to a final stanza about death, heaven, or resurrection, several of which are funeral classics:

“Amazing Grace”
“It Is Well with My Soul”
“Be Still, My Soul”
“Rock of Ages”
“Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”
“What Wondrous Love Is This”
“Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand”
“I Am Thine, O Lord”
“How Great Thou Art”
“Be Thou My Vision”

This is just a sampling of the nearly two hundred songs on the “Funeral Songs” playlist. Note that even though I’ve subtitled the list “The Christian Hope of Life After Death,” I mean that to include both the first and final phase of that life, both the soul’s immediate ascent to heaven and its ultimate reuniting with the raised body on a renewed earth—though as I’ve mentioned, existing catalogs skew heavily toward the former, and we’re in need of better balance that reflects Christians’ central hope of resurrection.

What songs have brought you comfort after the death of a loved one or are helping you face your own death? Is there a particular one you want sung at your funeral?

Advent, Day 11: He’ll Outshine the Sun

December 10, 2025 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

His face was like the sun shining with full force.

—Revelation 1:16

[. . .] make ready for the Face that speaks like lightning,
Uttering the new name of your exultation
Deep in the vitals of your soul.
Make ready for the Christ, Whose smile, like lightning,
Sets free the song of everlasting glory
That now sleeps, in your paper flesh, like dynamite.

—Thomas Merton, from “The Victory” (1946)

LOOK: Portrait of Jesus by Hatigammana Uttarananda

Uttarananda, Hatigammana_Portrait of Jesus — Hatigammana Uttarananda (Sri Lankan, 1954–), *Portrait of Jesus*, 1996. Oil on canvas, 72 × 61 cm. © missio Aachen.

Hatigammana Uttarananda is a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk, artist, and scholar. His friendship with Fr. Aloysius Pieris, SJ—a Jesuit priest, liberation theologian, and founding director of the Tulana Research Centre for Encounter and Dialogue in Kelaniya—led him to study the Christian Gospels and to portray some of its stories in his paintings.

In his semiabstract Portrait of Jesus, Christ’s face gives off a deep radiance. He is both enlightened and enlightening.

“Bikku Uttarananda portrays Jesus with lowered eyelids, the enlightened one who has found the true meaning of life and is united in compassion with the suffering of all beings,” writes the Christian theologian Wesley Ariarajah in Christ for All People: Celebrating a World of Christian Art. “The rays of the light of life burst through his forehead; the colours are those of the saffron robes of the Buddhist monk and the fire of self-giving.”

LISTEN: “When Jesus Comes,” African American spiritual | Arranged by Alice Parker, 1988, and performed by The Musicians of Melodious Accord on Listen, Lord: A Cantata, Two Suites, and Eight Spirituals, 2010

When Jesus comes, he’ll outshine the sun
Outshine the sun
Outshine the sun
When Jesus comes, he’ll outshine the sun
Look away beyond the moon

When Jesus comes, we’ll sing Hosiana! . . .

When Jesus comes, we’ll shout Hallelujah! . . .

If you want to see King Jesus, keep prayin’ on . . .

Alice Parker (1925–2023) was an American composer, arranger, conductor, and teacher whose arrangements of hymns, spirituals, and folk songs of American, French, Spanish, Hebrew, and Ladino origin have become part of the repertoire of choirs around the world. In addition to arrangements, she also wrote original works, including operas, song cycles, cantatas, choral suites, and hymns. In 1985 she founded the professional choir Melodious Accord, with whom she released fourteen albums.

For the African American spiritual “When Jesus Comes,” she cites her source as The Negro Sings a New Heaven, a collection compiled by Mary Allen Grissom (University of North Carolina Press, 1930).

Roundup: The body as sacred offering; rest as resistance; “Amazing Grace”

June 10, 2025July 9, 2025 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

I’m late in notifying you about my June 2025 playlist (a random compilation of faith-inspired songs I’ve been enjoying lately), but be sure to check it out on Spotify.

See also my Juneteenth Playlist, which I’ve added six new songs to since originally releasing it two years ago, including a cover of Roberta Slavitt’s protest song “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle,” “Black Gold” by Esperanza Spalding, and “The Block” by Carlos Simon, a short orchestral work based on a six-panel collage by Romare Bearden celebrating Harlem street life.

Romare Bearden, The Block — Romare Bearden (American, 1911–1988), *The Block*, 1971. Cut-and-pasted printed, colored, and metallic papers, photostats, graphite, ink marker, gouache, watercolor, and ink on Masonite, 4 × 18 ft. (121.9 × 548.6 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.

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PODCAST EPISODE: “The Body as Sacred Offering: Ballet and Embodied Faith” with Silas Farley, For the Life of the World, April 30, 2025: An excellent interview! “Silas Farley, former New York City Ballet dancer and current Dean of the Colburn School’s Trudl Zipper Dance Institute, explores the profound connections between classical ballet, Christian worship, and embodied spirituality. From his early exposure to liturgical dance in a charismatic Lutheran church to his career as a professional dancer and choreographer, Farley illuminates how the physicality of ballet can express deep spiritual truths and serve as an act of worship.”

I was especially compelled by Farley’s discussion of turnout, the rotation of the leg at the hips—foundational to ballet technique. It gives the body an “exalted carriage” and allows for “a more complete revelation of the body,” he says, because you see more of the leg’s musculature that way. This physical positioning, he says, reflects the correlative “spiritual turnout” that’s also happening in dance, and that Christians are called to in life—a posture of openness and giving. He cites the theological concept of incurvatus in se, coined by Augustine and further developed by Martin Luther, which refers to how sin curves one in on oneself instead of turning one outward toward God and others.

Farley also discusses how liturgical dance is like and unlike more performative modes of dance (“liturgical dance . . . is a kind of embodied prayer . . . a movement that goes up to God out of the body”); how discipline and freedom go together; the body as instrument, and how dancers cultivate a hyperawareness of their bodies; the two basic design elements of ballet, the plié and the tendu, and their significance; his formation, from ages fourteen to twenty-six, under the teaching of Rev. Dr. Tim Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church; the Four Loves ballet he choreographed on commission for the Houston Ballet, based on a C. S. Lewis book (see promo video below, and his and composer Kyle Werner’s recent in-depth discussion about it for the C. S. Lewis Foundation); Songs from the Spirit, a ballet commissioned from him by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (see next roundup item); Jewels by George Balanchine, a three-act ballet featuring three distinct neoclassical styles; “Hear the Dance” episodes of City Ballet the Podcast, which he hosts; and book recommendations for kids and adults.

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SITE-SPECIFIC BALLET: Songs from the Spirit, choreographed by Silas Farley: Commissioned by MetLiveArts [previously], Songs from the Spirit by Silas Farley is a three-part ballet for seven dancers that interprets old and new Christian spirituals, having grown out of an offertory Farley gave at Redeemer Presbyterian Church based on the song “Guide My Feet, Lord.” Staged in the museum’s Assyrian Sculpture Court, the Astor Chinese Garden Court, and the glass-covered Charles Engelhard Court of the American Wing, the ballet progresses from “Lamentation” to “Contemplation” to “Celebration.” Here’s a full recording of the March 8, 2019, premiere:

For the project, Farley solicited new “songs (and spoken word poetry) from the spirit” from men who were currently or formerly incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in California, whose creative talent he learned about through the Ear Hustle podcast. Recordings of these contributions form about half the score, while the other half consists of traditional spirituals sung live by soprano Kelly Griffin and tenor Robert May. My favorite section is probably “Deep River” at 26:54, a duet danced by Farley and Taylor Stanley, picturing a soul’s “crossing over” to the other side, supported by an angelic or divine presence, or perhaps one who’s gone before.

In his artistic statement, Farley says he wanted to invite viewers “to accompany us [dancers] on this journey: from darkness to light, bondage to freedom, exile to home.”

I am struck by how a contemporary work that is, in Farley’s words, so “unequivocally Christ-focused and Christ-exalting” was welcomed, even made financially possible, by a prestigious secular institution. I find apt Farley’s response when asked by Macie Bridge from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture about his consideration of his audiences (see previous roundup item):

All the people coming to the performance are hungry in different ways. Some are longing for beauty. Some are longing for a prophetic image of a better world. Some are longing to see something reflected back to them from their own lives. And I’m just trusting that as I offer the artwork as an act hospitality, and as I offer the artwork as an act of adoration and worship back to God, that in his own beautiful, winsome, totally personalized way, he’ll meet each of the audience members in the way they need to be met.

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ARTWORK: Dreaming with the Ancestors by Charlie Watts and Tricia Hersey [HT: Visual Commentary on Scripture]: Tricia Hersey is a poet, performance artist, spiritual director, and community organizer living in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that promotes rest as a form of resistance against capitalism (which fuels contemporary grind culture) and white supremacy, and the author of the New York Times best-selling Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto (2022) and We Will Rest! The Art of Escape (2024). She pursued graduate research in Black liberation theology, womanism, somatics, and cultural trauma, earning a master of divinity degree from Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

Watts, Charlie_Dreaming with the Ancestors — Charlie Watts and Tricia Hersey, *Dreaming with the Ancestors*, 2017. Archival digital print photograph, 76.2 × 101.6 cm.

The photograph Dreaming with the Ancestors, taken by Charlie Watts, portrays Hersey reclining on a wooden bench inside an open brick enclosure and above rows of cotton plants. Dressed in a soft yellow gown, she closes her eyes in rest, practicing what she calls “the art of escape”—from the incessant demand of productivity and overwork, from oppression of body and spirit, from noise that drowns out voices of wisdom.

In We Will Rest!, Hersey advises:

Every day, morning or night, or whenever you can steal away, find silence. Even if for only a few minutes. Look for quiet time, quiet breathing, quiet wind, quiet air. It is there. Even if it’s cultivated in your body by syncing with your own heart beating. Guilt and shame will be a formidable and likely opponent in your resistance. We expect guilt and shame to surface. Let them come. We rest through it. We commit to our subversive stunts of silence, truth, daydreaming, community care, naps, sleep, play, leisure, boundaries, and space. Be passionate about escape. (107)

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ALBUM: Grace Will Lead Me Home by Invisible Folk (2024) [HT: Jonathan Evens]: An Arts Council England grant awarded to singer-songwriter Jon Bickley in 2022 enabled him to conduct a research and songwriting project that culminated in the album Grace Will Lead Me Home, which engages with the hymn “Amazing Grace,” its author’s biography, and its legacy. Bickley partnered with the Cowper and Newton Museum in Olney and enlisted the collaboration of fellow folk musicians Angeline Morrison (The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience) and Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne (creator of the “Black Singers and Folk Ballads” resource for secondary educators, and concertina player on Reg Meuross’s Stolen from God). Here’s the title track, written and sung by Morrison:

The album also includes a cover of Zoe Mulford’s “The President Sang Amazing Grace,” written in response to the racially motivated mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015 (its ten-year anniversary is next Tuesday). In his eulogy at the funeral of one of the nine victims, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, President Barack Obama chose “the power of God’s grace” as his theme, and he closed by singing the first stanza of “Amazing Grace,” a moving gesture that Mulford’s song remembers.

Other songs on Grace Will Lead Me Home address John Newton’s love for his wife Polly, his impressment into naval service, and his friendship with William Cowper. There are also songs that grapple with the harm and suffering Newton inflicted on others through his involvement in the slave trade, and that wonder at his hymn’s being so mightily embraced not only by the Black church, many of whose members are descendants of enslaved Africans, but also by other traumatized communities, who insist amid all the wrongs and afflictions they’ve suffered that God is amazingly gracious.

It’s a myth that John Newton (1725–1807), who converted to Christianity in 1748 after surviving a turbulent sea voyage, immediately gave up his employment as a slave trader upon embracing Christ. In fact, he was soon after promoted from slave ship crew member to captain and sailed three more voyages to Africa as such, trafficking human beings for profit until 1754, when his ill health forced him to retire. But he continued to invest in slaving operations for another decade, until becoming a priest in the Church of England. It wasn’t until 1788, in the pamphlet Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade, that he publicly denounced slavery and confessed his sin of having participated in that evil institution, and this was the start of his abolitionism.

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SONG: “Amazing Grace,” performed by the Good Shepherd Collective: This adaptation of “Amazing Grace” premiered at Good Shepherd New York’s digital worship service on June 1. Listen via the Instagram video below, or cued up on YouTube. The vocalists are, from right to left, Charles Jones on lead, Solomon Dorsey (also on bass), Jon Seale, Dee Wilson, and Aaron Wesley. James McAlister is on drums, Michael Gungor is on electric guitar, and Tyler Chester is on keys.

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Roundup: Alfombras from Antigua, Christ the Grapevine, “Ask Now the Beasts,” and more

April 13, 2025May 8, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

HOLY WEEK TRADITION: Antigua, Guatemala, is renowned for its annual Good Friday observance, which involves the laying out of alfombras (carpets) of multicolored sawdust through the city’s cobblestone streets, hundreds of feet long. On Maundy Thursday, the city closes so that families and businesses can spend the day constructing the carpets, applying the sawdust to planned designs using stencils and strainers and adding pine needles, flowers, fruits, and other natural materials as well.

At 4 a.m. on Good Friday, the processions begin, with people carrying floats that bear statues of Christ carrying his cross, followed by marching bands playing solemn music. (This is a remembrance of Jesus’s walk to Calvary.) As their feet pass over the alfombras, the dust scatters. Locals and visitors gather along the streets dressed in black for mourning, and at 11 p.m. a figure of Jesus is laid to rest in the church.

Here are two resources for exploring this tradition further:

>> ARTICLE: “Exploring Guatemala’s Vibrant Easter Tradition” by Meredith Carey

>> VIDEO: “Alfombras de Semana Santa en Guatemala,” dir. Federica Dominguez: This short film (in Spanish, with English subtitles) interviews Rolando Ortiz, an alfombrero who is also a shoemaker. He explains that the carpets hark back to Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when the crowds strewed his path with palm branches (giving him the red carpet treatment, so to speak). Even though the alfombras last only a brief time, locals spare no expense in bringing them to fruition each year—“for Jesus,” Ortiz says. “It is an act of gratitude above all.” An offering of beauty and praise.

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NEW ALBUM: As Foretold, Part 3 by Poor Bishop Hooper: Released today, this is the final album in a trilogy based on the prophetic fulfillment passages in the Gospel of Matthew. It centers on Jesus’s passion and concludes with a resurrection epilogue. As with all their music, the duo graciously offers it for free download from their website.

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SONGS performed by Emorja Roberson: Emorja Roberson [previously] is a singer, gospel choir conductor, and assistant professor of music and African American studies at Oxford College of Emory University in Georgia. I enjoy following his YouTube channel. Here are two songs that are especially fitting for Holy Week.

>> “I Know It Was the Blood”: Roberson sings three verses of this beloved African American spiritual: the title verse, “They whipped him all night long,” and “He never said a mumblin’ word.” The song is more typically sung in a major key, and its full lyrics span Christ’s passion, resurrection, ascension, and second coming. But Roberson slows down the tempo and sings in a minor key, homing in on the sorrow of Good Friday.

>> “He Decided to Die” by Margaret Pleasant Douroux: Roberson, on keys, sings a gospel classic with friends Marcus Morton and Cameron Scott, a song that emphasizes Christ’s resoluteness on the cross, his endurance for love.

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VISUAL COMMENTARIES: “After the Order of Melchizedek” by Victoria Emily Jones: My latest contribution to the Visual Commentary on Scripture, a project based out of King’s College London, was published earlier this month. Tasked with choosing and commenting on three artworks that dialogue with Hebrews 7–8, I landed on a “You Are a Priest Forever” icon from Russia (very strange!), an Antwerp Mannerist triptych that centers the Last Supper, and (my favorite) a wall painting of Christ the Grapevine from a Romanian church. I was interested to explore the idea of how Jesus, in giving his body and blood, is both the offerer and the offered, both priest and sacrifice.

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POEM: “The Death of Christ” by Emperor Kangxi: Emperor Kangxi (1654–1722) ruled in China for sixty-one years during the Qing Dynasty. In 1692 he issued the Edict of Toleration, which barred attacks on churches and legalized the practice of Christianity among Chinese people. Curious about and respectful of other faiths, he penned this short poem on the Crucifixion using the classical qi-yen-she form.

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EXHIBITION: Tara Sellios: Ask Now the Beasts, Fitchburg Art Museum, January 18, 2025–January 18, 2026: Tara Sellios is a multidisciplinary artist from South Boston working mainly in large-format photography. Delighting in detail and complex symbolism, she often uses insects, dried fauna, bone, and other organic matter to create elaborate still lifes that she then photographs under dramatic lighting. She is inspired by art historical representations of the end of the world, especially the bizarre paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Albrecht Dürer’s Apocalypse woodcuts, and by seventeenth-century Dutch vanitas paintings.

The photographs in her current solo show, Ask Now the Beasts at Fitchburg Art Museum in Massachusetts, are “contemporary allegories of suffering and transcendence.” The exhibition’s title comes from Job 12:7.

Two of the works on display are a pair of crosses: Umbra (Latin for “darkness” or “shadow”) and Dilucesco (“to begin to grow light, to dawn”), which together suggest a movement from death to resurrection. Constructed with a throng of black beetles and other black insects, the Umbra cross evokes the detail from the Synoptic Gospels’ Crucifixion accounts that at noon, “darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed” (Luke 23:44–45; cf. Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33). Dilucesco, on the other hand, shows the cross seemingly exploding into light, as white moths and other winged insects break out of their cruciform shape. View these two photographic artworks, plus a few process photos and sketches the artist sent me, below. See, too, www.tarasellios.com.

“Our Grandmothers” by Maya Angelou (poem)

February 7, 2025February 8, 2025 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

White, Charles_Mother Courage II — Charles White (American, 1918–1979), *Mother Courage II*, 1974. Oil on canvas, 49 3/4 × 39 7/8 in. National Academy of Design, New York.

She lay, skin down in the moist dirt,
the canebrake rustling
with the whispers of leaves, and
loud longing of hounds and
the ransack of hunters crackling the near branches.

She muttered, lifting her head a nod toward freedom,
I shall not, I shall not be moved.

She gathered her babies,
their tears slick as oil on black faces,
their young eyes canvassing mornings of madness.
Momma, is Master going to sell you
from us tomorrow?

Yes.
Unless you keep walking more
and talking less.
Yes.
Unless the keeper of our lives
releases me from all commandments.
Yes.
And your lives,
never mine to live,
will be executed upon the killing floor of innocents.
Unless you match my heart and words,
saying with me,

I shall not be moved.

In Virginia tobacco fields,
leaning into the curve
of Steinway
pianos, along Arkansas roads,
in the red hills of Georgia,
into the palms of her chained hands, she
cried against calamity,
You have tried to destroy me
and though I perish daily,

I shall not be moved.

Her universe, often
summarized into one black body
falling finally from the tree to her feet,
made her cry each time into a new voice.
All my past hastens to defeat,
and strangers claim the glory of my love,
Iniquity has bound me to his bed,

yet, I must not be moved.

She heard the names,
swirling ribbons in the wind of history:
nigger, nigger bitch, heifer,
mammy, property, creature, ape, baboon,
whore, hot tail, thing, it.
She said, But my description cannot
fit your tongue, for
I have a certain way of being in this world,

and I shall not, I shall not be moved.

No angel stretched protecting wings
above the heads of her children,
fluttering and urging the winds of reason
into the confusions of their lives.
They sprouted like young weeds,
but she could not shield their growth
from the grinding blades of ignorance, nor
shape them into symbolic topiaries.
She sent them away,
underground, overland, in coaches and
shoeless.
When you learn, teach.
When you get, give.
As for me,

I shall not be moved.

She stood in midocean, seeking dry land.
She searched God’s face.
Assured,
she placed her fire of service
on the altar, and though
clothed in the finery of faith,
when she appeared at the temple door,
no sign welcomed
Black Grandmother. Enter here.

Into the crashing sound,
into wickedness, she cried,
No one, no, nor no one million
ones dare deny me God, I go forth
along, and stand as ten thousand.
The Divine upon my right
impels me to pull forever
at the latch on Freedom’s gate.

The Holy Spirit upon my left leads my
feet without ceasing into the camp of the
righteous and into the tents of the free.

These momma faces, lemon-yellow, plum-purple,
honey-brown, have grimaced and twisted
down a pyramid of years.
She is Sheba and Sojourner,
      Harriet and Zora,
      Mary Bethune and Angela,
      Annie to Zenobia.

She stands
before the abortion clinic,
confounded by the lack of choices.
In the Welfare line,
reduced to the pity of handouts.
Ordained in the pulpit, shielded
by the mysteries.
In the operating room,
husbanding life.
In the choir loft,
holding God in her throat.
On lonely street corners,
hawking her body.
In the classroom, loving the
children to understanding.

Centered on the world’s stage,
she sings to her loves and beloveds,
to her foes and detractors:
However I am perceived and deceived,
however my ignorance and conceits,
lay aside your fears that I will be undone,

for I shall not be moved.

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) was an African American poet, storyteller, civil rights activist, and lecturer, most famous for her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). She began her career as a singer, dancer, and actress but started writing in the late 1950s, often combining personal narrative with advocacy for racial and gender equality. In 1960 she worked as the northern coordinator for Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, before moving to Egypt and then Ghana with her son. She returned to the US in 1965 to help Malcolm X build the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

In addition to seven autobiographies and multiple poetry collections, Angelou also wrote children’s books, cookbooks, essays, short stories, stage plays, screenplays, documentaries, and music (including film scores). She was a recipient of three Grammys for her spoken-word albums, an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Kunta Kinte’s grandmother in the miniseries Roots (1977), the National Medal of Arts (2000), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010), the Literarian Award (2013), and many other honors. Recurring themes in her literary works include hardship and loss, love, social justice, Black beauty, the strength of women, and the human spirit.

In her Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy, given March 20, 1990, for the American Council for the Arts in Washington, DC, Maya Angelou addressed her audience with a question:

I often wonder what would happen if I could come face to face with a grandparent, a great-great-great-grandparent. Suppose you did? Just imagine. What would happen? Not a specter, a real person, 200 years old, who said, “So . . . You’re the reason I took the lash, you’re it, huh? So you’re the reason I took the auction block, and stayed alive . . . you’re it, are you? How is it with you? How are you doing with the gifts I gave you?”

She went on to describe how her grandmother and mother used to sing the African American spiritual “I Shall Not Be Moved” around the house. Its lyrics are based on Jeremiah 17:7–8: “Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit” (cf. Ps. 1:3; 62:6).

Angelou then talked about the importance of “being flexible so one can bend, resilient so that one can stand erect after being knocked down,” before proceeding to read her poem “Our Grandmothers.”

The poem celebrates the strong Black women who have gone before, that great cloud of witnesses, the ancestors, who stood firm in the face of all kinds of adversity, giving life to succeeding generations. The queen of Sheba (who gifted gold, spices, and jewels to King Solomon of Israel, as 1 Kings 10 relates, and who the ancient historian Josephus said ruled over Ethiopia and Egypt), abolitionist Harriet Tubman, writer Zora Neale Hurston, and educator and philanthropist Mary Bethune are among the women named. Self-assertive, tenacious, filled with holy desire, steadfast in the pursuit of freedom and justice.

Angelou is one of the most banned authors in the United States, particularly in high schools, where some districts deem her books inappropriate for their use of racial epithets and frank depictions of violence, including sexual assault. “Our Grandmothers” is mild by comparison to her first autobiography, but it does allude to lynching and rape and contains a litany of vulgar, demeaning names. She does not want to sugarcoat these realities, this history.

While acknowledging the suffering endured by Angelou’s female forebears, the poem is triumphant in tone. It’s that refusal to despair, that holding on to faith, that Angelou so admires and that impels her to join in that old refrain, composed in chains and having carried her people through countless trials and acts of resistance: “Like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved.”

Roundup: Why go to church, “Good Trouble,” “Sacred Songs Suite,” and more

February 3, 2025February 8, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: February 2025 (Art & Theology): I put these monthly playlists on pause for December and January, since I’ve already published long, dedicated playlists for the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, but now I’m picking back up my usual smorgasbord routine. Enjoy two hours of songs handpicked by me!

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PODCAST EPISODE: “Nadia Bolz-Weber: From Fundamentalism to Stand-Up Comedy to Ordained Pastor,” No Small Endeavor, January 27, 2025: “Christian Fundamentalism is often looked down upon for its dualistic, black-and-white outlook, which is often used for policing behavior. But, Nadia Bolz-Weber explains, these are the same extreme tendencies that she found in secular activism after she left the church. Later in life, after working as a comedian and entering recovery, Nadia began to untangle the mindset that had taken her from one extreme to the other. Her long journey has since led her to becoming a Lutheran pastor and a three-time bestselling author. In this episode, she tells her story.”

In conversation with host Lee C. Camp, Bolz-Weber [previously] discusses some of the gifts and wounds from her Church of Christ upbringing; how comedy prepared her for preaching; the influence of AA’s Twelve-Step Program on her life, especially her necessary reckoning with her powerlessness (“it doesn’t mean you don’t have access to power; it’s just that it doesn’t all come from you”); moving through the grief of losing her nephew; and her Red States Revival tour, which since the date of recording has been actualized!

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SUBSTACK POST: “Why go to church, anyway” by Amy Peterson, Making All Things New, November 20, 2024: Amy Peterson is an Episcopal priest from Asheville, North Carolina, and the author of one of my favorite books from 2020, Where Goodness Still Grows: Reclaiming Virtue in an Age of Hypocrisy. In this Substack post from last November, she shares some responses from when she asked on Instagram, “Why did you stop going to church?” and, to a different set of respondents, “Why do you go to church?” Then she answers the second question for herself, giving fourteen reasons why she would still go to church even if it wasn’t her job. I (a regular churchgoer who has been hurt in the past by the church, though not to the degree that many others have been) find these reasons so compelling and encouraging.

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SONG: “Good Trouble” by Thomas Keesecker: This choral work was inspired by the catchphrase of the civil rights icon John Lewis (1940–2020), who repeatedly called on Americans to “get in good trouble”—to agitate for liberty and justice for all. For example, on June 27, 2018, he tweeted, “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” Similarly, on December 4, 2019, at the opening of the Library of Congress exhibition Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words, Lewis said, “Rosa Parks inspired us to get in trouble. And I’ve been getting in trouble ever since. She inspired us to find a way, to get in the way, to get in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Lewis was a crucial leader of the civil rights movement, chairing the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966, participating in sit-ins and Freedom Rides, co-organizing the 1963 March on Washington, and, on March 7, 1965, physically leading, with Hosea Williams, some six hundred peaceful marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery to protest the disenfranchisement of African Americans, an action that erupted into what’s known as Selma’s Bloody Sunday. When the marchers refused to disperse, Alabama state troopers attacked them with billy clubs and teargas, fracturing Lewis’s skull. He survived and continued his political activism and advocacy for another half century, serving in the US House of Representatives for Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District from 1987 until his death in 2020.

To learn more about John Lewis and his remarkable Christian witness, see the documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble, which is streaming for free on Kanopy (ask your local library if they subscribe). Here’s a trailer:

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NEW ALBUM: Sacred Songs Suite by Du’Bois A’Keen: Last month I had the privilege of seeing Sacred Songs, a new dance work choreographed by Matthew Rushing and scored by Du’Bois A’Keen, performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. It was phenomenal! Both a visual and aural experience. The music was performed live with four vocalists (A’Keen sang lead) and a four-piece band, and throughout the evening, the verbal responses from the audience—“Mmmm” and “Amen” and “Yes, Lord!”—made me feel much more like I was in church than in a performing arts center.

Featuring original arrangements of nine spirituals, Sacred Songs “brings together and reimagines the sounds of jazz, West African drums, gospel, hip-hop, calypso, and more to call on the past, engage our present, and invite the listener into a magical, hopeful, and musical future.” A’Keen released the music, plus a few bonus tracks, on his album Sacred Songs Suite on January 18. “By the Waters” is one of the most memorable sections for me.

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VIDEO PROFILE: “NEA National Heritage Tribute Video: Marion Coleman”: I learned about the quilter and NEA National Heritage Fellow Marion Coleman last year when perusing the book Visioning Human Rights in the New Millennium: Quilting the World’s Conscience at the Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women exhibition at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC. (The book is not a catalog of the exhibition but was complementary in nature and thus was left on one of the gallery tables.) Her work is amazing! Here’s a video that provides a nice snapshot:

Coleman, Marion_Her Heart Was in the Clouds — Marion Coleman (American, ?–2019), *Her Heart Was in the Clouds*, 2012. Cotton fabric, cotton thread, and cotton batt, 60 1/2 × 60 in. (153.7 × 152.4 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

Coleman, Marion_Tender Gardens — Marion Coleman (American, ?–2019), *Tender Gardens*, 2014. Cotton fabric and batt, 72 1/2 × 72 1/8 in. (184.2 × 183.2 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

Christmas, Day 9: Pretty Little Baby

January 2, 2025January 2, 2025 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

LOOK: What You Gonna Name That Pretty Little Baby? by Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson

Robinson, Aminah_Mother and Child_reduced — Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson (American, 1940–2015), *What You Gonna Name That Pretty Little Baby?*, 1992. Pen and ink on typewriter paper. © Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson Trust.

Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson (1940–2015) was an artist working in multiple media whose work celebrates Black history and culture. She was a lifelong resident of Columbus, Ohio, and bequeathed her art, writings, home, and personal property to the Columbus Museum of Art, who established the Aminah Robinson Legacy Project in 2020.

The drawing above is one of twenty-six from Robinson’s excellent book The Teachings: Drawn from African-American Spirituals (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992). These drawings, she writes in the introduction, “have grown from the stories and songs that were given to me by my family and my early teachers, and I offer them here to the children of today’s troubled world and the children of tomorrow. They carry a message of dignity, knowledge, and wisdom . . . speak of survival, of freedom and determination, of love and faith, of justice and of hope . . .”

The artist’s estate is represented in the US by Fort Gansevoort in New York, which is currently showing Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson: Character Studies through January 25.

Another exhibition of her work, Aminah Robinson: Journeys Home, a Visual Memoir, will be touring nationally for the next few years: to the Springfield Museum of Art in Ohio (February 1–July 13, 2025), the Newark Museum of Art in New Jersey (October 16, 2025–March 1, 2026), the Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama (March 26, 2026–January 9, 2027), and two remaining venues to be announced. This is a major exhibition that brings together Robinson’s drawings, prints, paintings, textiles, collages, homemade books, dolls, “hogmawg” sculptures (made of a mixture of mud, clay, twigs, leaves, lime, animal grease, and glue), and “RagGonNon” pieces (monumental swaths of fabric encrusted with buttons, beads, and other found objects) to create a portrait of her life.

LISTEN: “Mary, What You Gonna Name That Pretty Little Baby?,” African American spiritual | Arranged by Alex Bradford, 1961 | Performed by Princess Stewart and Marion Williams on Black Nativity: Gospel on Broadway! (Original Broadway Cast), 1962

Mary, Mary, what you gonna name that pretty little baby?
Mmm, mmm, pretty little baby
Mmm, mmm, pretty little baby
Glory be to the newborn King

Some call him one thing, I think I’ll call him Jesus
Mmm, mmm, sweet Jesus
Mmm, mmm, (ain’t he sweet?) sweet Jesus
Glory be to the newborn King

Some call him Jesus, I think I’ll call him Wonderful
Mmm, mmm, wonderful
Mmm, mmm, he’s so wonderful
Glory be to the newborn King

Some call him Wonderful, I think I’ll call him Emmanuel
Mmm, mmm, King Emmanuel
Mmm, mmm, (ain’t he the king?) Emmanuel
Glory be to the newborn King

Some call him Emmanuel, I’m gonna call him the Prince of Peace
Mmm, mmm, Prince of Peace
Mmm, mmm, Prince of Peace
Glory be to the newborn King

Some call him Prince of Peace, I’m gonna call him Jesus
Mmm, mmm, sweet Jesus
Mmm, mmm, (ain’t he sweet?) sweet Jesus
Glory be to the newborn King

Mary, Mary, what you gonna name that pretty little baby?
Mmm, mmm, pretty little baby
Mmm, mmm, pretty little baby
Glory be to the newborn King

This Christmas spiritual, a dialogue between an unnamed visitor and the new mother Mary, has been recorded by many artists. I think I like the original cast recording from the Langston Hughes musical Black Nativity best, featuring soloist Princess Stewart on the first verse and Marion Williams on the remaining six, backed by the Stars of Faith.

But here’s a handful of other versions I like. Because the song was passed down orally, it has taken on different lyrical variations and accrued new verses. Some reference the wise men.

>> “The Virgin Mary Had One Son” by the Staple Singers, arr. Roebuck “Pops” Staples, on The 25th Day of December (1962):

>> “The Virgin Mary Had One Son” by Josh Garrels, on The Light Came Down (2016):

>> “What ’Cha Gonna Call the Pretty Little Baby” by the National Lutheran Choir, dir. David M. Cherwien, arr. Ronald L. Stevens, on Christ Is Born (2016):

>> “Glory to the Newborn King” by Chicago a Cappella, dir. Jonathan Miller, arr. Robert Leigh Morris, on Holidays a Cappella Live (2002):

>> “Virgin Mary Had One Son” by Joan Baez and Bob Gibson, live at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival (see also “Virgin Mary,” a bonus track on the 2001 Vanguard reissue of Baez’s 1966 album Noël):

Roundup: Bolivian Christian art, Ukrainian folk carol, and more

December 23, 2024December 23, 2024 Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

ART SERIES: Pallay: Andean Weaving of Liturgy and Design by Daniela Améstegui: Daniela Améstegui is a graphic designer from Cochabamba, Bolivia, who holds a master’s degree in theological studies from Regent College in Vancouver, with a specialization in Christianity and the arts. Her work “revolves around exploring faith, social justice, and Christian contextualization through design” and “reflects her commitment to using design as a tool for expressing and exploring theological concepts,” she says. She currently lives in Langley, British Columbia, with her husband and two young children, working as a freelancer.

Améstegui’s final Integrative Project in the Arts and Theology for her master’s program was Pallay: Andean Weaving of Liturgy and Design, a series of seven digital illustrations, one for each of the major seasons/feasts of the liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time. The designs are inspired by Andean textile art and culture. You can view the full series at the link above from Regent College’s Dal Schindell Gallery, where the works were first exhibited in early 2022, but also listen to this wonderful online talk Améstegui gave about Pallay in 2020 for INFEMIT’s Stott-Bediako Forum, where she discusses not only her motivation and influences but also the content of each specific piece:

Whereas those of us in the northern hemisphere associate Advent with cold, darkness, and the onset of winter, in the southern hemisphere Advent falls in early summer, a time when the earth is most fertile and farmers plant their seeds. In her Advent design, Améstegui connects Mary carrying the seed of new life within her with Pachamama (Mother Earth).

Amestegui, Daniela_Advent — Daniela Améstegui (Bolivian, 1990–), *Adviento* (Advent), 2019–20, from the digital illustration series *Pallay: Andean Weaving of Liturgy and Design*. Used with permission.

In Bolivia, Christmas takes place during a season of harvest, so in her Christmas design, Améstegui places Jesus in the center between crops of corn and quinoa, the two main agricultural foods cultivated in the country. Mary wears braids and a bowler hat and Joseph plays the zampoña (Andean panflute), and at the bottom three cholitas, Indigenous women from the Bolivian countryside, gather reverently to greet the Christ child.

Amestegui, Daniela_Christmas — Daniela Améstegui (Bolivian, 1990–), *Navidad* (Christmas), 2019–20, from the digital illustration series *Pallay: Andean Weaving of Liturgy and Design*. Used with permission.

Améstegui does not have a website just yet but tells me she plans to launch one in 2025. If you would like to purchase one or more of her Pallay pieces, you can contact her at daniela@amestegui.com.

Thank you to blog reader Nicole J. for alerting me to this striking series!

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VIDEO COLLECTION: Casa del Catequista (CADECA) chapel paintings: As chance would have it, the same week I learned about Daniela Améstegui’s work, a different blog reader, Mark M., emailed me a link to some videos his Langham Partnership colleague Paul Windsor took during a recent trip to Bolivia. They record the many paintings, most by the late Quechua artist Severino Blanco [previously], inside the chapel of CADECA in Cochabamba, a place where men and women are trained as Christian leaders who then go out to serve their rural communities. They portray scenes from the Old and New Testaments, the parables of Jesus, and Latin American church history, including a remarkable liberation theology–inspired Resurrection, in which Jesus breaks down the doors of death and hell, holding high a cacique’s staff and leading the people of Bolivia into their future. Here’s a 360-degree view captured by Windsor, but visit the boldface link to see additional videos that narrow in on particular portions.

Blanco, Severino_Nativity — Severino Blanco (Quechua [Bolivian], 1951–2020), *Infancy of Christ* painting cycle, 1985. Chapel of the Casa del Catequista (CADECA), Cochabamba, Bolivia.

On the west end of the chapel (where people enter the space) is an Infancy of Christ cycle—reproduced here from a scan of a pamphlet, it appears. In the center is a Nativity, the Christ child painted over a pane of glass through which natural light comes gleaming in (see a closer view). The oblong shapes radiating out from the center are also glass, onto which the artist has (I think) etched lambs in various stages of prostration. On the sides, two villagers come with hot water and towels, and at the bottom two shepherds kneel before the Savior, removing their hats as a sign of respect. At the top, a host of angels with rainbow-colored wings and indigenous instruments sing Christ’s praises.

To the left of the Nativity are six scenes: (1) The Annunciation to Mary, (2) The Visitation, (3) The Annunciation to Zechariah, (4) The Journey to Bethlehem, (5) No Room at the Inn, and (6) The Flight to Egypt. To the right are (7) The Annunciation to the Shepherds, (8) The Annunciation to Joseph, (9) The Presentation in the Temple, (10) The Adoration of the Magi, (11) Jesus with the Scholars in the Temple, and (12) The Massacre of the Innocents.

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SONGS:

>> “Admirable Consejero” (Wonderful Counselor) by Santiago Benavides: Santiago Benavides is a Colombian singer-songwriter living in Toronto. On his Facebook page he describes his musical style as “trova-pop-bossa-carranga worship.” This song he wrote is a setting of Isaiah 9:2, 6–7 in Spanish. In the video, he’s the guitarist with the red-tinted glasses.

>> “The Word Became Flesh” by John Millea: John Millea is “a storyteller with a guitar,” singing in the tradition of Americana, folk, and gospel “about life and all of its joys, sorrows, and struggles.” He’s one of the artists I support through Patreon. This was the first song of his I encountered, and it’s one of my favorites, engaging with John 1:1–3, 14 in a wholly unique way!

In contrast to everyone and everything else in the universe, Millea explains, God had no beginning point, and all that is can in some way be traced back to him, the first link in a massive chain of cause and effect. So here Millea playfully traces his guitar all the way back to God—from the store he bought it at in Illinois, to the factory in Pennsylvania they ordered it from, to the mill in Washington that supplied the wood, to the Alaskan forests whence the tree was logged, and so on and so forth, imagining many thousands of years of fallen and dispersed tree seeds that traversed seas and continents, with an ultimate source in a tree planted in Eden by the Word of God.

When he hits on Eden, he starts moving forward again, through the story of creation, fall, and redemption in Christ, the divine beginningless One who graciously and mysteriously entered human history, born of a woman named Mary.

>> “Mary Had a Baby”: Arranged by Roland Carter, this African American spiritual is performed by the Nathaniel Dett Chorale, featuring the amazing mezzo-soprano Melissa Davis. It’s from their 2003 album An Indigo Christmas, the tracks taken from two live concerts given at the Church of St. George the Martyr in Toronto.

>> “Що то за предиво” (Shcho to za predyvo) (Behold a Miracle): This Ukrainian folk carol is performed by Trioda (Тріода), a musical group consisting of Andrii Gambal, Volodymyr Rybak, and Pavel Chervinskyi.

What is this awe-inspiring miracle?
There is great news on earth!
That the Virgin Mary gave birth to a son.
And upon birthing him, she declared,
“Jesus—my son!”

And the aging Joseph stands nearby in awe
Of Mary having given birth to a son.
And he prepares the swaddling for Jesus Christ.
And Mary swaddles him, and scoops him to her heart—
The pure Virgin Mary!

Trans. Joanna (Ivanka) Fuke [source]

Advent, Day 19: Thy Light Is a-Comin’

December 19, 2024June 7, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.

—Isaiah 60:1

But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.

—Malachi 4:2a

LOOK: Christ as Sol Invictus, Early Christian mosaic

This ceiling mosaic from an ancient Roman mausoleum built for one Julius Tarpeianus and his family contains an extraordinary depiction of Jesus Christ modeled after the sun-god Sol Invictus, who was sometimes identified with Helios, Apollo, or Mithras. It’s one of many surviving examples of how the early Christians appropriated pagan iconography for their own use, communicating the sacred stories and truths of the new faith—in this case, Jesus as the light of the world.

Buried beneath St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, the mausoleum was first discovered in 1574 when a workman conducting floor alterations on the cathedral accidentally broke through. A larger hole was then drilled to gain access, which is why this mosaic on its vault is partially destroyed.

The mosaic shows a male figure wearing a radial crown and wheeling through the sky in a quadriga (four-horse chariot)—though just two of the horses survive. He holds an orb, symbolic of his dominion over the earth, and is dressed in a tunic and a windswept cloak. His other hand, missing due to the damage, may have been making a blessing gesture. He sends forth rays in all directions, lighting up the sky with a golden sheen. Grapevine tendrils unfurl all around him, symbolic of life and especially the life-giving Eucharist.

Most scholars identify the image as Christian and read the figure on the sun-wagon as Christ, though this is debated. Other images in the mausoleum are of a fisherman, a shepherd, and a man being swallowed by a sea-monster (e.g., Jonah)—all of which appear in both pagan and Christian funerary contexts in that era.

That December 25 was the birthday of Sol Invictus (and Mithras, a Persian sun-god whose cult gained popularity in Rome in the third century) likely factored into the church choosing that date for the annual celebration of Jesus’s birth. In his book Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God, Bobby Gross, the vice president for graduate and faculty ministries for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, writes,

Worship of the sun has a long history in ancient cultures. The Roman emperor Aurelian, who apparently wanted to unite the empire around a common religion, instituted the cult of Sol Invictus, the “Unconquered Sun,” in 274 and declared the day of the winter solstice, December 25, as the birthday and feast of the sun-god. [The official date of the winter solstice in the Roman Empire would change to December 21 when the Council of Nicaea adjusted the Julian calendar in 325.] The earliest evidence of Christians in Rome celebrating Christ’s nativity on December 25 appears later in 336. Many scholars conclude that the church purposefully countered the pagan festival by adopting its date for their celebration of the birth of “the sun of righteousness” (Mal. 4:2). This cultural appropriation became an implicit witness to the truly unconquerable light. (66–67)

Other scholars argue that December 25 was chosen because the Feast of the Annunciation—celebrating the miraculous conception of Christ in Mary’s womb—had already been fixed on March 25, the spring equinox, and if you count forward nine months (the average human gestation period), you land on December 25.

These two theories of the dating of Christmas are not mutually exclusive. Christ’s birth was and is celebrated in Rome as a festival of light, so it makes sense that Christians there would mark that birth on the date when the daylight hours first start to grow longer. (Just as it makes sense that his conception was placed in springtime, reflecting the flowering of new life.) Jesus came to us in the depths of our darkness, bringing light. The winter solstice is not an intrinsically pagan event—it’s a natural one, which religions of all kinds find meaning in, not to mention the practicality in ancient societies of marking time by the courses of the sun and the moon.

Many of the church fathers wrote about Jesus as light-bringer and as Light itself. In chapter 11 of his Protrepticus pros Hellenas (Exhortation to the Greeks), written around 200 CE, Clement of Alexandria glories in the light of Christ that extends over all of creation, banishing the darkness. The chapter is editorially titled “How great are the benefits conferred on humanity through the advent of Christ”:

Hail, O light! For in us, buried in darkness, shut up in the shadow of death, light has shone forth from heaven, purer than the sun, sweeter than life here below. That light is eternal life; and whatever partakes of it lives. But night fears the light, and hiding itself in terror, gives place to the day of the Lord. Sleepless light is now over all, and sunset has turned into dawn. This is the meaning of the new creation; for the Sun of Righteousness, who drives his chariot over all, pervades equally all humanity, like his Father, who makes his sun to rise on everyone, and distills on them the dew of the truth. (translated from the Greek by William Wilson, adapt.; emphasis mine)

In chapter 9 of the same work, Clement expounds on Ephesians 5:14, writing, “Awake, he says, you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light—Christ, the Sun of the Resurrection, he who was born before the morning star, and with his beams bestows life.”

Similarly, Ambrose of Milan refers to Christ as “the true sun” in his Latin hymn “Splendor paternae gloriae,” written in the second half of the fourth century:

O splendor of God’s glory bright,
O Thou that bringest light from light,
O Light of Light, light’s Living Spring,
O Day, all days illumining.

O Thou true Sun, on us Thy glance
let fall in royal radiance,
the Spirit’s sanctifying beam
upon our earthly senses stream.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Morn in her rosy car is borne:
let Him come forth our Perfect Morn,
the Word in God the Father One,
the Father perfect in the Son. Amen.

Trans. Robert Bridges

Some Christians may feel uncomfortable with Christ’s being made to resemble a pagan deity in the Vatican Necropolis mosaic, or with the suggestion that the church saw fit to celebrate Christ’s birth on the same day Sol Invictus, the “Invincible Sun,” was said to be born. As for myself, I feel no such qualms. Just as the apostle Paul affirmatively quoted the pagan poets Epimenides and Aratus in his Areopagus sermon to reveal the truth of Christ (Acts 17:28), so too can we recognize connection points between our own faith tradition and others, which often reveal common yearnings we share—for example, for light that the darkness cannot overcome.

It’s then for us to articulate what makes Christ, who is such a light, distinct from those who came before and after. He is true God and true man, born miraculously of a virgin in first-century Judaea. He knows our sorrows intimately, because he was one of us—he made himself vulnerable. He taught people how to live as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. For that he was crucified, but he conquered death, rising from the grave and ascending to the right hand of the Father, where he lives and intercedes for us. He will come again to restore us to our true home. This, the story of Christ, is what C. S. Lewis called “a true myth.”

Suggestions for further reading:

Robin Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2023)
Kurt Weitzmann, ed., Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979) (available to read online for free)

LISTEN: “Rise, Shine, for Thy Light Is a-Comin,” African American spiritual

>> Performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, dir. Paul T. Kwami, feat. Briana Barbour, 2016:

>> Performed by the William Appling Singers on Shall We Gather, 2001:

Refrain:
Rise, shine, for thy light is a-comin’
Rise, shine, for thy light is a-comin’
Rise, shine, for thy light is a-comin’
My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by

This is the year of Jubilee
(My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by)
My Lord has set his people free
(My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by) [Refrain]

I intend to shout and never stop
(My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by)
Until I reach the mountaintop
(My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by) [Refrain]

Wet or dry, I intend to try
(My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by)
To serve the Lord until I die
(My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by) [Refrain]

This song originated in enslaved African American communities in the southern US in the first half of the nineteenth century. They composed spirituals as a way to hold on to hope amid the suffering inflicted on them by their enslavers.

The spirituals often hold double meanings, with words like “salvation,” “deliverance,” and “freedom” referring to God’s acts toward the soul and the body. So “freedom,” on the one hand, can mean freedom from sin and eternal death, but it can also mean freedom from physical bondage. “Light” could be the light of the world, Jesus, returning to consummate his kingdom on earth, and it could be the lantern of an Underground Railroad conductor, come to guide you up north to liberation.

The “year of Jubilee” in the first verse refers to the Jubilee law of ancient Israel, which dictates that every fifty years, the enslaved are to be set free (see Leviticus 25). “Wet” in the last verse may refer to how some enslaved people tried to escape by crossing rivers.

“Rise, Shine, for Thy Light Is a-Comin’” exhorts its hearers to take heart, for the sun of righteousness is on its way.

Advent, Day 11: Judgment Day

December 11, 2024December 20, 2024 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

LOOK: The Judgment Day by Aaron Douglas

Douglas, Aaron_The Judgment Day — Aaron Douglas (American, 1899–1979), *The Judgment Day*, 1939. Oil on tempered hardboard, 48 × 36 in. (121.9 × 91.4 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]

Born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1899, Aaron Douglas moved to New York in 1925 and became one of the leading artists of the Harlem Renaissance. He studied African art and European modernism, developing his own unique visual language that brought together influences from cubism, art deco, and African sculpture.

In his early career he worked as an illustrator for Black magazines, including The Crisis and Opportunity, and accepted a commission by the esteemed poet James Weldon Johnson to illustrate his collection God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. After the book’s publication in 1927, numerous other commissions followed, including large-scale murals. In 1944 Johnson established the art department at Fisk University in Nashville and taught there until his retirement in 1966.

The Judgment Day (1939) is based on one of Johnson’s illustrations for God’s Trombones, made to accompany a poem of the same title. It showcases his signature style of silhouetted figures and flat, hard edges.

In the painting, the archangel Gabriel stands astride earth and sea, summoning the living and the dead to judgment with a blast of his horn. He holds the key to the kingdom of heaven, which he’ll open to those who have repented of their sins and trusted in Christ. A bolt of lightning rips through the sky on the left, and on the right, a light ray shines down onto a praying figure who is ready for the great accounting.

LISTEN: “In That Great Gettin’ Up Morning,” African American spiritual | Arranged by Jester Hairston and performed by the Leonard De Paur Infantry Chorus, 1953

I’m a-gonna tell you ’bout the comin’ of the judgment
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
I’m a-gonna tell you ’bout the comin’ of the judgment
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
There’s a better day a-comin’
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
There’s a better day a-comin’
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)

Refrain:
In that great gettin’ up morning
Fare thee well, fare thee well
In that great gettin’ up morning
Fare thee well, fare thee well

Oh preacher, fold your Bible
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Preacher, fold your Bible
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
For the last soul’s converted
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Oh, the last soul’s converted
(Fare thee well, fare thee well) [Refrain]

Blow your trumpet, Gabriel
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Blow your trumpet, Gabriel
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Lord, how loud shall I blow it?
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Blow it right calm and easy
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Do not ’larm all my people
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Tell them all to come to judgment
(Fare thee well, fare thee well) [Refrain]

Then you’ll see them coffins bustin’
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Then you’ll see them corpses risin’
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Then you’ll hear that rumblin’ thunder
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Then you’ll see that forkèd lightnin’
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Then you’ll see the stars a-fallin’
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Then you’ll see the world on fire
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Then he will call sinners
(Fare thee well, fare thee well)
Then he will call sinners
(Fare thee well, fare thee well) [Refrain]