The Healer's Art: Stained-Glass at the Intersection of Faith and Medicine
Andrew Kim, Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University, Lawndale Christian Health Center and Lindsay Mahler, Loyola Stritch School of Medicine, Lawndale Christian Health Center
Stained glass artwork has long captivated and commanded communal narratives and visual storytelling. Often weaving local life and Biblical imagery, stained glass offers a unique medium of prophetic imagination--literally illuminating how faith reinterprets culture. (Brueggemann 1978) We present a theological and artistic case study of a community-based, faux-stained glass series project at a Hispanic-majority church in Chicago, where congregants and neighbors have faced compounding health inequities arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, racism and xenophobia, and the recent migrant crisis, fueling other social barriers to health and flourishing. Borrowing Walter Brueggemann's framework, we ask: how can stained glass designs both critique the dominant narrative of a neighborhood and energize beholders toward prophetic hope?
Created by a health professions student living intentionally within the community, the three-pane series interprets the intersection of a health inequity, a Biblical narrative, and a form of neighborhood activism. Viewers are first invited to recall past ways a church community has responded to the health disparities of its context in Biblically-inspired ways. Second, outsider and dominant narratives, often dehumanizing to the local community, are directly confronted with Biblical story-telling. Finally, the beholder is inspired to imagine new possibilities for communal flourishing.
The first pane addresses maternal health disparities, Mary's Magnificat (Luke 1) & The Hemorrhaging Woman (Mark 5), and the barrio effect. The second portrays Biblical narratives on migrants and journeying, focusing on the The Good Samaritan (Luke 10) and the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24). The third pane explores food insecurity, met with Five Loaves and Two Fish (Matthew 14) and The Last Supper (Matthew 26). Together, they trace the pilgrimage of a beloved immigrant neighbor loving others as a depiction of Aquinas' wayfarer. (Kinghorn 2024) In this multifaceted catechesis--an organic Visio Divina--we argue that a tool historically used for teaching and illumination has a profound and sacred public place at the intersection of medicine, religion, public health, and the arts.
Created by a health professions student living intentionally within the community, the three-pane series interprets the intersection of a health inequity, a Biblical narrative, and a form of neighborhood activism. Viewers are first invited to recall past ways a church community has responded to the health disparities of its context in Biblically-inspired ways. Second, outsider and dominant narratives, often dehumanizing to the local community, are directly confronted with Biblical story-telling. Finally, the beholder is inspired to imagine new possibilities for communal flourishing.
The first pane addresses maternal health disparities, Mary's Magnificat (Luke 1) & The Hemorrhaging Woman (Mark 5), and the barrio effect. The second portrays Biblical narratives on migrants and journeying, focusing on the The Good Samaritan (Luke 10) and the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24). The third pane explores food insecurity, met with Five Loaves and Two Fish (Matthew 14) and The Last Supper (Matthew 26). Together, they trace the pilgrimage of a beloved immigrant neighbor loving others as a depiction of Aquinas' wayfarer. (Kinghorn 2024) In this multifaceted catechesis--an organic Visio Divina--we argue that a tool historically used for teaching and illumination has a profound and sacred public place at the intersection of medicine, religion, public health, and the arts.