https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9175-3734
![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Mary and Jesus typically appear in visual art in one of two scenes: the “Madonna with Christ Child” (“Platytéra”), or “Pietà” (Mary holding Jesus after his crucifixion). Mark Doox’s icon Our Lady, Mother of Ferguson and All Those Killed by Gun Violence (2016) fuses these contrasting narratives by depicting a modern-day crucifixion of the Ferguson Christ Child in front of (or within) his mother’s womb. Doox’s adaptation of ancient iconography and allegory for Mary and Jesus make a poignant statement about today’s threat of gun violence, particularly in black communities. This paper exegetes the icon’s biblical visual allegory by highlighting parallels between the icon, biblical scriptures, visual theologies of the “Platytéra,” “Black Madonna,” and “Pietà,” and the socio-cultural context of this icon following inter-racial violence in Ferguson, Missouri. This paper explores the value that the icon provides for discourse on the intersection of race, theology, and art.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge Mark Doox for his brilliant and thought-provoking work. Thank you, Mark, for all of our conversations and the insight you have shared with me about your life, your vision, and your work. Thank you for your permission to include your icon in this article.
Thank you, Professor Rebecca Esterson, for your teaching and guidance. Your “History of Biblical Interpretation” course at the Graduate Theological Union inspired me to explore biblical allegory in art, which led me to this icon. Thank you, Professor Amanda Kaminski, for graciously introducing me to Our Lady, Mother of Ferguson. Thank you, Professor Kathryn Barush, for so generously teaching me about art history and iconography. Thank you, Dr. Christine Joynes, for your leadership with the “Bible in Visual Art” program unit at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (2019) and the University of Oxford’s Bible in Art, Music and Literature seminar (2020).
Thank you, Mom, for my life and our faith.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Declaration of Interest Statement
In accordance with Taylor & Francis policy and my ethical obligation as a researcher, I am reporting that the only funding I have received towards the publication of this essay has been a $400 grant that I received from the Center for the Arts & Religion (CARe) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California on November 11, 2021 to defray the cost of publishing this essay that includes colour figures. If Black Theology chooses not to publish this article, I will return the $400 funding to CARe.
Correction Statement
This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (https://doi.org/10.1080/14769948.2024.2318098)
Notes
1 Sojourners, “New Icon Depicts Black Mary as ‘Our Lady Mother of Ferguson.’”
2 The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, “Close Looking Salon: Black Iconography in St. John the Divine.”
3 Hart, “The Mother of God in Festal Icons.”
4 Whitman, Interpretation and Allegory, 4.
5 The author has decided to write terms for racial categories (“black,” “brown,” “white”) in lower case for two reasons: (1) as a testament to the mutual relationship between race and colour in this work of visual art (seeking to harmonise reference to the terms in both racial and artistic contexts); and (2) also to minimise confusion with other capitalised names and terms in the paper, such as the Black Madonna, Michael Brown, and Black Lives Matter.
6 Mark Doox, “About Mark Doox.”
7 Albert Douglas Honegan, Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, “‘Our Lady of Ferguson and All Who Have Died of Gun Violence': Reflections on ‘Black Lives Matter’ and Visual Biblical Allegory during Black Catholic History Month.”
8 Sojourners, “New Icon Depicts Black Mary as ‘Our Lady Mother of Ferguson.’”
9 Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 110.
10 Ibid., 105–6.
11 Ibid., 248.
12 Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 110.
13 Curry and Ghebremedhin, “Michael Brown Could Have Survived First 5 Shots, Last Shot Killed Him, Autopsy Says.”
14 NBC News, “Ferguson Chief Names Darren Wilson as Cop Who Shot Michael Brown.”
15 Rosenbaum, “Florida Family Seeks Justice After Unarmed Teen Shot By Neighborhood Watch Captain.” See also, Cobbina, Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, 78.
16 Black Lives Matter, “8 Years Strong.” See also, Black Lives Matter, “About.”
17 Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 229. Theologian, professor, and author Kelly Brown Douglas writes, “In response to this noonday slaying, the streets of Ferguson were filled with protests for nine nights.”
18 NewsOne Now, “Tef Poe Breaks Down The ‘Hands Up Don’t Shoot’ Movement.”
19 Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 230. Douglas discusses the role of race in the discourse around Michael Brown’s killing, which this paper cites in more detail in the section on “Black Visual Biblical Allegory, Symbolism, and Christology.”
20 U.S. Department of Commerce, “Community Facts: Ferguson city, Missouri.”
21 Cobbina, Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, 1.
22 Williams, “America's Racial Reckoning Black Lives and Black Futures in Historical, Political and Legal Context.” See also, Doox, “Gallery: Our Lady of Ferguson.”
23 Levine, Thomas, Cloherty, and Date, “Ferguson Report.”
24 Cobbina, Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, 91.
25 Ibid.
26 Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, “Iconography in the ‘Sacred Béma.’”
27 Michelangelo, Pietà, 1498–1499, Marble, 174 cm x 195 cm, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City.
28 Pettis, “Panagia,” 432.
29 Elise Harris, “Who is ‘the Black Madonna’ and why is she so important?”
30 CatholicSaints.info, “Our Lady of Altötting.”
31 “Montserrat Visita: Our Lady,” Monestir de Montserrat.
32 Vallée de la Dordogne, “The Sanctuaries.”
33 Duricy, “Black Madonnas.”
34 Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries, 67–80.
35 Boss, Mary, 81.
36 Harris, “Who is ‘the Black Madonna’ and why is she so important?”
37 Doox, “Gallery: Our Lady of Ferguson.” On his webpage dedicated to Our Lady of Ferguson, the iconographer Doox clearly states that “the Mother of God and Christ are black.”
38 Cleage, Black Messiah, 4. See also, Clark, Albert Cleage Jr. and the Black Madonna and Child, 117; Shrine of the Black Madonna, “Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman.”
39 Cone, God of the Oppressed; Douglas, The Black Christ.
40 Blum and Harvey, The Color of Christ, 7.
41 Doox, “The N-word of God: Envisioning the Image of Christ.” Doox writes about how views such as these and biblical scriptures related to the image of Christ (such as the prophetic Isaiah 53:2 [“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him”]) have impacted his creative process, inspiring his Byz-Dada surrealist and collaged portrayal of Jesus in iconography: “[T]hese ideas have led me to approach my icons and the image of Christ differently and have decidedly transformed my image making. I have combined my primary influence, the Byzantine iconographic genre, with early Italian religious iconography and specific ideas found in the 20th century dada, pop and surrealist artistic movements.”
42 Boguslawski, “Russian Painting.”
43 Steffler, Symbols of the Christian Faith, 67.
44 Doox, “Gallery: Our Lady of Ferguson.”
45 Cone, God of the Oppressed, 16.
46 Sadar, “Before Sunday’s Major Boston Protest, Clergy Marched to Police Headquarters.” Sadar reports, “Rev. [Laura] Everett carried an icon, Our Lady of Ferguson Missouri and All Those Killed by Gun Violence, throughout the march and gathering [in Boston]. Created by the artist Mark Doox, Everett ‘felt it was important to me to bring this image of the Holy Mother because we heard George Floyd cry for his mother, and so many people respond to Mary’s cry for her son.’”
47 Pastoureau, Black, 30, 52.
48 Gage, Color and Culture, 83–90.
49 Boraas, “Purple,” 855.
50 Proverbs 31:22 (NRSV)
51 Gambero, Mary in the Middle Ages, 61.
52 McGuckin, “Platytera,” 450–1. Platytéra icons often feature the infant Christ within a roundel upon Mary’s womb or bosom to symbolise Jesus conceived by the Holy Spirit “but not yet born.”
53 Burton-Christie, “The Scandal of the Particular.”
54 Matthew 27:19, 24 (NRSV)
55 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NRSV)
56 Matthew 5:38–40 (NRSV)
57 Catholic Biblical Association of Canada, “Early Christian Symbols.”
58 John 6:64 (NRSV)
59 Luke 22:52–53 (NRSV)
60 Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 174. Douglas discusses the role of crucifixion in Jesus’ lifetime: “In Jesus’ first-century world, crucifixion was the brutal tool of social-political power. It was reserved for slaves, enemy soldiers, and those held in the highest contempt and lowest regard in society. To be crucified was, for the most part, an indication of how worthless and devalued an individual was in the eyes of established power. At the same time, it indicated how much of a threat that person was believed to pose. Crucifixion was reserved for those who threatened the ‘peace’ of the day. It was a torturous death that was also meant to send a message: disrupt the Roman order in any way, this too will happen to you. As there is a lynched class of people, there was, without doubt, a crucified class of people. The crucified class in the first-century Roman world was the same as the lynched class today. It consisted of those who were castigated and demonized as well as those who defied the status quo. Crucifixion was a stand-your-ground type of punishment for the treasonous offense of violating the rule of Roman ‘law and order.’”
61 Doox, “The N-word of God.”
62 Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, xiii.
63 Ibid., 1–2.
64 Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 230.
65 Ibid., 174.
66 Ibid., 178.
67 Doox, “The N-word of God.”
68 Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 225.
69 Ibid., 183–4.
70 Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 187.
71 Isaiah 40:30–31 and Galatians 6:9 encourage faith in God to counter weariness: “Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:30–31 [NRSV]); “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9 [NRSV]).
72 Genesis 1:27 (NRSV)
73 King, “The American Dream.” The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., emphasises, “There are no gradations in the image of God. … [E]very man is made in the image of God.”
74 Clark, Albert Cleage Jr. and the Black Madonna and Child, 171–87. In his writing on the Rev. Albert Cleage Jr.’s life, Clark provides reflection on the significance of the imago Dei for twentieth-century and contemporary black theology.
75 Matthew 22:37–40; 1 John 4:20–21 (NRSV)
76 Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 172. Douglas writes on the dire need to end violence: “The cross is at the center of black faith. The paradox of the cross helps black people to deal with the contradictions of black living. There is no greater contradiction than the senseless murder of a seventeen-year-old, young black adolescent denied an opportunity to go home. The cross affirms the faith of his mother that his death was not in God’s plan. The absurdity of the cross reveals the ‘ridiculousness’ of the assertion that God had something to do with Trayvon’s death.”
77 Matthew 5:11 (NRSV)
78 Matthew 1:23 (NRSV)
79 Romans 8:31 (NIV)
80 John 19:26–27 (NRSV). The Gospel of John places Mary at Jesus’ crucifixion: “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’”
81 Mikulich, “Black Lives Matter.”
82 Gage, Color and Culture, 89. Gage asks, “Why should white be considered superior to all other colors?” Gage details how fifteenth-century Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla challenged the hierarchy of colour symbolism proposed by jurist Bartolo of Sassoferrato. Bartolo cited Aristotle and argued that “white was noble because of its lightness and black the least noble since it was opposite to white.” Valla, “on the basis of everyday experience embodied in ordinary language [related to colour],” found it “stupid to want to lay down the law about the dignity of colours.”
83 Acts 10:34 (KJV); Acts 10:34 (NRSV)
84 James Martin, “Post.”
85 Sojourners, “New Icon Depicts Black Mary as ‘Our Lady Mother of Ferguson.’”
86 Mikulich, “Black Lives Matter.”
87 Religion News Service, “Faith at the Barricades.”
88 Mickey McGrath, “We need images of the Black Madonna now more than ever.”
89 Doox, “The N-word of God.”
90 Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 227.
91 Editor’s Note: The article was written and submitted prior to the subsequent trial of Derek Chauvin, who was found guilty of murdering George Floyd.
92 Psalm 90:13 (NRSV)
93 “Say Her Name,” The African American Policy Forum.
94 Tetrault, “Where Does ‘Say Their Names’ (#SayTheirNames) Come From?”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Albert Douglas Honegan
Albert Douglas Honegan is a theologian, linguist, and language artist whose work and research interests include language, culture, religion, education, the arts, and technology. He is currently a doctoral student at the Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley, California. He also teaches various languages, including Amharic, Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Arabic Language and Literature from Georgetown University in 2008 and his Master of Arts in Biblical Languages from the Graduate Theological Union and the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in 2020.