The members of a 180-year-old Baltimore church took a symbolic step Sunday toward facing and transcending what they recently discovered is their congregation’s own racist history, including ties to slavery.
About 100 people at Govans Presbyterian Church in North Baltimore heard the Rev. Lea Gilmore, a longtime social-justice activist and gospel singer, as well as the church’s minister for racial justice and multicultural engagement, dedicate a painting in two panels, “Sanctuary City I and II,” during a celebratory 90-minute service at the house of worship on York Road.
The works, by Baltimore-born muralist Ky Vassor, depict 13 people of color associated with the city, some of them well known and others less prominent, mostly in postures of worshipful supplication.
The two panels incorporate images of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore man who died in police custody in 2015, sparking weeks of widespread unrest; of Pauli Murray, the celebrated civil rights activist, legal scholar and Episcopal priest who was born in Baltimore in 1910; and a worker in a hard hat who Vassor says represents the six Latino men who perished in the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge last year.
Installed on Tuesday, the panels now flank “Christ the Consoler,” a Tiffany stained-glass window dating to about 1905 that depicts what appears to be a Jesus of European ancestry giving comfort to a young man.
Generations of worshippers at Govans came to view the stained-glass work as something like the church’s trademark. But a committee of members who set out in 2021 to research the congregation’s history learned not only that the church sits on land that was once part of a slaveholder’s plantation, but that the window is dedicated to Anna Graeme Turnbull, an early congregant who, history shows, owned two enslaved persons.
That, in turn, led committee members to confront the reality that the Jesus the window depicts appears to be white — a conceit adopted by European artists of the late 19th Century during a period of widespread colonization but that scholars say has little basis in fact — as well as to rethink how such images might make nonwhite Christians feel.
They sent a request for proposals to Baltimore’s African American arts community for a work that might diversify the religious imagery inside the church. The submission by Vassor, a mixed-media artist and curator known for working on collaborative community art projects in her hometown, was overwhelmingly approved.
It was during the past year that congregant Myra Brosius, who led the church’s research efforts, came across the will of landowner and church namesake William Govane. In the document, Govane describes the property in what was then known as Govanstowne as a “plantation,” and he lists the names (first names only) of 30 individuals who were enslaved there.
Vassor added 15 of the names across the top of each panel, and she incorporated a map from the 1930s that evokes what might have been the perimeter of the Govane estate.
“I let the members know it was imperative to me that we acknowledge the formerly enslaved individuals who were forced to upkeep that land,” Vassor said in an interview last week. “They were very amendable to that, and I appreciate it so much.”
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Invited to the stage to speak about the process of creating the work, Vassor told a hushed congregation that discussions behind the project “included an examination of Govans’ contribution to institutional racism in Baltimore during its founding as well as an exploration of the church’s ongoing commitment to combatting racial injustices today.”
She read the names of all 30 individuals who had been enslaved on the site, and when she finished speaking, the audience erupted in applause.
Brosius and others said that while Govans was an overwhelmingly white congregation throughout most of its history, church leaders began realizing years ago that its demographics fell short of reflecting the diversity of the neighborhoods that had grown up around it.
The history project was part of a churchwide effort to attract worshippers from a wider variety of backgrounds. So was the gospel- and spiritual-tinged music Gilmore introduced to its services when she joined the staff five years ago.
Govans’ membership of about 150 people, nearly all Caucasian as recently as 20 years ago, is between one-third and one-fourth African American. The diversity of backgrounds shaped the theology of Sunday’s service and gave rise to a blend of music that at times had congregants clapping and crying “Amen!”
Gilmore did nothing to hide her joy at the outcome — three art works in a prominent place above and behind the altar, suggesting the connectedness under God of individuals of all ethnic backgrounds, and a church full of worshippers on hand to celebrate.
In her sermon, she repeatedly cited passages in which Jesus preached the idea — revolutionary for its time — that those who follow him should love others, whatever their background.
She pronounced herself a “happy child of God today,” and the audience gave a supportive laugh.
“Today, we did not solve racism,” Gilmore said. “[But] I know we did take a step. We put our feet in the water. We further acknowledge that Christ the Consoler consoles all of us, every color, every culture. Everybody is welcome in this diverse congregation.”
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