Friday Anniversary Thoughts II—St. Stephen’s: Connecting in Light 1
(detail) AZ Shindler, Interior of St. Stephen’s 1853/1858
Built as our meeting place with God and one another, the physical St. Stephen’s foregrounds a powerful architectural messenger: soaring stained-glass windows whose colors and compositions provide voices for the light pouring in, sign (Scripture tells us repeatedly) of divine presence and spirituality. Our physical church is among the first in this country, and likely the first in Philadelphia, designed to include original stained-glass windows for our times. These provided the “storied windows” and “dim religious light” that Bishop Hobart proposed, at our consecration in 1823, for the ideal modern church inspired by Gothic models. Learn more
We must also keep in mind, however, that congregations (usually through committees), not just powerful visionaries and designers, shape such features. Because of their prominence and expense, our windows became deliberate expressions of who we are through our values. Though most of our windows were replaced over more than a century, I’m continually struck by how many convey facets or examples of connection and continuity. I wonder if those values, expressed in manifold ways, provide a distinctive dimension of our mission through time?
As we approach our 200th anniversary, I’ll explore connection and continuity in key windows as they appeared in the church.
The Original Windows of the 1820s
I’ve found nothing in the church archives to help here, so looking and interpreting now are vital. An account, published 5 years after St. Stephen’s consecration, reports that the church chose identical English ornamental windows throughout the nave. Today, we have several on the upper story that, though modified over time, meet that description as twin lancets (narrow lance-like windows), like the one shown here. They’re filled with symbolic natural elements that, even in Christian art, have various meanings, so here’s what this window says to me.
For me, these symbols in radiant color affirm the relationship between God, Christ and humankind. The largest and brightest areas assure us of God’s loving presence with their mottled fields of gold lilies, a symbol of divine purity and goodness. Above, grape leaves and fruit clusters, embedded in burnished gold, red, and green, render the life-giving Eucharist, our ritual interaction with the loving, sacrificial man-god. The whole is banded by blue ivy vines that promise fidelity and immortality, ours and God’s. Between the lancets, a naturalistic cherub in cloudy (celestial?) sepia tones contemplates the Eucharist. These symbols communicated by light, for me, gather us in mutual commitment, interaction in worship, and promised afterlife together.
I see this window as a powerful statement at our birth as a church, reiterated in multiples throughout “our” section of the church, about connection (human and divine) and continuity (the immortal God’s constancy, the vitality of the ancient Church, and our future across and beyond time).
New windows for the growing church 1879-80
Magee memorial windows in the 1878 Furness transept (since modified), 2019
50 years later, as the congregation grew dramatically, Frank Furness’ added transept introduced a radically new type of window for St. Stephen’s that instead spoke through life size narrative figures and settings from Scripture. Their subjects were crucial. Donors offered these windows to the church as memorials for departed congregants that honored their values through depicted parallels in Scripture. Memorial donors were often involved in choosing subjects, but the church committee’s approval was paramount. Some of the honored values are familiar Christian tenets; what matters is how the departed put them into practice in life and how those efforts and values were depicted in the window.
This inaugural pair opened options for later windows in shifting attention to actions in everyday life.
James Magee memorial window, Abraham and the 3 Angels
The chosen subjects here, the roots of the Abrahamic lineage (Genesis 18 and 24), celebrate God’s blessing of service, in this case generosity to strangers. The bottom window represents Abraham’s lavish welcome to three strangers (some say angels; others, angels with God), earning Abraham and Sarah’s long-promised son in old age, a miracle.
The upper window depicts a later moment, when the virtuous young Rebekah offered water to Abraham’s agent Eliezer, dispatched to find a wife for the grown miracle son Isaac. Eliezer took her generosity to a stranger as signaling God’s choice of Isaac’s bride.
Caroline (Carrie) Magee memorial window, Rebekah at the Well
Though church documents don’t tell us how these subjects were chosen, these two windows suggest a parallel in life: They honor the patriarch and a prematurely lost daughter of a prominent Philadelphia family that was profoundly involved with the region and St. Stephen’s throughout the latter’s first century, the Magees. James Magee (1802-1878) admirably embodied service. He was a successful entrepreneur who retired in his 40s to focus on civic activities and the infant, radically transformative railroad as an influential director; he also deepened his work as vestryman at St. Stephen’s until he died.
Drawn by the windows’ soaring luminous presence, we explore their complex narratives in the richly colored, detailed stained glass designed by late English Pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Holiday. The eloquent poses and gestures, for me, convey the heart within service.
A form of connection and continuity, service weaves us together, divine and human, in values from earliest times that this church took to heart, pursued, and physically honored.
— Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator