Faith, Form and Light: A Guide to the Stained Glass Windows at Christ Anglican Church

Christ Anglican Church, Stained Glass Windows
Introduction
The ten stained glass windows in this series are situated along the south and north faces of the church’s
clerestory above the nave. The windows proceed clockwise beginning with the southeast window. Each
window has the same dimensions—approximately 2 ft wide by 3 ft tall—and are each the same height
from the ground (18 ft). The uniform size and elevation create continuity in the series. This continuity,
in turn, is further aided by several repetitions of forms appearing across the series of windows.
First is the repetition of a thick, red external border of uniform width on each side, and a slender white
inner rectangular border, which together frame each window’s central image. The second form which
appears throughout is the vertical, cyan stripe. This bright blue band is comprised of two thin vertical
panes of equal width, such that the central black band that connects them perfectly bifurcates the left
half of the image from the right. This blue stripe runs from the top to bottom in each window,
intersecting the red and white frame.
This placement creates depth in the compositions as we innately understand or assume that the blue
exists in front of the red and white border. The main symbolic and gurative components of each
window appear to rest or hang on the blue band as if it is a pilaster, column, or beam. This lends
additional signicance to the central features as they are, or appear to be, elevated out of and above the
red and white surrounding elds. The consistent presence of the red, white, and blue forms also helps
integrate the windows into the surrounding architecture of the building. Just as each clerestory
window opening is the same size and is positioned at the same height, each image contains the same
essential features. To that end, the border area and band of blue in each window operate both
metaphorically and concretely as a transitional zone between the material realm of the church wall and
the spiritual world represented in each central image.
These repeated forms further parallel the function of the church’s architecture: they provide a
consistent ground to support a multitude of colors, shapes, symbols, and gures just as the physical,
built environment of this church provides a steady space for its many parishioners throughout their
lives and the variations in their journeys of faith. While one’s experience in this church is sacred, it is
not conned to this physical building. We are reminded of this in viewing the aspects of select
windows that are not contained by the red and white frame. These features cross through the
composition’s boundary to reach the edges of the composition.
Ultimately, this movement, expansion, and transformation—both of the compositional elements and in
our daily lives—is the essence of why stained glass is powerful: it embodies the ability for an
immaterial, intangible entity to move through a material form, at once transforming and causing
transformation. The small clear, diamond-shaped panes that appear in each window most acutely
represent this phenomenon as they refract light through colorless glass to reveal a full spectrum of
colors. In doing so, these diamonds provide a reminder that this phenomenal interaction of the physical
and immaterial, of spirit and matter, is as miraculous as it is profoundly simple, universal, and everpresent.
The artist Chris Powers of Scottsdale, Arizona created this series of ten stained glass windows. Powers
conceived of the imagery and was assisted by the utilization of extant designs and collaborative
conversations with the Rev. Canon Steven E. Dart. The Rt. Rev. John Upham blessed the windows on
the twentieth anniversary of the consecration of Christ Anglican Church on November 24, 2019.