My primary vocation is ministry. I am a pastor who teaches the Bible. I discovered in Henry Tanner a painter who created some of the most moving biblical genre paintings I have ever seen, yet I felt myself wishing he had chosen other subjects—specifically Black subjects. Why? I wrestle with this question in my own heart. The tension I feel, and what I’ve tried to capture in telling his story, is that the reason Tanner stopped painting Black genre paintings and switched to biblical genre scenes was, in fact, largely the result of the realities of racial prejudice. Had he continued to paint the
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