Church replaces stained glass window of Edward Colston with ‘non white’ Jesus in boat with refugees

St Mary Redcliffe church in Bristol removed four glass panels dedicated to the 17th-century English slave trader.

Jimmy Nsubuga
Thu, 24 August 2023 

The new stained glass windows are installed at St Mary Redcliffe Church, in Bristol. (SWNS)

A church has replaced a stained glass window of slave trader Edward Colston with one featuring Jesus ‘in multiple ethnicities’ and refugees in a boat.

St Mary Redcliffe church in Bristol removed four glass panels dedicated to the 17th-century English merchant following the toppling of his statue in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests.

The window was temporarily replaced with plain panels and the church invited the public to submit new designs in a competition.

Local junior doctor Ealish Swift won the contest with a series of images showing a ‘non-white’ Jesus in a variety of situations and the new windows were installed on Thursday.

Read more: Edward Colston: Why toppled statue was hated by many

A young Jesus is shown as a refugee in a boat fleeing to Egypt. (SWNS)

Jesus is shown on a ship. (SWNS)

Vicar of St Mary Redcliffe, Canon Dan Tyndall, previously said: "The toppling of Edward Colston turned an international spotlight onto Bristol and its entangled history profiting, as it most certainly did, from human trafficking.

"The opportunity to reimagine how we can tell the story of the Good Samaritan was grasped enthusiastically by the church.

"We look forward to the new windows being installed."

Permission for the windows to be replaced was granted by the Church of England’s court in Bristol.

Read more: Street named after slave trader Edward Colston 'renamed' after activists who tore his statue down

The window shows the 1963 Bristol civil rights bus boycott. (SWNS)

The windows show a 'non-white' Jesus in a boat with refugees and with the Bristol Bus Boycott campaigners.

The Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963 arose from the refusal of the Bristol Omnibus Company to employ black or Asian bus crews in the city.

At that time, there was widespread racial discrimination in housing and employment against people of colour.

A St Mary Redcliffe Church spokesperson said the new designs referred to Bristol’s ''rich multicultural past and present''.

The statue of Colston is pushed into the river Avon. (Getty)
Controversy over Edward Colston statue

The bronze statue of Edward Colston, which had long been a source of division in Bristol, was hauled down during an anti-racism demonstration, one of the many that swept the globe in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Three men and a woman were eventually cleared in January 2022 of causing criminal damage for helping to pull down the statue and throw it into Bristol harbour.

The incident prompted a national debate about memorials to figures linked to the slave trade or Britain's colonial past, with some government ministers arguing the action amounted to the censoring of history.

Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees said the statue was in storage, but the long-term plan is for it to be displayed in public “with context”.