Mary as Prophet, awarded a 2016 Faith & Form Honor Award in Religious Arts, is sited on a small terrace just outside the walls of the seminary’s 1881 chapel (preserved as a sanctified space after a 2010 fire) and within view of the new chapel.

The sculpture depicts the Visitation (Luke 1:39-56), when Mary hastens to visit her older cousin, Elizabeth, and sings the Magnificat: “He has scattered the proud…cast down the mighty…lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things.” Her powerful and prophetic words place Mary in the line of the Old Testament prophets and echo Hannah’s song in 1Samuel 2:1-10.

Mary is shown very young and tense with prophecy, her focus turned inward. Elizabeth, very old, moves toward Mary, reaching forward to comfort and support her. Depicted as women from sub-Saharan Africa, they embody the Seminary’s ties with churches in Africa and reflect the composition of the Anglican Communion. And this depiction of Mary and Elizabeth as ordinary (rather than idealized) women, reminds viewers of the church’s call to “lift up the lowly.” The Archbishop of Canterbury, consecrating the sculpture, remarked that he sees these same women in refugee camps and other areas of conflict and deprivation.

The figures are a significant presence on this campus, an axis linking old and new: old chapel and new; old age and youth; Old Testament and New. And their prominent location honors the significance of women’s ministries in the church.