The Peaceable Kingdom

There shall come forth a shoot from the st The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and a little child shall eat them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw The nursing child shall play over the whole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Isaiah 11, 1, 6, through 9. This prophecy from the Hebrew Scriptures is commonly read in churches during the Advent season, as it anticipates the peace that will be ushered in by the coming of the Messiah. Its most famous visual interpreter is Edward Hicks, a Quaker minister and folk artist born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1780. He painted the scene at least 62 times during his career, predators and prey lying down together in harmony, and a little rosy cheek child, the Christ child, leading them. This particular version in the National Gallery is from 1834. An extension of Hicks' preaching ministry, the Kingdom Paintings, which he gave as gifts to friends and family, proclaimed to the eye, quote, the pure gospel of Jesus Christ, Hicks said. As a Quaker, Hicks believed that the light of Christ is within everyone. As Jesus said in Luke 1721, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. To access that inner light, we need to yield our self-will to the will of Christ, who regenerates us, making us agents of redemption in the world. The doctrine of the inner light does not deny the reality of a counteracting inner darkness. Hicks elaborated on this inner sermon preached to the Goose Creek meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia in February 1837, the most important source for interpreting his Kingdom Paintings. In this sermon, Hicks denounces the so-called animalistic passions of h Selfishness, greed, violence, bitterness, hate. These untamed vices, Hicks says, can be subdued only through surrender to Christ. So too can people say no to the ignoble instincts that pit them against one another. Painted in warm brown tones, Hicks's peaceable Kingdom depicts the five animal pairs mentioned by Isaiah, wolf and lamb, leopard and goat, calf and lion, cow and bear, lion and ox. As well as two children playing over a ravine, representative of the nursing child and the wean child who cavort with wild creatures without harm. Most importantly, a little boy in contemporary dress descends the small hill, leading a lioness into the celebration. He is the boy child Jesus Christ, born to reconcile the entire creation to God and to one another, turning enemies into friends. This painting brings together past, present and future to present a theology of peace that may seem simplistic on the surface, but is actually quite fraught. The traditional Christian reading of the scene, as depicting the future state of the world that God will institute at the end of time, is no doubt one layer. But as we saw, Hicks also read this passage as emblematic of what could happen in the here and now when people experience what he called the inward advent of the Savior. Namely, we abandon our warring natures and live out the peace of Christ. As a concrete example of this possibility, Hicks looked back to an episode from America's colonial past depicted in the middle ground at the left. Pennsylvania founder William Penn entering into a treaty of perpetual friendship with the Lenape Indians in the early 1680s. In a gesture of openness, Penn stands on the bank of the Delaware River with arms outstretched under the legendary Peace Elm, along with other Quakers in their low-crowned, large brim tats, as merchants unfurl cloths from a box. Penn was well respected by the Lenape because he treated them This Hicks thought is what it looks In some of his other Kingdom paintings, Hicks adapts this vignette of Quaker history to include banners proclaiming the words of the angels to the shepherds on the first Christmas night. Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy, peace on earth, goodwill to men. By conflating the founding of Pennsylvania with the story of Jesus' birth, Hicks suggests that the gospel has real implications on how we interact with our neighbors. Thrusting this then into the context of Isaiah's messianic prophecy of an everlasting Kingdom of peace further complicates things. On the one hand, Hicks could be suggesting a continuity between present-day peace-building efforts and the eventual end to which they lead in Christ. Or he could be drawing a contrast that highlights the imperfection of h Maybe both. Clearly, he's idealizing the Holy Experiment William Penn embarked on to establish a lasting community of peace and justice. But that experiment had failed. Painting nearly 150 years after the Great Treaty with the Lenape Indians, Hicks was painfully aware that Penn'successors did not honor its terms. And not only had the Quakers' intercultural relations frayed, but there was also, in 1827, a schism for the first time in the denomination's history, separating the society of friends into orthodox and liberal factions. Hicks's kingdom paintings express his deep yearning for unity and peace within the church, the country, and the wider world, as well as his struggle to hold on to hope that the seeds of peace we sow today are not sown in vain. His Christian faith kept him clinging to the promises of Scripture, which assured an eventual full flowering under the reign of Christ of light and love and joy and peace, which will, in the words of Isaiah, fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.