Painting Pentecost

Over the past century the Christian center of gravity has been shifting from the Euro-American West to the Global South, where the prevailing forms of Christianity are Pentecostal and charismatic in character. It’s not just that these are the fastest growing denominations. More significantly, the broad range of Christian traditions—including Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant churches around the world—are being touched and invigorated by Pentecostal and charismatic renewal.

One place where we can see expression of this is in art. The work of Thai artist Sawai Chinnawong, for example, gives a glimpse into the renewing presence of the Holy Spirit in other settings around the globe. In his painting Pentecost, Chinnawong depicts Acts 2:1–4. On the Jewish day of Pentecost all of Jesus’ disciples are gathered in one place when a sound like a violent wind fills the house, and “they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:3–4, NIV). The text links the tongues of fire with a proliferation of speech in other tongues, reminding us of Jesus’ pronouncement that when the power of the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples it will propel them as witnesses from Jerusalem throughout Judea and Samaria and even “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Although many artists have depicted this event, Chinnawong does so in surprising ways. He situates the Pentecost event within the traditions of Buddhist painting. The bright red and gold colors, along with the triple-peaked blue sawtooth sinthao line at the top of the image, identify a holy space. In Thai painting it is common to see the Buddha seated in the center of this space, often with his head surrounded by a stylized flame similar to the one filling the center of Pentecost. But where one might expect to find the singular figure of Buddha, instead one sees a community organized around a massive holy fire that is repeated in the small tongues of fire burning above each of the disciples’ heads. The Holy Spirit fills the space and the disciples, burning intensely but not as a consuming fire.