Religious Icons and Prayer Cards of Black Saints and Martyrs for Black History Month

Black and African-American Saints and martyrs are honored with religious icons by famed Franciscan iconographer Robert Lentz, and with imported Italian prayer cards.

(PRWEB) February 9, 2004 --MissPoppy.com, the first alternative Christian online retailer, is offering a new line of religious products honoring the participation of Blacks and African-Americans in the Christian faith.

Robert Lentz
A Franciscan brother, Robert Lentz has painted over 100 icons in the Byzantine style. His inspired icons make it possible for people of different cultures and religious backgrounds to make intimate contact with religious stories and concepts from which they have long been excluded.

MissPoppy.com currently offers two icons in postcard form: "Jesus Christ Liberator," and "Martin Luther King, Jr.," and one in note card form: "Saints Perpetua and Felicitas," which captures the love between these two Christian martyrs.

"Jesus Christ Liberator" features a Black man and is described, "Christ wears the traditional Greek garments of icons, ...but now they have African colors: the burnt orange of the Maasai and the white of the Saharan peoples. Like most African men, He wears necklaces.

"The justification for this icon lies in the text Christ holds (Matthew 25:31-46). 'When did we see you...?' those on Christ's left will ask him at the Last Judgment. The text reminds us that Christ identified with the poor and oppressed of the world. The lives of the saints abound with stories about how Christ appeared as a beggar or a sick person in need. Christ has suffered in the Black members of His Mystical Body for many centuries—slavery, exploitation, prejudice, racial violence. The time has come to depict His solidarity with the Black peoples of the world—in iconographic form."

The icon of Martin Luther King, one of the martyrs of the Twentieth Century, is depicted in vivid colors, enhanced with gold coloring. "He was an ordained minister of the Baptist Church. From 1955 until his death, he led a campaign of nonviolent resistance in the United States against racial oppression and injustice. The number he wears around his neck is from a 'mug shot' taken one of the many times he was arrested by American police for resisting unjust laws. The prison bars behind him represent the occasions he himself was placed in jail, and also the oppression and slavery of Blacks in the U.S. The text on his scroll is from his speech in Albany, Georgia, on December 14, 1961. The Greek inscription by his head reads, 'Holy Martin.'"

These cards are available at: http://www.misspoppy.com/goto/black_saints

Other formats of all the existing Black icons, including Saint Benedict the Black, Bernard Mizeki, Saint Martin de Porres, Moses the Ethiopian, Mother of the Streets, and Steven Biko of South Africa, are available. Contact Miss Poppy at misspoppy@misspoppy.com for more information.

Imported Italian Prayer Cards
Many saints commonly identified as "white" were actually Black, or people of color. This series of prayer cards features four well-known images:

1. The beautiful Black Madonna and Child of Czestochowa. Though the cause of the darker coloring of the icon is in dispute, it is the coloring, and the possibilities inherent in it, that has made this Madonna and Child adored throughout the world.

2. Saint Augustine of Hippo, beloved and renowned church father. Son of Saint Monica, Augustine came from North Africa, a black man who bore a black son, Adeodatus (meaning "God given"). He left his wife of twelve years to enter the ministry, taking the boy with him. Saint Augustine was a brilliant writer, the author of many common sayings, religious and secular.

3. Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo, is the patron saint of all mothers. Saint Monica is also from North Africa, born in Thagaste in about 331.

4. Saint Martin De Porres, son of a Spanish nobleman and a Black woman. When he was young his mother sent him to work as a helper to a surgeon where he learned to care for the sick. He later entered the convent as a lay brother in the infirmary.

All four cards are imported from Italy, gilt detailed, and laminated. Prayers to the various saints and words of comfort are printed on the back of each card. All 4 5/8" x 2 3/8"

These cards are available at: http://www.misspoppy.com/goto/black_saints

MissPoppy.com opened in June 2003 and seeks to be the web's first and most complete one-stop shop for all popular Christian products, religious accessories, and spiritual gifts. Miss Poppy Dixon has been online since 1995 with Miss Poppy Dixon's Adult Christianity [http://www.jesus21.com.

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