(REVIEW) A 9-by-23-foot fresco depicting 30 people who have battled homelessness, addiction and poverty fills the back wall of the sanctuary at Haywood United Methodist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. 

This mural, Haywood and the homeless population of Asheville are the subjects of “Theirs Is the Kingdom,” a documentary premiering on PBS on Easter Sunday. 

The mural depicts its subjects in the setting of the Beatitudes, Jesus’ sermon recorded in the Gospel of Matthew that emphasizes the importance of caring for the poor. 

It was painted in the fresco style popularized by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo — a rare medium in the modern world. Also rare is the depiction of the poor, when traditional fresco figures are heroes of history like God, Adam, the 12 disciples and others. 

This alone makes Haywood’s story an interesting one. But what the mural represents on an individual and community level offers a deeper narrative that explores art, hope and the value of humanity. 

Asheville has been known in recent years as an undiscovered gem of tourism, boasting a picturesque town surrounded by pleasant scenery and hosting a number of shops and award-winning restaurants. The documentary critiques the wealth gap visible in the town and the general societal tendency to avoid those in poverty.  

These issues are interwoven with interviews featuring 11 of the 30 people depicted in the fresco. The audience sees each model and their initial sketch, hears their story and sees their final artistic likeness. 

“I really wanted to make an effort to see people in different ways throughout the film,” director Christopher Zaluski told ReligionUnplugged.com. Because of that, he shows them as they see themselves, as an artist sees them and, most importantly, as their community sees them. 

Because he couldn’t fit every Asheville resident on the fresco, the fresco’s primary artist, Christopher Holt, works to depict individual stories that also represent the overall struggle and hopeful redemption of an impoverished community. 

Its figures are different races, genders and socioeconomic backgrounds. They’ve each had a different experience with homelessness and poverty. Some are now rightfully proud homemakers — Rachel shows off her beloved collection of stuffed animals — and others have joined local missions to tend gardens or feed the hungry. 

Jeanette, who’s depicted as a torch-bearer in the fresco, was briefly homeless with her child. She was also one of the first people to join Haywood and get involved with the church’s mission. 

“One day, a lady said to me, with her child, ‘How would you know? You’ve never been homeless,’” Jeanette said in the film. “I said, ‘Oh, yes, I have.’ She said, ‘You don’t look like someone who’s been homeless.’ Well, you know, you can’t say what is a homeless look because some people that are homeless don’t look like they’re homeless.”

It’s vulnerable interview moments like this that inspire reflection about appearance, perception and a greater need for acceptance.

“I always thought that was kind of the thesis statement of the film — that everybody’s struggling with something,” Zaluski said. “We should try to reserve our judgments, try to keep an open mind and be loving of others because we don’t know what each other’s going through.”

The fresco project faced national and local controversy early on — another interesting footnote in its story. The whole project was estimated to cost $200,000 and had been given a grant of $72,000 by the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority. The church returned the money after pushback from the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

The church made up the cost with other private donors, most of whom wouldn’t traditionally be associated with Haywood. Many still criticized the project, suggesting that this money could be better spent on ministries providing food or basic items to the community. 

“Why is it that we make the assumption that just because you’re in poverty, somehow you shouldn’t have access to things that are beautiful?” Combs said in the documentary. “If we believe that, we should take away all film, all music, beautiful scenery and anything else that doesn’t have utilitarian value. In that way, the fresco is entirely useless, and that’s on purpose.”

The documentary cares about art like the church does, and it offers an exploration of the process of creating a Renaissance fresco mural as well as a look into Asheville’s fresco experts. 

“I really wanted to follow the whole process of creating the fresco, so a lot of my film was just from first sketch to final unveiling,” Zaluski said. “I sat with (Holt) when he first started sketching Charlie, the very first model, to the very last brushstroke in the fresco.”

Ultimately, “Theirs Is the Kingdom” is focused on people. 

“Hopefully the documentary will make people think twice about people that maybe they ignore on a day-to-day basis who are on the street corner,” Zaluski said. “Hopefully it will make people rethink the power of art and music and those elements in their life, and how they’re something that everybody should be able to enjoy, no matter their socioeconomic status. Ultimately, I really hope it makes people more curious about the work that Haywood Street is doing.”

Among other community ministries, that work includes building 45 “deeply affordable” housing units in Asheville. It’s a clear example of the way Haywood is working to physically, emotionally and spiritually care for the city.

There’s a clear message both within the mural project and “Theirs Is the Kingdom” that the poor and suffering abundantly deserve to be listened to, respected and loved.

“I think that the mural’s power is that it is in the sanctuary of the church,” Zaluski said. “That’s who we should be looking at as God, at least in Reverend Combs’ mind, and in my mind as well.”

Jillian Cheney is a contributing culture writer for Religion Unplugged. She also writes on American Protestantism and evangelical Christianity and was Religion Unplugged’s 2020-21 Poynter-Koch fellow. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.