These four photographs by Patricia Spyer offer samples of the billboards and murals discussed in her “Blind Faith: Painting Christianity in Postconflict Ambon” (Social Text 96). Christian art sprang up across Ambon during the religiously inflected conflict that engulfed this provincial Indonesian capital in violence between 1999 and 2002, and Spyer writes about its multiple functions: as visible emblems of Christan territory, as a way of making manifest and presencing God, as a pedagogical mode of intervention in everyday Christian behavior, as a way of branding community identity, as a material counter to Islam’s national and international visibility, and as a kind of amulet aimed at warding off the Muslim other.

1. Mural of Christ in Christian Area of Ambon

2. Mural of Christ as Prisoner to Roman Soldiers

3. Billboard at the Border of Christian Area in Ambon

4. Christ Miraculously Appears over Ambon During Riot