They began, like the Gospel story itself, with a nativity scene. John Mack Walker carved wood along the way the Gospel story went, through scenes and stories in the life of Christ, until finally there were sixty carvings
That first nativity scene was a copy of a Rembrandt etching Walker had seen at the North Carolina Museum of Art, called “The Adoration of the Shepherds with the Lamp.”
A scholarly Presbyterian minister, he became a self-taught sculptor combining his devotion to Christ and his admiration of Rembrandt’s art with a love for people and nature, John Mack Walker’s body of art work has become a Presbyterian treasure. In this season of Advent, other carvings related to that first nativity scene, “The Arrival of the Shepherds,” and “The Adoration of the Magi,” add to the mystery and awe surrounding the birth of Christ. Captured in walnut and cedar, these carvings can evoke a sense of wonder, even today.
As he was creating these and subsequent carvings, the artist pondered interpreting the Christian faith through art. He studied the life and work of Rembrandt, telling those attending a Sprunt Lecture at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond: “Art is faithful to the Gospels when it is controlled by both matter-or-factness and mystery. It is here, I believe, that Rembrandt is the supreme 
And so John Mack Walker continued until the end of his life at age 83 to find the people in the Gospel scenes who were waiting for him to liberate them from a block of wood. There was “Christ in the Wilderness,” based on Mark 1:12-13. And “Jesus at the Well,” based on John 4:1-15. Then there was one of his favorites, “The Walk to Emmaus,” based on Luke 24: 1-27.
Familiar Bible persons like Peter, Andrew, Zacchaeus, Paul, Mary Magdalene, Bartimaeus, Nicodemus, Matthew, and John came to life in walnut, cherry, rosewood, and East Indian laurel. The carvings are now carefully preserved and displayed to inspire this and future generations who visit the Presbyterian Heritage Center in Spence Hall at Montreat. The 24 carvings on permanent loan from the family here include one in the lobby of Assembly Inn. There is also a seal of the reunited Presbyterian Church at Assembly Inn. They were previously on display at the Presbyterian Historical Foundation and then at the Presbyterian Historical Society at Montreat.
There is a walnut inset, Supper at Emmaus, in the sanctuary of First Church in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., where Walker served as senior minister from 1942 to 1980, when he and his wife, Amelia, retired and lived for twenty years at Rockfern, a long-time family cottage on Greybeard Trail at Montreat.
“The Servant Christ,” a life-sized walnut figure, is in Little Library on the Davidson College campus. Walker graduated summa cum laude from Davidson in 1936 and received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree there in 1973.
There are two Walker carvings at Union – PSCE in Richmond. The carving “Christ Teaching” was done in 1972 and “The Calling of Andrew” was done in 1976, given in honor of his parents. His father, John Mack Walker Sr., was a Union Seminary graduate, and his mother, Annie English, was the daughter of Thomas Reese English Jr., who taught Greek at the seminary. John Mack Walker received B.D. and Th.M. degrees from Union in 1940.
Another carving, “Disciples at the Transfiguration,” was given to Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Ga., in 1978 in memory of his grandfather, an alumnus.
“The Return of the Prodigal Son,” carved in cherry wood, was commissioned by the Elkin (N.C.,) Church in 1993.
A gift to the Black Mountain (N.C.) Church, “A Child in Their Midst,” was given in memory of a grandson, Aaron Alexander Walker, who died at age four.
The carvings were never for sale. Walker told a Davidson College group in 1994 that he worked only with mallet and chisel. “I like to go slow,” he said, adding, “If I had to make a living with this, I’d starve.”
The three Walker children, John, now in Black Mountain; Daphne, now in Nashville; and Eric, now in Tallahassee, cherish their memories of growing up as “children of the manse” in Roanoke Rapids and going with their parents to Montreat every summer, where they could be “children of the mountains” with their many cousins.
Their father loved Montreat and the mountains surrounding it. He established many hiking trails and hiked most of the Appalachian Trail. He modeled many of the people in the carvings from ordinary people he created in an imaginary world glimpsed as “Appalachia.”
If anyone expected his carvings to look like people in Christmas pageant costumes, they were surprised to find them dressed like people in the 1950s rural American South. He could see the woman at the well standing by a wooden pump with an oak bucket and a dipper. He saw the tax collector sitting at an old desk in the county courthouse. They looked real. Walker laughed when he told an audience that he was sure one of the citizens he imagined as Matthew would be “very surprised to learn that he was a disciple.”
His daughter, Daphne, recalls that when her father died in 1998 at age 83, there were pencil sketches and big blocks of wood in his workshop. His vision, his art, and his impact continue. That first nativity scene marked the beginning of his interpretation of the life of Christ through art. There is no end in sight, as more and more people view the carvings he left for the church.
JANE HINES is the retired director of communications for the Synod of Living Waters, where she edited the Presbyterian Voice publication. Now living in Nashville, Tenn., she serves as a director on several boards, including the Presbyterian Heritage Center at Montreat, and The Presbyterian Outlook Foundation.
Photos courtesy of the Presbyterian Heritage Center at Montreat, N.C.
