In Lowly Wise, Kwilecki contrasted the God represented by St. Peter's in Rome with the God suggested by the rural black churches he photographed. He characterized the former deity as “vain, ostentatious, and bombastic,” and the latter as “a no-nonsense father who loves all his children unconditionally.” Although a non-believer himself, Kwilecki used spiritual metaphors to describe the day he photographed Mt. Horum, an abandoned African-American church. The church interior, he wrote, was bathed in light. “It was as if God in his radiance stood in the church yard. . . . This was God’s house and we had found him at home.” Kwilecki's images of Mt. Horum stand in sharp contrast to his only picture of Bainbridge's First Baptist Church, a large brick structure with columns patronized by respectable white citizens. Kwilecki shows First Baptist under cloudy sky, upstaged by a parking lot full of bulky cars.Lowly Wise, pp. 46, 48. Pictures of Mt. Horum are on pp. 18-23; the photograph of the First Baptist Church is on p. 13. See the selections from the religion series in One Place, pp. 170-185.
