One of the most striking and beautiful features of St. Mark=s Church are the six stained glass windows that comprise the Te Deum window located directly above the high altar.  It is called the Te Deum window because written at the bottom of the window is a line from Te Deum Laudamus, an early Christian hymn: AThou are the King of Glory, Christ, Thou art the Everlasting Son of the Father.@  Designed and executed by the Judson Studios, the window was installed in 1948 when the church was still under construction.  Its theme and design was very much influenced by St. Mark=s rector at the time, Dr. Clarance Parlour, who wanted both a window of striking beauty and also one that would teach a lesson in church history.  Centered in the middle in a rich display of reds, blues and gold is Christ Enthroned and, below him, St. Mark the Evangelist, in whose memory the church is named. 

The two panels on the left side of the window depict six early Christian leaders in a sort of pictorial genealogy of the Anglican Church, from the apostle St. John of Ephesus (top, left), to his close friend and pupil Polycarp, the martyred Bishop of Smyrna (middle, right), to his pupil Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon in the 3^rd Century and witness to early Christianity in the British Isles (top, right), to St. Albans, the first British martyr in 303 (middle, left), to Theodore of Tarsus, who united the English church in the 7^th Century (bottom, left), to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the father of the Prayer Book (bottom, right).  In this window Dr. Parlour wanted to show the connection between the early eastern church of St. John and the origins of Christianity in Britain, origins that pre-dated by centuries the dominance of the Roman church.  As he wrote later, in a commentary on the Te Deum window:

For one to say that Henry the Eighth founded the Church of England is to ignore centuries of heroic Christian missionary zeal and effort the like of which for persistence and sacrifice are unsurpassed in the annals of Christian history.

The two panels on the right side of the window are portraits of six clergymen in a more recent time.  In the upper left panel is Bishop William White, chaplain to the Continental Congress and the original Presiding Bishop of the American Episcopal Church.  To his right is William Temple, the talented and courageous Archbishop of Canterbury during World War II when Britain stood as a lone beacon of Christianity in a continent overrun by godless fascism B still a recent and unpleasant memory as Dr. Parlour and his congregation built their new church.

The four portraits in the lower right panel are of bishops that played a direct roll in the story of St. Mark=s Church.  William Ingraham Kip (top, left) was the first Bishop of California who authorized the creation of an Episcopal mission in Glendale in 1889.  To his right is Joseph Horsfall Johnson, the first Bishop of Los Angeles, who authorized the establishment of the Parish of St. Mark=s in 1914.  In the lower left is William Bertrand Stevens, the Second Bishop of Los Angeles, who instituted Dr. Parlour as Rector of St. Mark=s in 1935. And finally in the lower right, Robert B. Gooden, First Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles, a close friend and supporter of Dr. Parlour and St. Mark=s, who presided at the groundbreaking for the new church earlier in 1948.