Explainer
Art
Culture
Identity
5 min read

Controversial art: can the critic love their neighbour?

What to do when confronted with contentious culture.

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

Two people run though a darkened art gallery towards a body lying amongst photography paraphanalia
Audrey Tautou and Tom Hanks, The Da Vinci Code.
Sony Pictures.

In the wake of the controversy over the Olympic opening ceremony, based as it was on a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of Christians as to what was being portrayed, you may be perplexed or confused by the different ways Christians respond to controversial art or media portrayals that are perceived to be an attack on core Christian beliefs. If that is you, here are some thoughts as to why it is that Christians react in a range of different ways.  

Our responses are always underpinned by depth of relationship with and commitment to Jesus, the one who has turned our lives upside down and filled us with his Spirit. Our sense of what it is that Jesus has done for us and what it is that relationship with Jesus means to us is the determinative factor affecting our response when we perceive the One we love and who loves us to have been maligned or mocked. 

For some, we feel a need to stand with or defend Jesus whenever we perceive that he is under attack, and we have seen that instinctive response apparent in reactions to the Olympic opening ceremony. However, instinctive emotive responses run the risk of pre-empting more reasoned or reflective responses. That has certainly been the case here, as what many Christians perceived to have been a parody of the Last Supper was not actually that at all. Instead, the sequence was a portrayal of the feast of Dionysius, so had nothing to do with the Last Supper at all.  

Christians, as here, are often too quick to make allegations of blasphemy without actually understanding what is being portrayed. I have, unfortunately, seen many similar examples within my lifetime. In the 1970’s and 80’s films like Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ resulted in thousands of Christians demonstrating outside cinemas, while Christian organisations, like the National Viewer’s and Listener’s Association headed by Mary Whitehouse, lobbied for those films to be banned.  

God does not need human beings in order to be defended, particularly from perceived mockery. 

However, interestingly, the release of The Da Vinci Code in 2006, although it dealt with similarly controversial material for Christians, did not result in mass protests. Instead, through seeker events, bible studies, websites and booklets, churches encouraged discussion of the issues raised by the film while clearly contesting the claims made about Christ and the Church. 

The protests against such films often did not tally with the content of the films themselves and displayed a lack of understanding of them, their stories and meaning. As Richard Burridge, a former Dean of King’s College London, has said of Life of Brian, “those who called for the satire to be banned after its release in 1979 were ‘embarrassingly’ ill-informed and missed a major opportunity to promote the Christian message”. Life of Brian portrayed the followers of religions as unthinking and gullible and the response of Christians to that film reinforced that stereotype.  

As a result, the Church had to learn again that the way to counter criticism is not to try to ban or censor it but to engage with it, understand it and accurately counter it. The Da Vinci Code events, bible studies, websites and the like that the Church used to counter the claims made in The Da Vinci Code featured reasoned arguments based on a real understanding of the issues raised, making use of genuine historical findings and opinion to counter those claims. These created a conversation with the wider community that was far more constructive than the kind of knee-jerk reactions we have seen to the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. 

Some of these knee-jerk reactions derive from a sense, in the West, that the dominant place Christianity used to have in society has been eroded leading some to think that our values and beliefs are under threat. This reveals an underlying insecurity which it is surprising to find in those who believe that God is all-powerful and in control of human history. God does not need human beings in order to be defended, particularly from perceived mockery.  

Indeed, the reverse is the case, as, in Jesus, God deliberately entered human history to experience human life in all its facets, including real mockery and suffering, to show that such experiences are not defining and can be transcended through love and sacrifice. Such a God does not require those who follow to become defensive themselves when the path of mockery is actually the path to resurrection and renewal.    

Cultural comment is as much about love for neighbour as any other aspect of Christian life. 

So, what might a more constructive and productive response to controversies entail? Taking time to reflect and to understand what it is we are experiencing would be a much better place to start. The Olympic opening ceremony was a celebration of French culture, which highlighted images from the Louvre in particular. Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ is in Italy and does not include a blue Dionysius. With some reflection and investigation, that would quickly have become apparent. Similarly, the scene to which Christians objected in The Last Temptation of Christ was just what it said on the tin, the last temptation Jesus faced. It was a temptation that he rejected, and the film was all the more powerful as a depiction of the incarnation as a result. 

Then, we can see that what the Christ who embraced human life through the incarnation calls us to is a charitable hermeneutic (how we interpret), when it comes to receiving, understanding and commenting on the culture around us. Cultural comment is as much about love for neighbour as any other aspect of Christian life. Our charitable hermeneutic was summed up for us by St Paul when he wrote of going through life looking for “whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable”. Sister Wendy Beckett, the cultural commentator who most recently has best exemplified this charitable hermeneutic achieving huge popularity as a result, wrote of “a beautiful secret … that makes all things luminous … a precious gift in this confused and violent world”.  

With the beautiful secret of a charitable hermeneutic, we might, perhaps, look again at the Olympic opening ceremony and appreciate the intent of Thomas Jolly, the artistic director behind the ceremony, when he said that religious subversion had never been his intention: “We wanted to talk about diversity. Diversity means being together. We wanted to include everyone, as simple as that.” 

 

Article
Comment
Identity
Nationalism
5 min read

Which nation are you flying the flag for?

Flag raisings, Ed Sheeran, and my split national identity

Juila is a writer and social justice advocate. 

A Union Jack is draped over a railing, next to a red flag saying Jesus.
A flag demonstration, Portsmouth.
TikTok.

Flags are flying from lamp posts around England. It’s newsworthy here – and yet reports barely note that for those of us from Northern Ireland, we know something of this. A couple of weeks ago, the backlash was loud when Ed Sheeran declared himself ‘culturally Irish’, attributing greater significance to his family’s heritage than being born and raised in England. When it comes to signs of identity, things can quickly get personal. 

In my family – Northern Irish mother, English father, two daughters born in London but most of our childhood spent living just outside Belfast – we’ve been known to debate points to tot up our national identities over the dinner table. Does a place of birth outweigh the school years? When does formation finish – on turning 18 or do the months away at university count for anything? Does it matter how our mixed DNA actually expresses in our hair, our eyes, our stature?  

It’s a game and it’s our deeply felt reality. It’s the years spent with my schoolmates teaching me to correctly say ‘how now brown cow’ – and the arrival in England to find people couldn’t understand me saying my own name. It’s the stomach churn I still feel when I see flags flying, having grown up in a country where banners signal who is in – and therefore who is out. It touches on the questions of belonging and home.  

Irishness seems to travel well. The popularity of the island’s artists and art (from Paul Mescal to Derry Girls) are all signifiers of this cultural moment. But being Irish has always carried more cachet when I’ve been abroad, and I confess that when it has suited, I have led with my more ‘palatable’ half (or quarter or… the family maths is still up for debate). It’s convenient – but there’s also a discomfort in the enduring appeal of ‘Irishness’ outside of the island. It’s an ‘otherness’ that evokes intrigue and warmth, rather than fear. Difference that is more than acceptable, sometimes desirable. Distinct enough to be interesting but unthreatening for often being associated with white skin. 

Underneath the light-hearted arguments of our dinner table is a question of formation. Ed Sheeran attributes his sense of being Irish to the things that he feels have shaped him. It’s in being away from Belfast, living in England, that that I have seen more clearly the ways that Irishness has formed me. Watching Derry Girls with my English husband I freely laughed at what I assumed were universal jokes, only to have to hit pause and explain them. The show unearthed memories – not bad, just not often recalled – of Bill Clinton’s historic visit and the ‘across the barricades’ style gathering of primary schools from different sides of the community. 

Signs and symbols matter. I recently rewatched an episode of tv show, The West Wing, in which the US flag may – or may not – have been burned as part of a trick by magicians Penn and Teller. A media maelstrom follows. Whether or not the flag burned matters, as does the symbolism of this act taking place in the White House, itself an emblem of national identity and power. 

Reflecting on the news, I find myself thinking about the signs of a different kind of kingdom, one that transgresses national borders. In the Bible there's the story of one man who died once for all the world. And in dying, he brought forth his kingdom – one that crosses boundary lines to be truly global. The signs of this kingdom are not division or disconnection but peace and justice, joy and comfort, healing and presence. 

This is not about homogenisation. It’s not about the erosion of cultures, but about the beauty of all represented. As Harvey Kwiyani, a theologian from Malawi, puts it: “We are all welcome to God’s kingdom with our unique cultures. Being in the kingdom of God does not erase our cultural differences… The kingdom of God finds its fullest expression in intercultural mutuality. It is a multicultural kingdom.” The kingdom of God in all its richness – that’s a tempting proposition.  

It’s easy to see that we aren’t living in the fullness of this yet. But the world is not a static place. One metaphor used to describe the kingdom of God is yeast; living cultures filling the dough, making it rise. This is an image that is expansive, generous. The kingdom isn’t wholly realised yet, but we can see more and more of it. 

And like the yeast, we have a role to play in culture changing. As Graham Tomlin wrote following debates about ‘Englishness’, belonging to the kingdom of God means we have an identity not defined by where we live. Being part of this kingdom, we also become active participants in it. Formation is not just about us; we get to play an intentional role in the formation of a kinder world, in the coming of God’s kingdom. In the midst of fear and uncertainty, our ability to engage in such life-giving action offers a concrete hope.   

This is not a defensive position, but a brokering one. The kingdom is bigger than our individual lives, churches or communities; recognising this helps us to break out of a fortress mentality. So far, this century has been marked by fortification. As well as the raising of flags, there have also been walls. At the end of the second world war there were fewer than five border walls; there are now more than 70, most of them built in the last two decades. But the kingdom of God offers a view of home that is not about defence, not about perimeters, or even places. It’s a relationship with God, who made and sustains this world, who crosses the divide to meet each of us. In meeting him, we can partner together in seeing more of his kingdom on this earth.  

Anthropologist Andrew Shyrock defines sovereignty as “manifest in the ability to act as host”. Or to ground it in the day to day: to be able to offer a cup of tea. Perhaps some of the anger about Ed Sheeran’s claim is because of what it seems to either take or reject, pulling towards one nation while turning a back to another. Belonging to the kingdom of God invites us to think beyond what we can have to how we can intentionally serve. It has room to honour heritage and at the same time, it bends forward towards eternity. In the day to day, I find this a comfort: to see formation as not just about the past, but also the power of creative act after creative act in shaping the world that’s coming. 

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