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.” 

 

Review
Books
Culture
Film & TV
Purpose
8 min read

You may never take the Salt Path but here's why the tale makes sense

Kindness runs deep in the architecture of reality.

Roger is a Baptist minister, author and Senior Research Fellow at Spurgeon’s College in London. 

A hiking couple sit on the grass next to a pack.
Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.
BBC Films.

The Salt Path is a phenomenon.  

An internationally best-selling book and now a movie starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. How is it that a memoir of a middle-aged couple walking the South West Coast Path from Somerset to Dorset, via Land’s End, has had such an impact? 

Well, it’s because it resonates. It rings true. It’s about life as we know it, even if we haven’t hiked the 630 miles of the path from start to finish. A journey that is also, incidentally, the equivalent of climbing Mt Everest four times over. 

In the events leading up to their walk Raynor (Ray) and Moth Winn are dealt a series of body blows. They’re left bankrupt and homeless empty-nesters, struggling to come to terms with Moth’s deteriorating health.  

It was just as the bailiffs were seeking to gain access to their farm and take possession of it that Ray spotted an old book, 500 Hundred Mile Walkies, and took inspiration. 

‘We could just walk.’ 

And that’s what they did. 

So, what are the truths about life and our human experience that this story opens up for us? 

Life is precarious  

Bad stuff happens. Sometimes we bring it on ourselves, the consequence of wrong or ill-judged decisions. Other times it is thoroughly undeserved. Life turns around and bites us, hard. We’re left with our heads numb and spinning round with the persistent but unanswered question, ‘why me?’ 

For the Winns, an investment in the business of a trusted, life-long friend failed. The deal he structured left them responsible for the debts of his company. The end of a prolonged legal battle meant they lost everything, their farm, their home, their business, and the life-long friend. 

The same week also found them in a hospital in Liverpool getting the diagnosis for Moth’s chronic shoulder pain. It was not the suspected nerve damage, but rather the fatal neurological condition corticobasal degeneration. CBD. A diagnosis that was untreatable and only finally confirmed postmortem. 

Whether it’s the South West Coast Path or the familiar details of our own life, we can never fully anticipate tomorrow. We do not know what lies behind the next headland or what unwelcome surprises life may spring on us. No, we need to live in the moment. It’s pointless worrying about tomorrow and we ought to let it worry about itself. We can only live in today. As Ray reflected towards the end of their time on the path: 

“This second in the millions of seconds was the only one, the only one that we could live in.” 

Who am I, really? 

Early in the book Ray recalls: 

“I once heard a lecture by Stephen Hawking, when he said, ‘It’s the past that tells us who we are. Without it we lose our identity.’ Perhaps I was trying to lose my identity, so I could invent a new one.” 

Who are we when everything is stripped away? What defines us? Homeless and jobless, questions about where we’re from and what we do are not only awkward, they also create an existential void.  

Often mistaken for tramps, Ray and Moth noticed people treating them differently. Some quietly moved away, others were more forthright, “disgusting!” But the judgement of others does not define who we are. Yet, who actually were they in this new world of theirs?  

And then there’s the impact of failing health. Each stage of deterioration promising to erode what can be physically done and requiring a redefinition until there is nothing left at all.  

Yet identity is deeper than that. It is at the core of who we are, at the very heart of us. It is the sum of our experiences and choices, our successes and failures, of what we have gladly embraced and that which life has unexpectedly thrown at us. We are unique individuals with intrinsic value, worth and dignity. People who love and are loved. 

At the end of the path Ray muses: 

“Most people go through their whole lives without answering their own questions: What am I, who do I have within me? The big stuff. What a waste.” 

I guess that’s one of the attractions of making space to walk. To lose the distractions and busyness of our over-complicated lives for self-discovery to break in. 

One step at a time 

How do you get your head around walking 630 miles? How can you appreciate the demands of climbing unknown hills and cliffs and navigating their gullies and ravines.  

On top of the terrain there’s the notorious English weather to negotiate. With little money and only a tent for respite: when it rains you get wet and stay wet, when it’s cold, you shiver and put on as many layers as you can. Even in August it can be challenging. 

Walk, eat, sleep, repeat. 

Sometimes the only thing to do is put one foot in front of the other.  

“Each step had its own resonance, its moment of power or failure. That step, and the next and the next and the next, was the reason and the future. … each day survived a reason to live through the next.” 

There is always agency. There is always the opportunity to choose today which path to travel and which attitude to serve. To give in or go on, to be a defeatist or hopeful, complaining or generous, those choices are always there, even when they’re limited. Even in the wake of unfair decisions and unexpected tragedy, we choose today the way we take. And sometimes that’s all we can muster. 

The kindness of strangers 

Ray and Moth’s story is littered with moments of kindness and warmth. From the lovelorn waitress who sneaks them the day’s leftover pasties to the generosity of a hippie commune there is a recurring theme that echoes an underlying goodness in the nature of people. And often it is those with the least who prove to be the most open-handed and thoughtful. 

On more than one occasion the Winn’s themselves share from their own meagre supply of food, especially their precious fudge bars, with those in a more uncertain state than their own. On another occasion they step into a tense and potentially violent situation with a young woman, Sealy, the subject of an abusive relationship. They offer her company and a way out, ultimately paying for her £5 bus journey to get away to family. 

There is something heartwarming about kindness, something elevating. Both the giver and the receiver feel encouraged, lighter, happier. The abiding truth continues to stand the test of time that it is ‘better to give than to receive’.  

Strangely, watching these scenes play out in my local Showcase Cinema was an uplifting and inspiring experience. You can never predict or properly anticipate when a tear will unexpectedly present itself to the corner of your eye. I suspect that kindness runs more deeply in the nature of things than we comprehend. It is part of the deep architecture of reality.

Love and relationship in tough times 

When it comes down to it, The Salt Path is about Ray’s relationship with Moth. How they face an unimaginably difficult set of circumstances and find a way through together. This is a profoundly hopeful story. And from it we can draw hope too. 

There was nothing religious about what they were doing, “It’s not a pilgrimage. Is it?”  

At one level it is purely a response to desperation. But in the midst of it all they have each other. Thirty-two years together, having begun their relationship when Ray was 18, they are still deeply in love. They epitomise the values enshrined in the marriage vows. 

“… to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part …” 

This is not slushy sentimentality but rather love that proves itself in the face of the onslaught of ‘worse … poorer … sickness … death’. 

The conclusion of their journey led Ray to a realisation: “I was home, there was nothing left to search for, he was my home.” As the ancient poet wrote: 

“Set me as a seal upon your heart,  

as a seal upon your arm; 

for love is strong as death, 

passion fierce as the grave. 

Its flashes are flashes of fire, 

a raging flame. 

 

Many waters cannot quench love, 

neither can floods drown it. 

If one offered for love 

all the wealth of one's house, 

it would be utterly scorned.” 

(Song of Solomon) 

That’s it then. The book and the movie work because they reflect back to us the life we know, the lives we live. Yes, they’re in high relief in the choices that Ray and Moth take, but that clarifies things for us. Most of us won’t ever find ourselves in the position they were in, but we can empathise. Most of us would never think to do what they did even if we were. But for all that, we see, we understand and it makes sense. 

If you get a chance to see the film, then do. Gillian Anderson and Jeremy Isaacs are exceptionally good in their understated performances. The visual experience of the South West coast is everything you would expect it to be, sounding as majestic and immersive as if you were there. A real treat. 

For me, the most poignant and telling moment of the story happens at Lyme Regis. Moth says: 

“When it does come, the end, I want you to have me cremated. …keep me in a box somewhere, then when you die the kids can put you in, give us a shake and send us on our way … They can let us go on the coast, in the wind, and we’ll find the horizon together.” 

Support Seen & Unseen and more

Since Spring 2023, our readers across the world have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. 
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief