Posted on 11/20/2002 7:20:17 AM PST by SJackson
Back in 1999 artist Chris Ofili smeared elephant feces and pasted pornographic photographs on an image of the Virgin Mary and hung it in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It caused a firestorm of protest. Olifi's detractors were outraged at the sacrilege. His defenders retorted with the predicable arguments citing freedom of expression and artistic autonomy but avoided any serious engagement with the real meaning of the piece.
Ofili's desecration is nothing new. In recent years we have seen "Piss Christ" where a crucifix was submerged in a jar of urine, Neonazis painting swastikas on synagogues, even Madonna simulating sex acts in a set designed as a church.
Shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin ordered soldiers into Russian villages that resisted the imposition of the Communist yoke. Lenin discovered that religious faith informed much of the resistance. Especially troublesome was the teaching that the statutes governing human affairs were subject to the higher judgment of God. It repudiated the Marxist denial of the ideal and everything it implied including the establishment of the state as the final arbiter of all human affairs.
Religious faith was a grave threat to Marxism and Lenin knew it. The soldiers struck at the heart of this faith by striking at the symbols that defined it. Churches, when not burned, were turned into the village dump - a kind of lasting testimonial of desecration. Soldiers urinated in chalices and defecated on altars. Almost all priests were killed. The offense caused by this desecration ran deep. It proclaimed that a new way of ordering the universe - a new faith - had entered the world.
The word symbol in the Greek means the place where two realities come together. Religious symbols have a particular power because religion speaks of the higher unseen things like meaning, purpose, value, and destiny, and thus represent a moral comprehension about how the universe is ordered and how man ought to live within it. In fact, the symbol itself can be said to contain this view. The symbol in other words, functions as a placeholder in space and time of eternal and timeless truths.
Religious symbols bind an individual to a religious community and testify to the sacred inheritance of that community. They represent the body of teaching and instruction inherited from the past that directs how the community ought to live today. This tradition shapes the culture of the community so that the tradition itself can be passed on to the next generation. The symbol identifies the community by what it believes and how it lives.
Desecration is more than the destruction or misuse of the symbol itself. Desecration is sacrilege; the use of the symbol in ways hostile to its meaning and in ways that the tradition considers profane. By desecrating the symbol, the desecrator not only defiles the symbol, he also denies the legitimacy of the community to whom the symbol belongs.
Secularists are unaware of the turmoil that desecration can cause because they have acculturated the Marxist denial of the ideal even though many may not realize it. The secularist perceives transcendence as social universals expressed in the language of "rights" and applied through politics. He regards the state as the final arbiter of truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, good and evil, all the constituents that shape culture, because the state is both the source and end of political life.
There no Moses and no Paul in the secular tradition - no sense of eternal or timeless truth. Rather, the secular prophets like Rousseau, Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Sanger, Gramsci, Alinsky, and others, reduce transcendence to social utility and thus establish the state as the guarantor of heaven on earth. Today this secular view dominates public discourse and explains why most discussions about the desecration of religious symbols address only their political and legal ramifications. The cultural ramifications seldom show up on the radar screen and when they do, the secular censors are quick to dismiss it.
Religion is not the product of culture, religion is the source writes philosopher Russell Kirk. "It's from an association in a cult, a body of worshipers, that human community grows.when belief in the cult has been wretchedly enfeebled, the culture will decay swiftly. The material order rests on the spiritual order."*
When the dominant religious symbols in the culture are desecrated, the beliefs and values that define and shape culture are weakened and can be overthrown. The overthrow of culture is why Lenin destroyed churches and Hitler destroyed synagogues (and why the Taliban blew up a 5000 year old Buddha). This is why a crucifix was submerged in urine and an icon of the Virgin Mary was smeared with feces.
There is contempt of the past, a senseless denial of any possibility of enduring meaning, in desecration art. Desecration art functions like the parasite; it destroys the heritage from which it draws its meaning. Ofili's piece illustrates this. The icon gives the piece meaning, yet the icon is what the piece seeks to destroy. Destroy the meaning of the icon and the meaning of the piece is destroyed with it like the parasite that dies with its host. The artist is vandal and the museum the gate to this cultural barbarism.
If the artist succeeds in destroying the heritage of western culture, the precepts that give his desecration meaning will die along with it. He follows the same path as the Marxist soldiers sent in to quell rebellious villagers: destroy the enduring truths to prepare the way for a Utopia that will never arrive.
*Russell Kirk "Civilization with Religion" The Heritage Foundation Report (July 24, 1992).
Johannes L. Jacobse is a priest in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. See his site OrthodoxyToday.org.
Not long enough to make the bet...
Many FReepers speak disparagingly of Islam. There are over a BILLION of them. Many are willing to die for their faith. All sorts of people get used. Although I respect their commitment, I think you would agree that they have been misled (if you understood the origins of Islam, you would have compassion for the people who take the Koran literally). So it would seem that neither massive numbers nor martyrdom make for an objective reading of scripture, not even in your book. To make such an argument to me as if it were convincing, therefore, isn't.
THe RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS and the millions of other Orthodox Christians, who died at the hands of the Turks and other islamics, were JUST AS CHRISTIAN AS YOU....and they had icons as reminders of their Faith in God....not as graven idols!!
I think you had better examine that idea a little more closely. I seriously doubt the the most unsophisticated animist practicing voo-doo believes that the spirits reside in their figurines. They are reminders, channeling devices, and symbols too. "Graven" means constructed by artifice. "Image" means graphic symbol, not the thing itself. Those are facts, and neither custom nor plurality can change them. There is a reason for that Law and I doubt that you saw it in my first post, blinded by your affrontery for having your adherence to custom having been supposedly disparaged. It was that which I was saying is one of the costs of the practice.
You do them a vast disservice by inferring that their FAITH is less, somehow than yours. Shame on you.
I never said that. You are projecting in order to have something to attack. I said that it diminishes their spiritual power and puts them in a blind rage (see above). That says nothing of my faith, which to me is a matter between me and the Father. It was an observation, not a comparison, that I don't pretend to make.
Who are you to say that? Just because these Christians WORSHIPPED JESUS CHRIST in a way that YOU do not approve of... you infer that they were less CHRISTIAN.
Me? What does that matter? MY approval hardly matters. I think that judgment is up to the Lord. I said that I thought the Salvation Army had it about right, yet I am not one of them. So you see, I made no pretense. It was an observation, not posturing. For that you had best commune with Mr. MarMema.
Your comments comparing Orthodox Christians to NON-CHRISTIAN muslims and animists proves it. SHAME ON YOU!!
"Mr." Marmema is a lady....and an Orthodox Christian.
Oh, yes God the Father will be the judge of YOUR actions and comments on the sacrifices of his followers and NOT, you.
Please refrain yourself from ever posting to me again. I do not like you or your weird ideas.
Just because a Christian happens to have an Icon or a rosary or a fancy church building or a cross...does NOT make him any less of a Christian than...let's say...carrie okie.
Saint Paul taught in synagogues...he taught Jews about Jesus Christ there. And he was put in jail for it too.
Do you propose that Christ ignored the torah?
DEU 12:11 Then there shall be a place which the LORD your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there; thither shall ye bring all that I command you; your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes, and the heave offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which ye vow unto the LORD:There is a difference between a synagogue and a temple. As I recall, Christ went to synagogue to teach and talk with the elders; i.e., an assembly.DEU 12:13 Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest:
DEU 12:14 But in the place which the LORD shall choose in one of thy tribes, there thou shalt offer thy burnt offerings, and there thou shalt do all that I command thee.
Before we go any further, is it your contention that no worship occured in synagogues around the time of Christ?
Think he has any "graven images" of family members in his home? ;)
Ah, well that shines a light of awareness on things doesn't it.
Yawn. Must be nice to have such a simplistic worldview. Well, maybe not.
I don't have a simplistic worldview - just one that favors facts rather than fairytails.
Huh? What are you talking about? Theodosius was long dead by AD 438.
Oh, look, you're right. I mistated the date. Favor us with the Date theodosius Named your church "Catholic". Cause Ignatius didn't. And Do stop spreading that lie about the so called ignatian text. It is a lie and it is tired.
You might ask yourself if the RC cares about much of anything other than securing it's own power. Looking at them from a purely biblical standpoint, they have trappings made to have them look like good people on the clerical side; but, their story don't match scripture. How they sing kindof looses any impact when they don't know God's word to begin with. Just an observation. Paul said that God is the Pillar and foundation of Truth. The RCC says it is. When you start looking deeper, the inconsistancies grow rapidly.
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