The Sacred or the Profane?

Belief in God has led Man to create great works of art – painting, architecture, sculpture, music – that have endured and been a source of inspiration for millennia. Christian art was often created for the glory of God but the driving force behind it was not Man but the creative power God gave Man. This gift from God ended up becoming a gift to God from his devoted worshipers.

As the Church expanded over the centuries and became the powerful institution we know today, in turn, it became a patron and sponsor of the arts. The history of Sacred Art, whether in the Catholic or Eastern Orthodox traditions, is inextricably intertwined with the Church.

Think of the greatest painters, writers, sculptors and composers and they are synonymous with Sacred Art. And not just in the Christian era. Art in the pre-Christian world was also mainly driven by religion whether in Greece, Rome, Egypt, Asia or the Americas.

Just as God gave us free will to do good or evil, artists have the freedom to create works as they please. This can be in classical or romantic, naturalistic or abstract styles. In our Western culture artists claim – and are given - unlimited freedom to create as they wish regardless of whether people understand or approve of it. This freedom of expression is so universally accepted in the West that many, if not most, artists do not care whether their works offend people for moral or religious reasons.

However, the West has not always been so tolerant. For 400 years the Vatican had an Index of proscribed books which the faithful were forbidden to read. The Index was scrapped in 1966 which, incidentally, was the same year when John Lennon caused a huge controversy in the United States when he claimed that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. He later apologized saying he had not been comparing the Beatles to Jesus but referring to the decline of religious influence.

It would be difficult to imagine a remark like this causing a fuss nowadays or any apology being issued. Look at the singer Madonna who was brought up as a Catholic and must have know that adopting a stage name like “Madonna” would have upset many Catholics. It annoys me to think that nowadays the word “Madonna” is more likely to make people think of this self-seeking egoist than the Virgin Mary. She has committed what would have been considered blasphemy at one time by using religious imagery with sexual overtones. The Vatican has openly criticized her exploitative use of Catholic themes and imagery in her albums and concerts.

The Western world´s tolerance has been seized on by artists who in many cases do not deserve the name. Look at Andres Serrano´s disgusting photograph of a jar containing a crucifix floating in the “artist´s” own urine exhibited in 1987. He called this abomination “The Sacred and the Profane”. The response was one of disgust and the photograph was damaged by angry Catholics when it was exhibited in France in 2011.

Unlike John Lennon who at least tried to explain what he meant, Serrano went on the offensive and accused his critics of being right-wing extremists and "religious" as if being religious meant being intolerant and small minded.

His words drip with the kind of woke victimhood that is now the norm: “My work is often deliberately misunderstood or abused, particularly by the conservative right and religious people. Those who take issue with my work generally have a political agenda. It is more comfortable for them to ignore the reasons behind my work and turn my work into a political battleground”.

I wonder how Serrano or Madonna would be treated if they tried to exhibit their “talents” in Islamic countries where artists cannot even portray the image of God.

The writer Salmon Rushdie was sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran over his novel “The Satanic Verses” even though this Moslem cleric had not read a word of it. This off-the-cuff death sentence issued under no legal precept had fatal consequences. One Japanese translator was killed, several were wounded and Rushdie himself lost an eye after being attacked by a knife-wielding Moslem fanatic who had not even been born when the book was published.

Another less extreme example occurred in India as recently as 2025 when a court ordered the removal of paintings of naked Hindu gods by the late artist M. F. Husain. He had received so many death threats from Hindu extremists who objected to his depictions of their gods that he went into self-imposed exile where he died in 2011.*

I don´t know enough about Rushdie or Husain to pass comment on their works but they both paid a high price for upsetting people´s religious feelings. In their cases they may have done so unwittingly but this is certainly not the case with Serrano and other Westerners who have deliberately courted publicity to sell their works.

Forcing artists to reign in their imagination and avoid being offensive to religious believers could be seen as censorship and I am not calling for this. However, abusing the gift God gave to produce genuine art and insulting him by exhibiting works of lewdness and filth shows more about the artist´s lack of moral vision than any artistic talent and originality.

On a more positive note the fact is that traditional works of Sacred Arts draw millions of tourists to churches and cathedrals all over Europe every year. Many of these visitors are not even Christian and most probably have little knowledge of the significance of the paintings in either religious or artistic contexts. However, this exposure can do nothing but good and can even have spectacular results. I listened to a BBC podcast on the Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona which highlighted a tourist from South Korea who was so overcome by Gaudi´s masterpiece in 1998 that he eventually converted to Catholicism.

*Husain also created a series of painting inspired by Mother Teresa of Calcutta – now St. Teresa - portraying her as a symbol of compassion and motherhood.