<\/span><\/p>\nSince media depictions of Muhammad appear in the western
\nmedia, and incidents of violence regarding such depictions have been directed
\ntoward secular or Christian writers and artists, one can detect a sort of
\nreligious-moral superiority here.
\n<\/span>Western culture, with its Christian heritage isn’t roiled by such
\ntheological narrowness. <\/span>After all,
\nwho would get so worked up over religious pictures as to try to kill someone?<\/p>\nI can’t and won’t defend the Revolutionmuslim website. <\/span><\/i>But violence against those who depict the Divine is not just
\nan Islamic problem. <\/span>It is worth
\npointing out that Christianity has a long history of violence against visual
\ndepictions of Jesus, the saints, and God.
\n<\/span>In 1987, Serrano’s Piss Christ <\/i>provoked
\ndeath threats and violence from Christian fundamentalists and conservative
\nCatholics across the U.S. and Europe and caused political outrage on two
\ncontinents. <\/span>In the 19th<\/sup>
\ncentury, American Catholics were regularly targeted by Protestant mobs for
\n“worshiping” statues while Protestant ministers lost their positions if they
\nplaced visual depictions of the crucifixion, Mary, or the saints in their
\nchurches. <\/span>Two hundred years before
\nthat, Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan army smashed religious artwork in English
\nparish churches. <\/span>During the 16th<\/sup>
\ncentury Protestant Reformation, followers of Luther and Calvin looted
\ncathedrals and convents carting off valuable paintings and statues to burn them
\nin public squares. <\/span>And so it
\nhas been for most of Christian history.
\n<\/span>Indeed, as early as 600, Bishop Serenus of Marseilles destroyed all the
\npictures in every church in his city worried that “images somehow cheapened the
\nsacred words of Scripture.”<\/p>\nThe worst outbreak of violence against visual depictions of
\nJesus occurred in the 700s. <\/span>In
\n726, Emperor Leo III outlawed the use of icons and ordered their
\ndestruction. <\/span>Upon the decree, mass
\nrioting broke out across the Byzantine Empire demanding the return of visual
\nart to worship. <\/span>At the same time,
\nIslam had emerged as a rival religion to Christianity, with even stricter
\nprohibitions against images. <\/span><\/p>\nIronically, John of Damascus (655-750), the great Christian defender
\nof artistic depictions of God, lived in the Muslim city of Damascus where he
\nserved as chief councilor to the Caliph.
\n<\/span>The Caliph, despite his own spiritual distaste for representative art,
\nprotected John against several attempts by Christian partisans to have him
\nmurdered.<\/p>\nJohn addressed the issue of art rather simply: <\/span>What is an image? <\/span>“An image is an likeness and
\nrepresentation of someone containing in itself the person who is imaged. <\/span>The image is not wont to be an exact
\nreproduction of the original. <\/span>The
\nimage is one thing, the person represented another.” <\/span>There is a distinction between the image and the
\nthing, thus depicting God or Jesus (or perhaps even Muhammad) should be
\nallowed, if reverently executed.<\/p>\nAlthough I doubt that John of Damascus would approve of South Park, <\/i>he nevertheless opened the
\nway for Christian artists to explore the territory of depicting divine
\nthings. <\/span>Not every believer has
\napproved of such artistic attempts to image God–and they have often objected by
\nresorting to violence against property and persons. <\/span>Christianity, like Islam, has a very mixed historical record
\nwhen it comes to the tension between “no graven images” and the freedom of
\nreligious–or even the irreligious–imagination of the artist. <\/span><\/p>\nWhatever the case, western commentators–especially those who
\nhappen to be Christians–cannot claim any theological superiority regarding art
\nand God and should not think of this as a “Muslim thing.” A little less outrage and a little more history might help. <\/span>As Jesus once said, “Let the one
\nwithout sin cast the first stone.”
\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The creators of the cartoon South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have been all over the news this week. On the show’s 200th episode, they sort of depicted the Prophet Muhammad thus attracting the attention of a radical website called Revolutionmuslim (since taken down) that, in return, sort of threatened to kill them. As…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3,2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-history-and-theology","category-islam","category-media-and-religion"],"yoast_head":"\n
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On the show’s 200th episode, they sort of depicted the Prophet Muhammad thus attracting the attention of a radical website called Revolutionmuslim (since taken down) that, in return, sort of threatened to kill them. 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She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of seven books including A People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s History of Christianity: the Other Side of the Story (HarperOne, 2009) Her best-selling Christianity for the Rest of Us (2006) was named as one of the best religion books of the year by Publishers Weekly and Christian Century, won the Book of the Year Award from the Academy of Parish Clergy, and was featured in a cover story in USA TODAY. Diana regularly consults with religious organizations, leads conferences for religious leaders, and teaches and preaches in a variety of venues. She regularly comments on religion, politics, and culture in the media including USA TODAY, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, CNN, FOX, PBS, and NPR. From 1995-2000, she wrote a weekly column on American religion for the New York Times Syndicate. She has written widely in the religious press, including Sojourners, Christian Century, Clergy Journal, and Congregations. From 2002 to 2006, she was the Project Director of a national Lilly Endowment funded study of mainline Protestant vitality\u00e2\u20ac\u201da project featured in Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Diana also serves on the board of directors of the Beatitudes Society. Diana has taught at Westmont College, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Macalester College, Rhodes College, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. She has taught church history, American religious history, history of Christian thought, religion and politics, and congregational studies. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia. She is a member of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in downtown Washington, D.C.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/author\/dbbass"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}