| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
______________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
The Incarnation Exclusive
An American publication celebrates the god of diversity
By Diogenes
Just before Christmas, American wire services were buzzing with reports about a striking new perspective on the Incarnation. The National Catholic Reporter had announced the results of a public competition in which artists were challenged to provide a new image of Jesus Christ, suitable for the new millennium.
It is just barely possible, I suppose, that our friends at the National Catholic Reporter had foreseen that their competition would catch the eyes of secular journalists. The publicity, no doubt, was welcome. (The editors of the Reporter might not be quite so happy to know that in the first three news accounts I read about their competition, their newspaper was identified as a “magazine.”)
By now, renegade Christians of all denominations realize that there is a guaranteed, foolproof formula for obtaining secular publicity: Just before Christmas or Easter, issue a press release challenging a Christian tradition. Reporters who are looking for a distinctive story—some fresh new insight, some quirky claim, some man-bites-dog report that will stand out from all the predictable religious stories—will snap up that release.
The Jesus Seminar has built its reputation by following this formula carefully (dare I say religiously?) for a decade. For 50 weeks out of the year, nobody in the secular media gives a hoot what the members of the Jesus Seminar say. Then just before Easter, like clockwork, this group of tired old professors will put out a statement questioning whether Jesus really rose from the dead, or whether the Gospels really report the Lord’s words accurately, or whether the Crucifixion really occurred. It works like a charm. The wire services run with the story, and the Jesus Seminar can claim its annual media “hit.”
But wait; I have failed to mention the most important ingredient in this public-relations recipe. It is essential for the people calling traditional faith into question to belong—or at least claim to belong —to the religion whose traditional beliefs they are questioning. If a Protestant denies a Catholic dogma, or a Jew denies the divinity of Christ, reporters will usually see that as a dog-bites-man story, unworthy of further attention. So the members of the Jesus Seminar identify themselves as Christians, and for all I know they come to press conferences wearing pants with shiny knees, suggestive of the hours they spend each day in prayer.
“As inclusive as possible”
Now the National Catholic Reporter, which has built its following among dissident Catholics by behaving as the Peck’s Bad Boy of American Catholic journalism, has followed the same route to prominence. I cannot recall seeing other stories from the Reporter mentioned on the secular wire-service reports. But the new Millennium Christ certainly captured the media’s attention.
What was the news “hook” that caught the reporters’ eyes? There were two things, actually.
First, the winning painting showed Jesus as a dark-skinned man, with deliberately indistinct features that could be seen as Negroid or Caucasian or Oriental, depending on the perspective of the viewer. Janet McKenzie, the Vermont-based artist who painted the portrait, explained that she had sought to make the image “as inclusive as possible.”
Now at first that goal sounds commendable. The salvation which Jesus offers to humanity is “as inclusive as possible”; the Church knows no racial boundaries. But this is not a portrait of the Church as an institution; it is a portrait of Jesus. And the Son of God was born into a particular race, at a particular time. The Incarnate God is not a racial amalgam, or a composite of humanity, but a specific man.
Second, McKenzie made it known—and every wire report picked up this detail—that she had used a woman as a model for her painting. So her image of Christ is not a portrait of an idealized man, but a picture of abstract humanity. This is not the God who became man, but the man who is to become God.
Unfortunately, none of those wire reports provided me with even a peek at Janet McKenzie’s painting. So I cannot comment on its artistic merits. But Sister Wendy Beckett, who has recently become an international celebrity as an art critic, pronounced the picture “a haunting image.” (It was Sister Wendy who selected McKenzie’s portrait from among a list of finalists.) So let’s assume, for the sake of the argument, that this is a powerful work.
Still I wonder what would have happened if the artist had given Jesus distinctly Semitic features, and used an unmistakably male model for the portrait. Could such a work have won the Reporter’s competition? Could it have captured the attention of the mass media? Or am I right in suspecting that the media lapped up the Reporter’s press release because by touting this new image the Reporter, a Catholic news organ, was subverting a Catholic tradition?
Out of curiosity I visited the Reporter’s web site, hoping that perhaps I would
find McKenzie’s image on display there. Alas, it was not there; apparently it would
become available to the public only when the newspaper put out its special Millennium
Issue.
But my visit to the Reporter site did produce one small reward. I noticed that the latest
available issue featured a column by the theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, entitled
“Only Catholics can really be Protestant.” I think I know what she means.
Back to Catholic Information Center on Internet's Main Periodical Page
Back to Catholic World Report - January 2000 - Table of Contents