c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Faith was Michelangelo’s inspiration when he spent four years painting the Sistine Chapel and countless hours chipping marble into biblical figures at the behest of Renaissance-era popes.

The Roman Catholic Church still recognizes art’s spiritual dimension, but the tension between religious and artistic communities today is palpable.

In the latest skirmish, an off-Broadway play-in-progress featuring a gay, Christlike figure who has sex with his apostles has sparked protests and death threats. The Manhattan Theater Club in New York yanked “Corpus Christi” by Terrence McNally but reversed itself last month in the face of angry backlash by the theater community.

Drowned out by the shrill cries of”censorship”and”Catholic bashing”was a decades-long debate being argued as American culture evolves into a more secular, less homogeneous stew.

“The Catholic church is the most visible, if not the last, bastion in defense of traditional moral standards in this country,” said Rick Hinshaw, a spokesman for the Catholic League of Religious and Civil Rights, which is spearheading the opposition to “Corpus Christi.” “There is a resentment of that by some. Bashing religion, especially bashing Catholicism, is popular in certain circles of the cultural elite.”

The Catholic League believes it has given voice to a common complaint among Catholics that their icons and theology appear to be fair game. No self-respecting theater, artist or movie director would dare release such material about Jews or African-Americans, the league argues.

Some members of the art community argue that by virtue of its size and influence, Christianity is fair game for discussion and interpretation. Long the arbiter of American culture, Christianity is a natural target of criticism as the society evolves, they argue.

Different religions get different treatment, said Steve Humphries-Brooks, a Bible scholar at Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y., who teaches a course called “The Celluloid Savior.”

“We’ve gotten very sensitized in the United States to the expropriation of religious symbols from the minority culture,”he said.”If you look at the treatment of Eastern traditions, the Hollywood treatment of Tibetan Buddhism these days is very kind, almost romantic. There are certain segments of Hollywood enamored of the demise of mainstream Christianity.”

Humphries-Brooks points out, however, that Islam has suffered much the same fate as Catholicism, painted as a violent, evil culture.

Not everyone agrees that what is at work in some museums, playhouses and movie theaters amounts to bashing.

Monroe Denton, an art history professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York, said efforts like “Corpus Christi,” “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “The Last Temptation of Christ” are more about spiritual seeking than blasphemy. Both “Superstar,” the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera that hinted at a sexual relationship between Christ and Mary Magdalene, and Martin Scorsese’s “Last Temptation,” which explored Jesus’ sexual fantasies, drew loud protests.

McNally, Scorsese and artist Andres Serrano _ whose photograph of a crucifix in urine outraged some believers _ are all Catholics.

“I don’t consider their work mockery, and that is the most important thing,” Denton said. “They are definitely spiritual quests, perhaps even undertaken from a theological viewpoint.”

The subjective nature of where the line is drawn between spiritual exploration and blasphemy is clear in discussions with religious rights groups.

Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission, an evangelical watchdog group that publishes movie reviews based on moral content, didn’t view the movie “Priest” as blasphemous but rather as a tale of a man struggling with his faith. The Catholic League launched a boycott of Disney over the movie, which depicts a young priest in a homosexual affair and an older priest who sleeps with his housekeeper.

Still, Baehr’s organization, which often works as a consultant to the movie industry to ensure religion is depicted fairly and accurately, will protest works it believes are blasphemous. He said the description of “Corpus Christi” would appear to make it a candidate.

“Church people are extremely tolerant, but the trouble with religious bigotry is it can lead to conflict and persecution,” he said. “That’s what happened in Nazi Germany. You may not believe that Jesus was a messenger of God, and we can dialogue about that. But to deride that notion and mock it is the essence of bigotry.

“It is not dialogue to pervert the truth,” he added. “You are taking people’s deeply held beliefs and trampling on them.”

The problem, said Catholic University professor Glen Johnson, is that different societies judge works of art differently. Nudes painted and sculpted in the Renaissance were sometimes covered with fig leaves by later generations, only to be uncovered in recent years.

“There is a long tradition in Catholic art of exploring spiritual issues through the metaphor of the physical,” said Johnson, who sometimes shows controversial films or artworks in a course he teaches on the First Amendment. “It’s always a matter of tension.”

In fact, Denton and others said, some of the controversial works opposed by Christians are all about metaphor. They portray Christ-like figures, not Christ himself.

“In our society, I don’t think there’s much harm at all in such works,” Johnson said. “I doubt if anyone’s faith was destroyed by `Last Temptation of Christ’ or by Serrano or this play. We have such an open society that I don’t think art has that kind of power. In Soviet Russia, an anti-Communist play had a lot of power, because it was repressed.”

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The Catholic League has said it doesn’t begrudge McNally his right to practice his art. But it also believes its 350,000 members have a right to weigh in with their opinion.

Many in the artistic world are appalled that by expressing this right to free speech, the Catholic League aims to shut down McNally’s effort at the same right. They point to the anonymous death threats _ which the Catholic League condemned _ as evidence of the ugliness such protests engender.

As for cutting off discourse, Hinshaw said the league mailed McNally a “respectful” letter on May 6 asking him if the offensive parts of the play were essential material, or could they be excised. McNally did not reply, and his agent said the award-winning playwright has a policy of not discussing works in progress.

In the end, Johnson said, it’s likely everyone will come out a winner.

“Not too many people would have heard of `Corpus Christi’ until all this started,” he said. “The artist gets publicity and can present himself as a martyr. The religious organization gets publicity and rallies the faithful. It’s very much the American way of dealing with things, and it’s one of the great things about free speech.”

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