🐱 Church Under Fire for Depicting Jesus With Beard and Breasts

https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/09/26/icelandic-church-under-fire-for-depicting-jesus-with-beard-and-breasts/

An advertisement encouraging children to attend Sunday school classes hosted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland has stirred up controversy following its social media release earlier this month.

The ad, brightly colored and cheerful, depicts a smiling cartoon Christ leaping amid the greenery outside a church populated by grinning multiracial children. Jesus has long hair and a beard, and He wears a long white gown — not so different from His traditional fashion choices, really, except that the fit of the garment reveals that this version of Jesus has breasts. His bright pink lips, rosy cheeks, and dark lashes also suggest to some that He’s wearing make-up.

Exactly what is Jesus’ gender identity in the ad? The ambiguity, says minister Guðrún Karls-og Helgudóttir, is precisely the point:

Each person interprets something in this picture. Some people interpret it as a trans Jesus, others as a [cis] woman. Some see Mary with a beard, and others see a genderqueer person. Views within the church are just as diverse as elsewhere.

The ads were initially unveiled on Facebook and the church’s website, and they’ve also appeared on public transit in Reykjavík.

But when the inevitable backlash arose, taking the ad’s creators to task for “humiliating” Jesus, the church scrubbed the image from social media and released a statement of apologyto anyone hurt by this depiction of a gender-ambiguous Christ:

Kirkjuþing 2020 [the church assembly] is very sorry that a picture of Jesus in an advertisement for the church’s Sunday school has hurt people. The intention was to emphasize diversity, but not to hurt or offend people.

The church has yet to apologize to people harmed by the apology, which uncritically accepts and supports the notion that there’s something inherently shameful or humiliating about being transgender or gender non-conforming.

Fortunately, it’s clearly a form apology, the kind that says “sorry you were offended” rather than admitting to any real harm. And Church of Iceland media director Pétur Georg Markancontinues to stand by the idea that “it’s okay” to depict Jesus in a range of different ways:

In this [advertisement] we see a Jesus who has breasts and a beard. We’re trying to embrace society as it is. We have all sorts of people and we need to train ourselves to talk about Jesus as being ‘all sorts’ in this context, especially because it’s really important that each and every person see themselves in Jesus and that we don’t stagnate too much. That’s the essential message. So this is okay. It’s okay that Jesus has a beard and breasts.

He adds that this is only the first in a series of ads that will illustrate different aspects of the church’s view of Christ. The next one is slated to show a Jesus who cares deeply about the environment.

But just as those who consider the picture blasphemous are unlikely to be appeased by an apology, queer activists want the church to stand up for its convictions. Þorbjörg Þorvaldsdóttir, chair of Iceland’s national queer rights association Samtökin ’78, expressed disappointment after the Church of Iceland gave in to transphobic backlash:

When it has been decided to make as much of a ‘statement’ as the image of Jesus in question, the minimum requirement is for the national church to stand on its own two feet and show that it is a real ally of [LGBTQ] people, even when faced with blows… Will the national church be our real ally or not? Is it enough for people to be offended and call the Episcopal Office for it to turn its back on us? From the events of the last few days, it is difficult to deduce much determination or sincerity in the Church’s support. [Loosely translated from the original Icelandic]

Þorvaldsdóttir stated her intention to bring her concerns before the bishop, but there’s been no word on what came of their meeting.

It’s hard to imagine the omniscient, omnipotent Creator of the Universe being this invested in policing whether people’s secondary sex characteristics all line up on the same side of the gender binary. Seems like even the Church of Iceland concedes that such a deity isn’t worth worshiping.

But that conclusion is only useful to the extent that they’re willing to stand by it in solidarity with the LGBTQ community to defend it.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

The Communist infiltration of seminaries and parachurch organizations in the heyday of the Cold War—and possibly now by China—was no joke and a generation or two later outside influence is not even needed and we get stuff like this.

There have been weirdo churches/cults in the US since the beginning. It didn't suddenly get all goofy because of the commies. It was always been this way. Joseph Smith, William Miller, and John Darby say hi.

Kinda one of those things that happens with religious freedom.

 

[Spooky Bones]

There have been weirdo churches/cults in the US since the beginning. It didn't suddenly get all goofy because of the commies. It was always been this way. Joseph Smith, William Miller, and John Darby say hi.

Kinda one of those things that happens with religious freedom.

Oh, there have definitely been weird cults (BTW this story is in Iceland, not the U.S.), but social liberalism smuggled into (particularly) mainline Protestant, but also Catholic, churches by commies is a real thing. In the 50s-80s, it wasn't about troons, that's for sure, but it was about sowing economic and racial division. Then came gays (look at how many mainline Protestant churches fly the fag flag) and now troons, as a natural enough outgrowth given that it's all about identity politics, discord, and undermining traditional Christianity as a dual-pronged approach to promote Marxist ideals and to undermine a significant enemy of Marxism, a vigorous Church.

 

[Shield Breaker]

There have been weirdo churches/cults in the US since the beginning. It didn't suddenly get all goofy because of the commies. It was always been this way. Joseph Smith, William Miller, and John Darby say hi.

Kinda one of those things that happens with religious freedom.

True, but the ECLS is a direct result of the shift in colleges to communist friendly professors back in the sixties and seventies. The pastors taught moral relativism split and formed the ELCS in the late 80s.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

It’s hard to imagine the omniscient, omnipotent Creator of the Universe being this invested in policing whether people’s secondary sex characteristics all line up on the same side of the gender binary. Seems like even the Church of Iceland concedes that such a deity isn’t worth worshiping.

Atheists think this line is a gotcha, but it's really not when if you read the Bible, God cares enough about the people on an insignificant rock to go take their form and let them torture him to death to pay for their sins. So you better damn well do what he says in the Bible, because God is petty enough to make sure you aren't a crossdressing faggot (Deuteronomy) or a faggot in general (Leviticus). And mutilating the body God made you with for your own selfish pride is a sin.

But these churches are mostly dead anyway because there's nothing Christian about them. "Oh, God might be real, but Muhammad also teaches a path to heaven, and so did Buddha and by the way Hindu gods might be just as real as God." Liberal Christiaity (and Liberal Islam, and Liberal most any religion) is nothing but intellectual dishonesty, twisting religion to suit secular morality. Tens of millions of people have to some degree realized this and become agnostics or atheists because that's precisely what they are. Even if I oppose religious fundamentalism as much as I do progressive feel-good bullshit, I have far more respect for fundamentalists of any religion than I do people like this.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

Western European Churches are "churches" in the same way that American cheese is "cheese." The only faith they practice is social justice.

 

[BoobWhiskers]

"We want to make sure that each and every person can see themselves in Jesus, and we decided the best way to do this is making a grotesque caricature that looks like approximately nobody in this ad's target audience"

 

[CatboyCumDump]

Who takes away the penises of the world.

Who takes away the cis of the world.

 

[Thorvald Stauning]

True, but the ECLS is a direct result of the shift in colleges to communist friendly professors back in the sixties and seventies. The pastors taught moral relativism split and formed the ELCS in the late 80s.

It is not a corruption of clergy my friend, its a corruption of the parish electorate who are simply part of the population. The provosts and bishops are as conservative as ever, but due to the Church reforms of the early 20th century many state churches lost political power to affect change and stand as a bulwark against this communist drivel.

 

[whitepumpkin]

So, when can we hope to see Trans!Buddha, Trans!Mohammad, Trans!Odin, and other deities put through this ringer in the name of social justice?

 

[LMFAOForgotPw]

Why would Jesus be trans computers didn’t exist back then.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

Now do it with Mohammed the goat fucking pedo.

 

[GHTD]

Now do it with Mohammed the goat fucking pedo.

Oh boy, I love Charlie Hebdo! Great newspaper!

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

So, when can we hope to see Trans!Buddha, Trans!Mohammad, Trans!Odin, and other deities put through this ringer in the name of social justice?

There was some YA novel by Rick Riordan that had all the Norse gods accepting they were inferior than Allah so that's a start, right?

 

[CivilianOfTheFandomWars]

There was some YA novel by Rick Riordan that had all the Norse gods accepting they were inferior than Allah so that's a start, right?

Do we have Vikings? No.
Do we have Jihad? Yes.
Case closed.

 

[Calooby]

Kind of making it hard for one to not be against LGBT doctrine when you do shit like this, you know? It's kind of like throwing turds at people and expecting them to not get mad about it while arguing you're just as human and respectable as them.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

There was some YA novel by Rick Riordan that had all the Norse gods accepting they were inferior than Allah so that's a start, right?

Western Europe deserves to get overrun by a stronger culture.

 

[Pentex]

Once upon a time, the Catholics ground the Cathars into dust and burned a good portion of the south of France for much, much less than this.

Just throwing it out there.

 

[Krystal]

Heresy will not be acceptable when the Holy Trinity finds out.

 

[Troonologist PhD]

It’s like the left is literally trying to summon Slaanesh.

Do we have Vikings? No.
Do we have Jihad? Yes.
Case closed.

Vikings were basically snow Jihadis.

 

[Mrs Paul]

The worst part? It's really, REALLY shitty art.