Graven Images and False Idols

What to say about the raging controversy, violence, and accusations over the Danish editorial cartoon debacle? I personally think this matter is far more about politics and post-colonial resentment towards Europe and America than it is about blasphemy or free speech. Yet few talk about the local conditions driving the protests and instead focus on the notion of graven images. Some Christian commentators have taken this opportunity to praise themselves for their relative restraint when their prophet and holy figures are parodied.

If we are talking about blasphemy, the obvious angle for a Pagan-boosting blog to take is to talk about how much we love graven images and idols. The connecting thread of all the politically powerful monotheisms is their restrictions on portraying divine figures. Historical (and modern) paganisms have in comparison been open to multiple representations and interpretations of divine and holy figures. One of the original slanders against pagan faiths by the Abrahamic faiths is that we believe idols to be the gods instead of mere representations. This misrepresentation of ancient pagan beliefs lead to the destruction of many statues, idols, and temples by zealous monotheists in hopes that the loss of these items would speed conversions.

Julian the Hellene (aka “the apostate” to Christians) discusses this very issue in his “A Letter To A Priest” (which can be found in the essential “The Paganism Reader”). In the letter, Julian makes the case for the continued use of statues, idols, and representations as an aid to worship and ritual.

“For our fathers established images and altars, and the maintenance of undying fire, and, generally speaking, everything of the sort, as symbols of the presence of the gods, not that we may regard such things as gods, but that we may worship the gods through them. For since being in the body it was in bodily wise that we must needs perform our service to the gods also, though they are themselves without bodies…”

One could posit that it is unwise and unhealthy to ban representations of the divine. Our human nature is one of communication and expression. If a faith or philosphy stifles our human need to express “bodily” perceptions of gods and holy figures it will (and does) lead to a heretical undercurrent that will carry with it unintended consequences. Just as Prohibition created bootlegging, so the societal pressures against representing Muhammad along with the tensions between Western powers and Muslims create an almost irresistible temptation to draw inflammatory cartoons.

Now we are in a situation where free-speech advocates are torn, newspaper staff are walking out or being fired, buildings are being burned, and people are dying, all for the impulse to draw the prophet of Islam. Now, as I said before, this isn’t a simple free-speech issue (even though the Danish cartoonists had the right to draw and publish them), and I have my doubts that the pile-on of newspapers reprinting them are doing so merely from some principled stand on the freedom of speech.

In any event, I think it is time we had a serious look at the religious beliefs that underlay both this controversy and the ongoing tensions between Islamic and “Christian” nations. Are we in this situation because our Christian leaders think far too differently from Islamic leaders, or are we here because both sides are increasingly of one mind?

Tags: Neopaganism