From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

The first, and the lasting, impression one gets from Canterbury
CathedralrCOs new graffiti-style art instillation is just how reasonable
and normal are the questions it quite literally poses. ThatrCOs some feat
for an exhibition that purports to be rCythought-provokingrCO and rCydynamicrCO
while simultaneously attracting such derision rCo even provoking the ire
of the US vice president, J.D. Vance. Echoing the feelings of many
people in this country, he asked why the cathedralrCOs curators had to
make a rCybeautiful historical building really uglyrCO.

Yet thererCOs nothing shocking in the concerns expressed in the brightly coloured tags affixed to the walls throughout the building (theyrCOre
actually stickers). Representing real questions made by members of a
workshop assembled by the exhibitionrCOs creators, regarding the one thing they would like to ask God, their queries are frequent and commonplace:
rCyAre you there?rCO, rCyIs this all there is?rCO, rCyWhy all the pain and suffering?rCO, or just rCyWhy?rCO. Such questions may indeed strike some as hackneyed and trite, the kind of things infants ask their parents and
elders. But they are the ones that race through all our minds in times
of disaster, emotional crisis and bereavement.

Other callow petitions on display here are less forgivable, seeing that
the Christian church already has at its disposal correct doctrinal
replies. rCyAre you there?rCO (answer: yes). rCyWill there be a next time?rCO (again: yes). rCyIs illness a sin?rCO (of course not). rCyDoes everything have a soulrCO (absolutely not). The eternal, and some would say, insoluble, problem of evil gets a prominent showing, and warrants more lengthy
answers. rCyWhy is there so much pain and destruction?rCO repeats one daub. The explanation for this, according to Christianity, is that God endowed humans with free will, and evil exists because He allowed us to make bad decisions. Adam was the first man and the first man to do wrong. ThatrCOs
why he was punished.

ThererCOs no harm in asking ourselves and others these questions, even if
some will never be satisfied with answers that only beg further
questions: then why did an omnipotent God make humans susceptible to
moral error in the first place? And rationalist atheists will never
accept the hypothesis of an all-powerful, all-loving God. Logically, in
light of the suffering in the world, He canrCOt be both.

What really gets people riled about this exhibition is not so much the questions it raises, but its motives and its methods. It encapsulates
the incessant and desperate desire by the Church of England to appear relevant, by no matter how vulgar, disrespectful or cringeworthy means necessary. It was not enough for this exhibition to broach the problem
of evil through the medium of ersatz urban scrawls rCo and in a decidedly dated style of clean, luminous graffiti last seen on the front cover of
hip hop albums in the late-1980s rCo it had to do so via sub-par hip hop lyrics.

rCyIf you made us all in your form. Why the violence the killing the
stormrCO, reads another graffito. And bad poetry: rCyThis is my question for
a god up above. Why so much violence instead of love.rCO And soppy,
saccharine sentiment: rCyWhy did you create hate when love is by far the
more powerful.rCO

Canterbury Cathedral, the principal church of the worldwide Anglican Communion, has form in this department. In February last year it hosted
four two-and-a-half-hour dance parties in its hallowed space, the rCyrave
in the naverCO, an event that was likewise greeted with exasperation. The carry-on at Canterbury has left many conservatives in a state of
despair. Reacting to this exhibitionrCOs unveiling, the Rev Marcus Walker, rector of St Bartholomew the Great in London and chairman of the
campaign group Save the Parish, told the Daily Telegraph that he would
like to challenge the cathedral rCynot to embarrass the rest of the Church
of England for one clear calendar year.rCO

Yet many suspect that the cathedral isnrCOt out of step with the Anglican establishment. This is one that for decades has been eager to prove how aligned it is with progressive thinking and the trendy, niche causes
beloved of the establishment. This is the same Church of England that
seems eager to bankrupt itself under the spurious cause of paying
reparations for its involvement with slavery over 200 years ago. This is
the same remote, out-of-touch Church that shut its doors to its flock
during the lockdown years.

This exhibition, entitled rCyHere UsrCO, represents merely the continuation
of this spirit. In its press release, it says that it seeks to give a
voice to the unheard and rCymarginalised communities rCo such as Punjabi, black and brown diaspora, neurodivergent, and LGBTQIA+ groupsrCO. Yet as anyone who has been paying attention to politics in the past ten years
will tell you, thererCOs little that is marginalised about these groups.
They are scarcely voiceless or unheard. Establishment progressives in
recent years have seemingly been doing little else but giving them a voice.

TodayrCOs liberals do so because they suffer from the delusion, or
perpetuate the deceit, that they are the underdogs, as opposed to being
the ruling class themselves. The values of the liberal left have been
those of our establishment since the 1980s, when the right won the
economic arguments and liberal mores became the dominant norm, capturing
with it all the institutions: the schools, universities, the civil
service, the BBC rCo and the Church of England.

Its clergy, like our secular liberal clerisy, either donrCOt know or feign
not to know that they no longer represent the dispossessed or the marginalised. TodayrCOs outcasts and voiceless, the ones who are openly maligned and slandered in polite society, are those who have since the
summer been raising the Cross of St George throughout the country rCo and
even they have been criticised by some Anglican clergy for doing so.

This exhibition, though well-meaning, represents regime art. ItrCOs a
gesture made on behalf of an elite that doesnrCOt understand most people
in this country. This exhibition is not daring, challenging or radical.
Its theology is inoffensive and pedestrian. That is both its virtue and
its vice.


Patrick West
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