From Marc Teillon's "Public Pillory," Fall '94 This "very very beautiful" piece of art -- as Wendy Steinberg, Public Relations Coordinator of the University's Institute of Contemporary Art, described it -- will be going on display next Saturday, just in time for Family Weekend. So if you can wrestle your family away from Franklin Field, take them on over to 36th and Sansom and show them what your University thinks about religion. While this exhibit may not enrage many non-Christians on campus, it still raises an issue of University-wide importance. Showing "Piss Christ" has little to do with definitions of art or federal funding of any offensive works. Displaying this work is about the cultural war on Christianity and which side the ICA, and consequently the University of Pennsylvania, has decided to join. The dominant cultural authorities, namely the arts and entertainment, have been waging war on Christianity for quite some time. The Hollywood and Network elites have led the attack to degrade this religion by making Christian leaders look like pedophiles, crooks and idiots and the church members like hypocrites and bigots. In the movie Short Cuts, Jennifer Jason Leigh runs a 900 number and tells her sister how their mother's priest calls regularly and has her pretend she is a little boy being sodomized on the church altar. In Leap of Faith, Steve Martin is a evangelical preacher who dupes the public out of thousands of dollars with a bogus ability to heal the sick. In Four Weddings and a Funeral, Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) brings his buffoonery to the Anglican Church and makes a mockery out of the wedding ceremony by mincing words and forgetting lines. In countless television shows, like NYPD Blue and Picket Fences, characters attending weekly services always take the moral high-ground and are later shown to hypocritical by acts of deceit and envy. The Institute for Contemporary Arts has now joined the fight to degrade Christianity by showing Serrano's otherwise unimportant work -- a work that takes the ultimate symbol of the religion, Christ dying on the Cross to give us eternal life, and sticks it in the artist's excrement. Why do these elites want to piss on Christianity and anybody who practices the religion? Because this religion fosters tradition, moral absolutes, and stable doctrines transcending the whims of human nature. Christianity was chosen from a number of religious targets because more than 90% of all Americans who claim to be religiously affiliated are members of a Christian congregation. In Christianity, morality is absolute, not relative. Doctrines are eternal, not partly repealed by each successive generation. The Word of the Lord is studied, not interpreted. Though Christians may err in judgment or suffer from ambition and avarice, the moral norms set down by the Lord are still what each individual strives for. The controlling elites despise this aspect of Christianity. They want people to do whatever feels good and give into the moment. Don't force your morality on me because what may be acceptable for you is not necessarily proper for everyone else. There are no rights or wrongs, only gray areas where Man can use his power of reason to determine what is appropriate behavior for a specific situation. When this faulty belief in moral relativism results in dire consequences, the only solutions offered by the dominant establishment are man-made restraints determined by the artificial State to control and sanction behavior. Don't tell children not to have sex. Allow them to make decisions for themselves. When teen pregnancy rates start increasing, give out condoms and birth control pills to stop the consequences of teen promiscuity. After that fails, let the State decide who should be made infertile and who should be allowed to bear children. Spanish philosopher Juan Donoso-Cortes once said, "there are only two possible forms of control [in society]: one internal and the other external; religious control and political control." Once civilized man allows himself to fall into disbelief and immorality, then "the way is prepared for some gigantic and colossal tyrant, universal and immense." Being religious is very difficult, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Buddhist. But Leviathan's rules are far more stringent and a lot less forgiving than God's. Those on the ICA's side of the culture war are pleased with the results because they are the ones who run this monstrosity. Those on the right side are the perfectible men whom the all-encompassing State will cure of any human imperfections. We may not be able to draw Leviathan out with a hook, but we can stop him from forming. A strong moral fabric, backed by religion, and grounded in a firm belief in God is the only prescription. Marc Teillon is a junior Finance major from Liverpool, New York. The Public Pillory appears alternate Thursdays.
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