I am writing to ask readers to cast their minds back to the dim dark days before the break and reconsider both Colleen McCarthy's sensible, funny and restrained March 7 column on Rudy Giuliani's attack on the painting called "Yo Mama's Last Supper" by Renee Cox and the responses to it.

Let me begin by saying that I don't want to argue for the intrinsic artistic or theological merit of the painting. In the admittedly poor and off-center photograph I saw, it looked slick enough to qualify on either count (unlike Chris Ofili's equally maligned African Madonna).

But I do want to take issue with the objections to Ms. McCarthy's claim to be able to image Christ as female. The idea that images of Christ, whether for art, veneration or spirituality should be determined by what can be known of the historical Jesus is both historically impossible and theologically problematic.

Particularly confusing was Riley's complaint that McCarthy's imaging of Christ as woman would be the same as his imaging Christ as "a shillelagh swinging son of the old sod who wouldn't hesitate to administer a love tap to the empty head of a fool."

I got a little worried here. Does this mean that Jesus never would strike anyone? How then does one understand the whips Jesus used to drive money-changers from the temple? Does it mean that Jesus shouldn't be represented as a white, blue-eyed westerner? Good idea, but look around you. Most representations of Jesus make him look like a cavalier in a nightie.

Imagining Jesus as a laboring Jewish male of the first century would mean picturing him as dark-haired, dark-eyed and dark-skinned, approximately five feet, two inches to five feet, four inches with shortish arms and legs and a broad torso and shoulders, wearing a short tunic (think a knee-length belted tee-shirt), a bad but short haircut and five o'clock shadow (assume cheap shaving tools), missing an odd tooth, aged anywhere from 28 (Luke 3:23) to 46 (John 2:20-21, 8:57) and looking every minute of it.

I don't object to constructing this image. I do it all the time myself, what with teaching New Testament and all. But it is as much an act of imagination as the wonderful Bible scenes of the brilliant Japanese painter Hisao Watanabe and the many varieties of Mestizo, aboriginal, African and Asian Christs and Madonnas.

These cross-cultural and trans-historical translations of the image of Christ are widely recognized not only as artistic achievements but also as necessary to theology and faith.

Such representations declare that the salvation proclaimed in Christ is neither limited nor distant but can inform and be informed by the human reality of those who seek it.

Why is the translation into female terms so much more controversial? Both gender and racial categories are social assignments that organize and give social significance to (and sometimes even create) physical characteristics that are by no means as clearly defined, obvious or fixed as is generally assumed.

The ancient definitions do indeed insist that in Christ the divine Word and Wisdom are joined to a whole human person, mind, soul and body (not to a body alone, incidentally).

But making the masculinity of Jesus so constitutive of the humanity of Christ as to exclude the possibility of imaging Christ as a woman risks violating the ancient principle of salvation that says that whatever of humanity cannot be said to be taken up into Christ is not redeemed.

Ms. McCarthy is by no means outside the tradition in representing Christ or the deity in female terms. She can draw upon the ancient theological traditions that treat divine Wisdom as a hypostasis or personification of the deity, that understand Jesus as the incarnation of Wisdom or that characterize the Holy Spirit as female. Medieval traditions represented by Anselm and Julian of Norwich represented Christ as mother. More recent theology and art have attempted to draw from or move beyond these traditions.

Too often these attempts have indeed evoked responses that uncover the deep vein of misogyny in western Christianity. For instance, Altmuth Lutkenaus-Lackey's sculpture "Crucified Woman" drew hostility from many people (largely men) who were unable to see any message except sexual invitation in a naked female body. This sculpture is now installed in the garden of Emmanuel College in Toronto as a memorial to the 14 women engineering students who were assassinated by an enraged male student in Quebec in 1989.

Am I arguing that Rudy Giuliani is misogynist? And maybe racist as well? Well, maybe. But don't forget the man is a publicity hound. It all takes me back to the days of John O'Connor's tenure in the archdiocese when he competed daily with Mayor Koch for coverage on the front page of the New York Times.

Borrowing the role of defensor fidei from Henry VIII is not surprising in one who believes himself to have inherited the mantle of both Hizzoner and Hizeminenz.

Mary Rose D'Angelo

associate professor, department of theology

March 20, 2001

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