Get a load of this

Oh the muddy headed theologian and reverend wanted to spark a debate. Too bad he's wrong on the facts.

More artists being “brave” in the usually cowardly way:

John Howard last night condemned two entries in the nation’s top religious art competition, labelling them “gratuitously offensive” to Christians.

A statue of the Virgin Mary shrouded by a Muslim burqa and a holographic image of terrorist Osama bin Laden that morphs into Jesus Christ submitted for the Blake Prize have drawn a furious response from politicians and church leaders.

Strange - I’d have thought a picture of Mohammed morphing into bin Laden would have been far more to the point, but I guess that would have been rude - and, you know, dangerous.

The fastest-shrinking church in Australia doesn’t miss this chance to show why it’s dying of self-loathing:

Last night, the Uniting Church minister who chairs the Blake Society defended the pieces.

The Reverend Rod Pattenden, who awarded the $15,000 prize to the competition winner in Sydney yesterday, said his mission was to spark debate about spirituality in a world that was “cynical, degraded and in crisis”. Mr Pattenden said he did not expect controversy to result from the exhibition at the National Art School Gallery “because the Christian community doesn’t look at art a great deal”.

Once, in fact, the Christian community actually looked at art so gladly it commissioned many of the world’s great masterpieces. Just think of the Sistine Chapel.

Christians do not look at art with any discernment that pleases the reverend I guess. This Pattenden is a idiot.