Crucifix showing a female Christ figure on display at Episcopal cathedral
October 05, 2016
A crucifix with a female figure of Christ has been installed at the Episcopalian cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, more than 30 years after the same crucifix was originally displayed there.
The crucifix, entitled Christa and fashioned by artist Edwina Sandys, was denounced when it was first shown in 1984, as “theologically and historically indefensible” in portraying a female Christ. Now New York’s Episcopalian Bishop Andrew Dietsche says that the faithful “may be ready to see Christa not only as a work of art but as an object of devotion.” The bishop remarked that this is possible in “an evolving, growing, learning church.”
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Posted by: wojo425627 -
Oct. 12, 2016 3:58 PM ET USA
Well, since Christ is a man shouldn't that title read, a statue of a female on a cross was installed in the episcopal church?
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Posted by: Bveritas2322 -
Oct. 06, 2016 4:37 PM ET USA
This inspires revisiting Orwell's famous remark, "Some ideas are so stupid, only intellectuals can believe them. Leave it to a dimwitted cleric to talk about "learning" as though God would have left the Christians of the past without sufficient knowledge and wisdom for salvation. But I guess you can believe such things if you see yourself as God's theological superior. How about learning about the meaning of the sin of pride Bishop?
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Posted by: loumiamo -
Oct. 06, 2016 11:58 AM ET USA
Re the Bishop's comments on an "evolving...church," I'm reminded of a comment I heard from economist Walter Williams: which of us would like to play poker in a game where the rules evolve?
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Posted by: crew8s1334 -
Oct. 06, 2016 11:34 AM ET USA
This type of scrambled thinking is why I,a lifelong member of ECUSA, came home to the Roman Catholic Church at the tender age of 61. Now it appears that the same mental disorder of modernism is taking hold in the Roman Church.
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Posted by: jalsardl5053 -
Oct. 06, 2016 2:55 AM ET USA
As we all know, anything goes in the world of art but extrapolating that to the world of devotion shows a complete lack of anything resembling common sense. Any "faithful" will NOT be ready to see this work of art as an object of devotion and should, in fact, raise as loud a protest as previously.
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Posted by: DanS -
Oct. 05, 2016 9:33 PM ET USA
The Episcopal Church never ceases to amuse for its predictable and consistent unseriousness. I applaud Bishop Dietche's naive and comically political act because it may well mark the last straw for more earnest Episcopalians to abandon the bark of Henry VIII and return to Rome. In that way, his spectacle is quite unifying and ecumenical!
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Posted by: mwean7331 -
Oct. 05, 2016 6:26 PM ET USA
How insulting to our Dear Lord who suffered so much on that crucifix. The crucifixion was not symbolic. What's the message here, anyway? When did a woman ever die to ransom mankind? How do these men become Bishops? Mind boggling!
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Posted by: Gil125 -
Oct. 05, 2016 3:34 PM ET USA
wsw33410, before we conclude that we should hear what the Archbishop of Canterbury has to say. Although...I wouldn't bet fifty cents that he would not approve of it. But we ought to give him a chance to weigh in.
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Posted by: wsw33410 -
Oct. 05, 2016 1:13 PM ET USA
With this action "unity and ecumenism" become empty slogans.
