Fundie art and sex

I knew Jeff Sharlet from Killing the Buddha and his great Harper’s piece on New Life Church in Colorado Springs. It turns out that he has a quirky personal blog too: Call Me Ishmael.

Check out his comments on Christian fundamentalist art.

My tentative theory: As religious art traditionally uses eroticism to channel worldly desires toward spiritual concerns, contemporary fundamentalist art uses eroticism to channel sex — the visual currency of power in an advertising culture — away from women and toward men. Either that, or it’s a vast gay conspiracy.