California school district faces backlash for including controversial Christ artwork in curriculum
Briana Oser
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Dos Pueblos High School in California is facing repercussions from Christian families for including a photograph called “Piss Christ” in its international baccalaureate curriculum.
The photograph is part of Theory of Knowledge, a mandatory course in the IB program that revolves around a central question: “How do we know what we know?”
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The course prompts questions about where we get our knowledge and how we should apply that knowledge in the real world.
According to an educational consultant called Structural Learning, Theory of Knowledge examines both scientific and religious types of knowledge, among others, and encourages “appreciation for the diversity between cultures in terms of values, practices and true beliefs.”
“Piss Christ,” which is a photograph of a crucifix submerged in artist Andres Serrano’s urine, was featured in a slide during the class’s discussion surrounding the question, “What is art?”
In a course that promises to promote respect toward all cultures, why is Christianity the exception?
To understand how educators would respond to this question, we could look toward higher education, and Catholic liberal arts colleges in particular.
The last 20 or 30 years have seen a pattern of Catholic colleges demoting their theology departments to religious studies departments. The shift away from Catholicism has opened up course possibilities not only for the study of other religions, a practice that can strengthen cultural understanding and Christian apologetics, but also for blasphemous biblical exegesis and interpretations of Christianity.
The latter tends to occur in classes that focus on racial aspects of the Bible. Classes like this often examine other “identities” in the Bible, including sexuality, as part of the course material.
A popular liberal interpretation of biblical sexuality is that the Beloved Disciple was Jesus’s homoerotic lover.
Catholic colleges welcome discussions like this in the name of “academic freedom.” And academics insist that the study of Jesus’s sexuality is a valid discipline. Besides, they might argue, who cares if this bothers Christians? Christians have never faced persecution. Christianity is the religion of “colonizers” and deserves to be taken down a notch. It is acceptable to mock Christianity for the noble cause of intellectual expansion secretly.
Students need to be exposed to diverse viewpoints and embrace Jesus’s homoeroticism as a valid and accurate historical analysis of the Bible (in order to become a more well-rounded human being. No other reason).
This claim is a facade. When Catholic colleges are willing to betray their mission statements and Catholic identity to push anti-Catholic material, they reveal their agenda.
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According to the letter sent by Dos Pueblos parents upset with the curriculum, the Theory of Knowledge course sought to explore whether “the artist is debasing religion or commenting on the way it has been debased.” And, as the parents aptly pointed out, the artist’s intention was to mock Catholicism. The photograph is objectively disrespectful. Two preposterous ideas are at work here: that the image is “art,” and that there is anything intellectual about someone submerging a crucifix in his own urine.
IB classes are designed for students who want to be challenged and excel in the classroom. Religious mockery like this will just discourage smart young Christians to enter the program, even if it suits their intellect. One could even say that it deprives Christians of educational opportunity. Doesn’t seem too equitable.
Briana Oser is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.