On Demonizing Non-Christians
Anti-Semitism was rare in Christian visual art of the 1st Christian millennium but flourished from the High Middle Ages into modern times. The depiction of Jews in art was such that the general public could recognize them as Jews. Jews were depicted as Jesus’ tormentors & executioners and were portrayed as monkey-like or demonic. This practice added fuel to actions and violence against Jews. At the same time, the same art prompted an urge for vengeance among the Jews who felt wronged by the portrayals. Whether contemporary viewers would be able to read the symbolism and identify the “bad guys” in the religious paintings as Jews, and thereby be fed conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism, is uncertain. In this time where Christians have finally begun to recognize & apologize for their role in the Shoah, however, we do not want to contribute to such a horror again.
Artworks demonizing many of those who are/were not Christian are also present in the world's collections of Christian art. The question of censorship arises. The preferable answer is to bring awareness to social sin and our own role in it. Censorship risks silencing the prophets. For what purposes may we depict violence? What might we do to limit the amount of violence depicted? A contemporary trend in art is to use violence to break open ideas. A similar practice has often been employed in religious art where the grotesque has been used to emphasize the beautiful or the holy.
