Christians in Britain are protesting a new art installation at the White Cube in London.  The title of the exhibit--Sonofagod Pictures:  Was Jesus Heterosexual?--was clearly designed to generate publicity, and let's hope that someday sincere but short-sighted protestors realize that they are actually part of such exhibits' marketing strategy.

The exhibit itself, however, is more interesting than the all too predictable rituals of outrage.  It has little to do with Jesus' sexuality, but is rather a critique of the banality of the ways we picture the divine. 

And the Blingdom is the heart of it. 

In panel after panel of their display, the artists illustrate how pins, charms, pendants and other trinkets can actually diminish the supernatural realm.  It's a concern that many believers share with the artists, but one that gets lost in the shuffle of pickets and publicity.

If you're not exactly driving or tube distance from London's East End, you can still see much of this exhibit by going to the White Cube's web site and clicking on "Programme," then "White Cube."

Ever hear the phrase "civil religion"?  It's a sociological concept used to describe the way that our civic rituals and symbols can take on what seem to be religious traits.  At the center of many of these rituals is, of course, the flag, which in the U.S. can have deeply religious overtones lacking any direct religious reference.

But that's not the case everywhere, as we can see from the South Korean flag reproduced above.  Known as the "Taegeukgi," or "Flag of Great Extremes," the flag contains an image of yin-yang symbol of dynamic unity in duality.  Surrounding this are trigrams representing heaven, earth, fire and water, all phases of movement toward harmony. 

And why would I write a post about spiritual symbols in a flag?

Because its fusion of religious imagery & national identity can make the taegeukgi a compelling image for designers in the Blingdom--and because I wouldn't want anyone to look at this charm & think that it was a celebration of Pepsi!

 

If you look to either side of the page, you'll see a new feature on the Blingdom of God . . .

Shopping!

 

That's right--from here on out the Blingdom of God will not exist on posts alone.  Besides talking about trends and symbols and fun stuff in the news, we'll also be assembling links to sellers of spiritual bling around the globe. 

The lists are small now, but keep coming back because they're going to grow like a mustard seed.  If you know of a shop or designer that you would like to see listed here, send me an email & if it's appropriate, I'll post the link.  And if you patronize a shop from this page, be sure to let them know that the Blingdom of God sent you.  You'll be glad you did!

"It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens."  This quotation from the Writings of the Baha'u'llah underlies the pendant pictured below, and it is one of the core beliefs of the Baha'i faith.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the designers of this pendant explain, little on this piece of jewelry lacks symbolic significance.  Its eighteen background lines represent the eighteen steps to the main floor of the Bahai House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois.  The "Ringstone Symbol" in the foreground 

represents the worlds of God, His manifestations & humanity, linked by divine messengers. 

At a time when many in the West associate monotheism with intolerance, Baha'i is a reminder that it can also give rise to more universal values.   Global peace, the elimination of prejudice, the fundamental unity of all nations and religions in one God--such are the core principles of the Baha'i faith, which has spread far beyond its Middle Eastern roots to count among its members world leaders in law, politics, education, journalism and entertainment. 

On a personal note, I couldn't finish my first post on Baha'i jewelry without noting my indebtedness to one of the most influential leaders of the Baha'i faith, the Hon. Dorothy W. Nelson, Senior Judge on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, for whom I had the good fortune of serving as a law clerk.  Without her I'd know a lot less not only about the Baha'i faith, but law, life and the inestimable value of a cup of tea and cookies on a rainy day.  Thanks Judge! 

WWJD? has become almost as ubiquitous a Christian symbol as the sign of the fish.  But where did this design come from and what does it mean?

WWJD, of course, is an acronym for "What Would Jesus Do?", and the ostensible purpose behind the phrase is to remind believers to think before they act.  About to gossip about your friend?  Ask yourself WWJD?  Cursing out the Knicks as they blow another game in overtime--WWJD?  Coveting your neighbor's ox--well, you get the point.

While WWJD is popping up on jewelry from bracelets to shades, the man who coined the phrase was far from fashion-conscious, let alone market savvy.  In 1896, a midwestern minister & newspaper editor named Charles Sheldon wrote a book called In His Steps, in which asking the question "What Would Jesus Do?" becomes the impetus for the global spread of Christian socialism.   

In the spirit of his work, Sheldon let In His Steps slip into the public domain, leaving his family to profit precious little from a work that has sold more than 50,000,000 copies & inspired a fashion empire. 

So the Pope's done gone and issued his first encyclical, which I won't quote too much here because I don't have any Euros handy--except to say that the Pope's reference to "that love between man and woman which is neither planned nor willed" sounds a lot like how my parents' explained why I was going to have another little brother. 

Seriously, though, the Pope's 25 page exegesis of the difference between caritas, agape and eros won't come as news to anyone who attended an evangelical fellowship in college.  This was a recurring theme at our Friday night InterVarsity meetings back when I was at Duke, as we learned the biblical basis for why God wanted us there watching skits & not out scoping hotties at keggers.

I've given the Pope enough press for now, so I decided to check out one of my old stomping grounds at college, the Southern Baptist Church (Westwood represent!), to see how they reflect the Church's obsession with sex are celebrating the primacy of spiritual love.  The pictures you see in this entry all come from the Valentine's Day jewelry listings of the SBC's Lifeway Christian Stores, and therein lies the tale.

Of eight pieces of jewelry listed on the Lifeway site, 

• one features a cross (and is the only one sold out),
• one sports the inspirational but not exactly romantic slogan "Faith," and
• six are about not having sex.

Is there a better way of giving your honey a memorable night of romance than by giving her a chastity charm?  Why, I bet she'll be telling her girlfriends about that for years! My favorite is the one pictured below . . .

Now why would you present your crush with three "True Love Waits" rings?  Let's see.  There's one for her ring finger, one for your ring finger, and one for . . . um . . .

NAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

My all-time favorite novel is Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, a wild and wonderful look at life through the Devil's escapades in Stalin's Moscow, and I was delighted to see it named as an indispensable accessory on Superfantastic Island over at Shangri Law. 

Since my photos are in storage I won't post my pictures of Bulgakov's apartment and M & M landmarks, nor will I regale you with stories about the formative influence this book had on me back when I, like the Shangri Lawvians, was a student at Yale Law (except back then it was known as The New School in Connecticut in Need of a Naming Gift). 

However, I will show you M & M inspired jewelry!

The above is an homage to Bulgakov's masterpiece and its spiritual influences, from Jewish mysticism and Goethe (hence the Hebrew version of the epigram that opens M & M) to a pre-Mill Valley fusion of the occult, Christian and Hindu symbolism.  The designer gives a brief overview of his inspiration here -- and keep reading Blingdom for lots more to come on triangles, diamonds and the three forces of life. 

EXTRA:  A new film adaptation has been all the rage in Russia, and I've just obtained a copy.  From the little I've seen it's clear the Wizard of Oz was an influence, although the W of O didn't have quite as much naked dancing.  As soon as I get through all ten episodes I'll write about it on Trexfiles.  For now, though, I'll just lift my coffee mug and joyfully drink . . . to existence!

In Italy, a heated controversy is brewing over the Vatican's decision to bill a publisher around $18,000 for using quotes from the Pope in one of their books.  And the Church isn't stopping there--it has announced its intention to enforce its copyright in all the Pope's official statements, including a new encyclical he is expected to issue in a few days. 

Whether the Vatican should charge a 3-4% royalty from "pirates" who dare to quote Church documents is a question I'll leave for others to debate.  But as the Pope himself shows a new designer sensibility with Prada shoes and Gucci glasses,

he might want to think about IP piracy of a far more profitable sort.  I am speaking, of course, of the global trade in knockoffs based on papal bling.

Take, for example, the tradition of a papal ring (Benedict's is pictured above).   The following cover of Lucky show two key dimensions of the Counterfeit Pope Ring Cabal--using the Papal name without royalties, copying designers of more expensive retail Pope Rings--while others go further and claim that such Pope Rings have "mystical" religious power!

And Lucky is far from alone. 

The web abounds
in shops
selling
Vatican and
Papal jewelry.

Now that the Church is asserting is its copyright against those unscrupulous "pirates" who dare to quote its teachings, can we expect a trademark crackdown on counterfeit Catholic bling?

So after I posted the last entry & finished watching American Idol meditated on the Vedas, who should show up on my TV but William Donohue, the President of the Catholic League, in full fulmination against the blasphemer Kanye West.  West's Rolling Stone cover is "pornography," spat Donohue, and he should not be allowed to curse God by "appropriating" the image of Jesus for a deviant hip-hop agenda. 

So let's get this straight.  A couple years ago Donohue denounced criticism of Mel Gibson's Passion movie as "sheer demogoguery," but once an African-American musician dons the thorns once worn by Jim Cavaziel the imitation of Christ becomes satanic porn.

OK, got it.  But in the interests of doing onto others what you would have them do to you (now where have I heard that before?), it might be good for Christ's defenders to think that maybe, possibly, it just might be that Kanye devoutly believes in the spiritual union of the believers and Christ in Jesus' suffering for humanity. 

Folks might also want to recall the iconography associated with the Church, such as . . .

the Pope, whose triregnum, or three-level tiara, has long been condemned by reformation-minded Protestants as an arrogant, materialistic and blasphemous appropriation of the Holy Trinity, and

tradtional Catholic saints.  Catherine of Sienna, for example, is here depicted wearing her trademark crown of thorns, as she has a vision of the infant Christ giving her a ring as His mystical bride.

Which, um, also goes to show that there are some religious symbols you don't want to spend too much time trying to understand.  Calling Reverend Freud!

It's a "sad day for our Lord"--that's typical of what many devout Christians are saying about Kanye West's controversial appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone, in which he appears as a suffering black Jesus with a crown of thorns. 

                 

But is this cover really a sign that West is arrogant, greedy and anti-Christian?  Is it just a cynical bid for publicity through a manufactured controversy?  

Not necessarily.  If you read this blog, you know that this is Kanye's iconic crown-of-thorns bling come to life, right down to the trickling tear. 

COMING SOON:  the origin of Britney's historic Rolling Stone cover in the Babylonian Talmud!

Designers protesting an unconstitutional ordinance; reports of police bending jewelry into crosses--religious jewelry is at the heart of a controversy now raging in the seaside paradise of Venice Beach, California.  Proposed new regulations on public expression & vending on the city's storied Ocean Front Walk are fueling concern over both the suppression and de facto establishment of religion.

How the both be an issue at the same time?  The problem lies in the city's attempt to balance the interests of area residents & storefront merchants with First Amendment religious freedom. 

Although street performers, protestors and street vendors make the Ocean Front Walk a lively tourist attraction, they also give rise to unmanageable crowds, loud noise and substantial competition to the boardwalk's brick-and-mortar shops.  Police, neighbors, shopkeepers--lots of folks are complaining, folks who either have more power or pay more taxes than those with tables by the beach.  To deal with the problem the city wants (1) to limit the number of people engaged in "free expression" and (2) to ban boardwalk vending except when an item is produced by the seller, is "inherently communicative and has nominal utility apart from its communication."

Here's where the fun begins.  On the one hand, according to the City, jewelry, candles, incense and other items have more than "nominal utility," and so they are included in the ban--leading some vendors, who see their items as "100% religious," to claim this new rule would be an illegal infringement on religious freedom. 

Meanwhile, street vendors who do not sell religious items report that local enforcement sees religious speech as beyond the reach of regulations aiming to provide order to public expression.  As one craftsperson relates,

LAPD officers have bent her jewelry into crosses and have told her that a religious symbol needs to be on the jewelry if she wants to continue to display and sell it on the boardwalk.

Who's right? Who's wrong? 

Well, except for the whole cross-bending bit (if that did indeed occur), existing law is not as favorable to the free expression camp as they might like, particularly when it comes to a purported (but non-existent) blanket exemption of religious items from ordinances that apply equally to secular & religious interests.  Perhaps instead of selling candles street vendors might want to light a few in prayer to the deity of their choice, because if this ordinance passes its reversal in court might require divine intervention.

It's 80s Night at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, which today is opening its "Edges of Grace" exhibit on transgressive arts and crafts.  As the museum's web site indicates, the premise of this show is that spirituality is not just confined to mainstream (read:  conservative Christian) religion and morality. 

"Erotic jewelry," "unorthodox religious icons," anti-war textiles and "deviant fur"--hey, what's not to like?  At the most basic level, Edges of Grace makes a valuable point.  Art, as Marshall McLuhan said, acts as a counter-environment:  it is a disruptive technology that exposes the hidden effects of conventional experience.  By taking us outside ourselves the avant garde at its best is supremely spiritual, helping us to transcend the mundane.

Yet Edges of Grace also has its weaknesses.  The first is a marketing strategy that no one running a nonprofit museum should indulge:  pitching admittedly "deviant" and "offensive" crafts to kids.

Yep, that's right:  not only does Fuller describe itself as an "all ages" museum, but the museum has posted a Teacher Packet with recommended lesson plans for children in middle and high school.  Even if you like avant garde art--and I'm a huge fan of the enterprise--encouraging twelve year olds to write essays on "Figure in Diaper and Glasses", to contemplate the inner grace of phallic jewelry and to emulate the shock art of the Guerrilla Girls is not exactly the smartest way to maintain community--or grant--support.

Another weakness of the exhibit has to do with the content of its transgressive message.  Edges of Grace is replete with "uncommon," "offensive" and "unorthodox" points of view seldom heard today, such as Social Security Reform is Uncaring, Republicans are Racists, Businessmen are Banal, Bush's War isssszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Um, sorry about that.  Edges of Grace is so predictably transgressive that I must have fallen asleep.  What the curators have yet to recognize--like so many in the bubble of today's avant garde--is that when art merely toes a party line, the transgressive becomes a boring routine. 

 

                                                                                   

You want transgressive grace?  You want the subversion of hegemonic ideology?  The best place to go for that is not a pretentious yawner of an art exhibit, but the marketplace of faith.  For instance, consider the popular Pugster charms pictured above.  The Tao, Jesus, Judaism, Wicca and free love--all viewpoints intermingle without judgment in a post-ironic pop melange.  Offensive art is retro in a Pugster world.

Thanks to the high praise from Counterfeit Chic, Almost Girl has become part of the daily devotional here at the Blingdom of God, and I was pleasantly surprised to see AG's post about the BofG today.  I was already enjoying Almost Girl for its insights into the world of fashion, but as far as I'm concerned, anyone who laughs at my jokes is guaranteed a spot in the heavenly Blog of Life. 

So if you've come here from Almost Girl, willkommen, bienvenue, welcome--what you see here today is just a taste of the manna to come.  And if you haven't ever been to Almost Girl, it's time to go there now.  You'll be glad you did.

They've done it again!  The same couple that made the world's smallest Bible have now crafted a pendant inscribed with the entire Bhagavad Gita, which you can read easily when you put the pendant under a microscope. 

One of the big stories on the fashion front from the Golden Globes is an apparent shift away from large and flashy jewelry toward jewelry in a more classic, subdued style.  Of course, the big name designers still rule the day--regular readers of this site will remember the partnership between Kanye West and Jacob the Jeweler.  And for many people outside Hollywood, the idea that jewelry costing millions, even mere tens of thousands of dollas is modest might seem a bit of a stretch.

The real story amidst the shift from hunks of gold to diamonds & platinum is the growing trend toward message jewelry.  Some of this is rooted in a specific religious tradition, like the ubiquitous crosses and West's religious line.  Others seek to portray more universal values, such as the popular Love and Pride collection.  Whatever one's faith belief is in--and it might be the answer to the flagging growth of jewelry sales in today's retail market. 

. . . at least not as a collectible.  Religious items have gone from being dead inventory to hot items among antiques collectors. 

As this story indicates, certain items--alms boxes, altar ornaments--are harder to find because, well, to get them usually requires someone to first steal them from a church, mosque or synagogue.  This makes antique religious jewelry particularly attractive for people who want to acquire collectible religious collectables without fueling the market for theft.

Most people have at some time or another heard about the hajj, the Islamic holy pilgrimage.  Every year millions of Muslims make their way to Mecca to worship before the most sacred object in the faith:  the Ka'aba, a giant stone structure, said to be built by Abraham, that houses the Black Stone given to humanity by God.

At the end of the Hajj Muslims celebrate the holiday of Eid ul-Adha, which commemorates Abraham's (and Ishmael's) willingness to obey God by sacrificing Abraham's son Isaac.  This holiday is marked in part by the slaughter of animals, echoing God's provision of a sheep as a substitute sacrifice.  

Gifts such as jewelry are also a common part of this celebration.  The above pendant depicting the Ka'aba aptly captures the connection between Eid and the Hajj.

Imagine taking the first phrase of the Bible--"when God began creating the sky and the earth"--jumbling all the letters and using them to make a picturesque calligraphy design. While that would be unusual in Western religious iconography, it is common practice in Islam, with the difference being, of course, that the words in question are the opening of the Quran. 

The pendant pictured above is an example of what in the Islamic tradition is referred to as "Bismillah," which literally means "In the name of God." "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful" is the phrase that opens the Quran, and art based on this recurring dedication abounds in Islamic culture.

(Of course, if you're a non-Muslim and the term "Bismillah" sounds strangely familiar, you probably heard it in Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, when they sing "Bismillah, we will not let him go.")

That so much Islamic art (including jewelry) revolves around words and not images is not an accident. A longstanding interpretation of Islamic law is that the faith prohibits images of living things. According to one story in the hadith or reported sayings of Muhammed, "Whoever makes a picture, Allah shall torture him with it on the Day of Judgment until he can breathe life into it, and he will never be able to." As another saying elaborates, to make an image is to try to imitate the creative power of God, a sin of the highest order.

Forbidden to make pictures of animate beings, Islamic artists often turn to calligraphy to express the sublime. As we shall see over the course of our posting in the Blingdom of God, this tradition not only rivals the greatest achievements of abstract art in the West; it reflects even more fundamental patterns in nature.

Glass jewelry may not sound valuable, but if it's glass jewelry from nineteen hundred years ago it can have a value that goes way beyond what it might sell for on eBay. Jewelry, coins and vases found in a village outside Jerusalem point to the presence of a Jewish community in the area from 70 to 132 CE, when the community suddenly disappears.

Why is this significant? Because it is commonly assumed that Jews fled the area around Jerusalem after Romans sacked the city in 70 (depicted on the Arch of Titus, below).

Now most people won't be able fo find, let alone wear, authentic jewelry from this era or before, but it's not uncommon to find ancient Jewish coins converted into rings.

Water is central to many religions, and not least of all Christianity, in which water baptism (in Greek, "dipping") is one of the defining symbols of second birth. So I guess it was only appropriate that the holiday season brought me not one but two water baptisms, as a pipe burst in my apartment and a water leak flooded my library in storage!

But fear not, faithful readers!  After countless hours of cataloguing damage & moving in and out of the apartment we are BACK for good. So in honor of the cleansing floods that washed me away from the site (and my apartment building) last December, here is an example of religious bling appropriate to the occasion.

This look like an ordinary pearl necklace, but be not deceived.  It is actually a baptism bracelet, given to the baptizee to celebrate his or her immersion into the Christian faith. 

Why pearls?  One possible explanation lies in Jesus' famous metaphor of the "pearl of great price or the image of pearls as a symbol of purity; but the real answer is probably much more simple: pearls come from water.  Not that this is without its own theological complications--after all, pearl-producing oysters can be hermaphrodites or can change their sex!

If you go to the site that sells this bracelet, you'll notice that it pitches the jewelry to anyone from babies to adults.  The reason for this age-spanning ecumenism lies with an age-old controversy within Christianity.  Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, & Methodists are a few of the prominent denominations that baptize babies, a practice that serves as a Christian analogue to infant circumcision.

But not all denominations equate baptism with sprinkling babies on the head.  Baptists and many other Christans follow the more ancient practice of immersion or dunking the whole person in water, although few Baptists do it the way it was originally done 20 centuries ago--with the new believer in the buff.