Thomas Moore hits home when he points out that nowhere in two thousand years of Christian theology, Western art and pornography do we "yet have a religious appreciation for the penis as the presentation of life's almighty power." Christianity, art and pornography are equally at a loss, I would add, for a religious appreciation of the vulva, vagina and naked breast with erect (aroused) nipple as a celebration of the almighty power of femaleness. At best, Christian theology and art have ignored the mystery of male phallic power or reduced it to flaccid penises. Theology has also sterilized the mystery of female sexuality with its emphasis on a virginity that represses or denies the creative power of female sensuality and eroticism.
The quiet celebration of the flaccid penis by Donatello, Michelangelo, Caravaggio and others was, I think, a subversive attempt to get the theologians and the ordinary lay folk to ask how male sexuality might fit into Christian spirituality. In the Renaissance, a few Christian artists dared to portray the child Jesus and John the Baptist with naked, flaccid genitals. A few paintings even dared to show the crucified Christ with hints of an erect penis beneath a loin cloth. But Christian "orthodoxy" quickly castrated these few attempts.
Similarly, there are a few paintings showing the Mary nursing her son. In classical art, Bernini's sculpture, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, and Teresa's own description of her orgasmic ecstasy and mystical union with her God stand alone in celebrating the passion and pleasure of female spirituality and eroticism. Who knows what messages were drawn from their powerful sensual presentations?
Unfortunately, these scattered attempts to connect the life-serving power of our sexual nature with our spiritual life and nature have been quickly buried behind fig leaves, whether artistic or mental.
In a different artistic vein, as Moore suggests, the larger-than-life-size penises one finds in modern pornography are a feeble and equally unsuccessful attempt to restore the phallic life-giving power of the penis within a holistic view that combines rather than splits male sexuality from the spirit. Western pornography with its obsessive portrayals of potency is obviously searching for the deepest meaning and mystery of the male phallus. Andres Serrano, Terrence McNally, Martin Scorsese and others have used photography, theater and cinema to confront Christians with the need for a religious appreciation of phallic power. Madonna, with her video "Like a Prayer," Judy Chicago, with her vulva-like place settings for "The Dinner Party" (1974-1979) and her 1979 book The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage, and other women artists, have issued a similar challenge to religious leaders.
Of course, many religious fundamentalists condemn these and any other attempts to rejoin the power of erotic pleasure and sexuality with spirituality as "pornographic and blasphemous." In this sense, religious institutions and "pornographers" have long shared a concern for the deepest meaning and mystery of our sexuality. Unfortunately, neither have had much success in rejoining sex and spirit.
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