I made it clear to my family that I had to visit Canterbury Cathedral while we were in England earlier this month. For some reason, I envisioned “the Vatican for Anglicans” with priests and monks bustling through the town, but instead we arrived on a sleepy, gray Friday with only a handful of tourists milling about.
Entering the cathedral did not disappoint, even if it lacked the hive of religious activity that I was expecting. Being in that sacred space was stunning. As my wife and I made our way to some of the side chapels near the quire, we came across the now much-discussed graffiti exhibit. I started taking pictures and whispered to my wife, “Could you imagine our church doing this? People would lose their minds.”
After texting the pictures to a few clergy friends with the caption, “Get a load of this,” I put away my phone and started to read the graffiti. Many of them were questions I had asked at some point in my life. Not only that, but they were the questions people have asked me consistently in my ministry. Does God hear me? Why is there violence in the world? Is there more to life than this? Who goes to heaven?
These are all questions that people inside and outside the church are asking. Typically, for Christians, these questions drive us deeper into prayer and the study of God’s Word as we seek answers. They drive us into conversations with others, possibly even with a priest.
Anytime I talk with people asking these questions, I know God is stirring something up in their lives. Their souls are restless, and my job as a pastor is to point them to the One who is their ultimate rest. In fact, shying away from these questions is a sign of spiritual immaturity. There is a gift to wrestling with them, and I thank God anytime someone invites me to help wrestle with these important matters.
And so, pastorally speaking, why should we not offer these questions in sacred space? People are asking these questions in conversations over coffee, in pubs, and at dining room tables; why not in church as well?
The problem may not be so much the questions as the bold style in which they are presented. That style is what got me to pull out my phone in the first place. Graffiti just doesn’t fit in church. It feels like it is defacing—even secularizing—the holy. What is meant for the side of railcars and abandoned buildings should not be allowed to desecrate the oldest cathedral in England. Is nothing sacred anymore?
The elusive artist Banksy’s latest work in London showed a judge beating a protester over the head with a gavel. A real judge ordered that it be painted over, unwittingly proving the artist’s point. Ironies seem to abound in our current cultural and political climate.
The same is true for this installation at Canterbury Cathedral. Art is meant to disrupt; it is intended to create a conversation and a dialogue. At times, artists can even take on a prophetic role within the church. That there have been so many reactions to this work—including those from JD Vance and Elon Musk—highlights that conversation is being created..
It has created a conversation about what is sacred and profane; what should be discussed in church, and what should be left outside those sacred doors. If the only comment is that it is ugly, then that’s style over substance, and yet again, we live in a culture that has an abundance of style and flair but oh so little substance.
When it comes to substance, there is something deeply incarnational about this whole project. God doesn’t run away from our tough questions, and he doesn’t leave us to ask them outside of the nave. He meets us in his well-beloved Son; he dines with us, walks with us, and opens the Scriptures until our hearts burn with the fire of his love. He is not afraid to teach in the Temple courts, but he much prefers Galilean hillsides and simple tables to address our deepest questions of who God is and what he is up to in this sinful and broken world.
The church cannot be afraid to address the tough questions people have, and we should once again give the artists in our midst the space to help us discover something ourselves—and our culture—that we could not see on our own.
And last of all, they’re only stickers. Whatever you think about it, it is a temporary exhibit. It’s coming down in January anyway. Let’s hope the church’s robust, gospel-centered answers will remain.
The Rev. R. Wesley Arning is an associate priest for young adult and small group ministry at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston.
