From ClickLiverpool:
A Christian churches Christmas ad campaign that shows Jesus as a foetus with a halo in Mary's womb has sparked a controversy.
The sonograph image is part of a Christian campaign to promote the message that the meaning of the Nativity as the birth of Jesus Christ.
Drawn up by charity Churchads.net, the "Ultrasound Jesus" campaign is backed by a number of Christian organisations including the Church of England, the Baptist Union, the United Reformed Church, the Anglican and the Methodist churches.
But the National Secular Society has criticised the ad saying it achieves the opposite and carries an anti-abortion message.
Terry Sanderson, director of the NSS, said: "The image of this poster is very similar to the ones used by the anti-abortion lobby - in fact when I first saw it that's what I thought it was.
"It may not have been the church's intention to give a political message with this campaign but for many people - particularly women who have had abortions it risks evoking painful memories.
"The church have made a mistake and won't attract more people to church over Christmas.
"It's more likely to put them off." (My emphasis)
Well then, Terry Sanderson, you should be cheering the ad, shouldn't you? If the ad will put people off Christmas, then perhaps it may increase the membership in your society, which would be all to the good from your point of view.
Some people will use any excuse to get their knickers in a wad.
Watch the video ad.
Thanks to Ann V. for the link.
I'd rather they used the conceit of the enhanced screening than the ultrasound. Yes, Christmas is surely about the wonder-full birth of Emmanuel but I also agree that women who have been made their difficult decision to have an abortion is bad may feel rejected and judged by this ad.
ReplyDeleteSusankay, I'm truly sorry if the ad makes women who have had an abortion feel bad, but the ad suggests nothing of the kind. Are no pictures or videos of ultrasounds permitted?
ReplyDeleteMimi -- of course, the ultrsound videos/pictures are a wonderful gift for those who can carry their child to term. They are, however, also a favorite of those who wish to disuade or inculcate guilt in those who choose an abortion. They have almost become a poster for those who feel abortion is always evil.
ReplyDeleteI never had to make that decision. I would hate to see it conflated with killing the Christ Child.
There are many sincere opinions on this issue. I have prayed over mine. But I am often wrong on so many things.
I would hate to see it conflated with killing the Christ Child.
ReplyDeleteSusankay, it seems a stretch to draw the analogy of killing the Christ Child from the ad. If I thought the ad was offensive, I would never have posted it. I thought it was clever. Should I delete the post?
My sense is that almost anything clever or humorous COULD be offensive to someone out there, but where do we draw the line? What Sanderson said seemed to me like just another excuse to attack Christianity.
I certainly don't feel bad or rejected. I didn't relate it to abortion at all and still don't. It's interesting and creative.
ReplyDeletePiskie, thanks for weighing in. I did not at all relate the ultrasound to abortion. On the contrary, I was surprised when I read Sanderson's words.
ReplyDeleteI thought maybe the "halo" was a Nuva-ring that didn't work. LOL
ReplyDeleteKirke, you are very naughty, but you made me laugh.
ReplyDeleteThis photo is used in lots of anti-choice materials with the tag -what if Mary had had an abortion - sorry I don't like it and would not go to a church that used it. It is offensive to me.
ReplyDeleteSo then all ultrasounds must be kept private?
ReplyDeleteI am not saying that at all - I am saying that this particular photo has bad connections for me. YMMV
ReplyDeleteAnn, is this the same photo the anti-choice people use? I checked online, and the only references I found after a rather quick search to a fetus with a halo are to this particular Christmas ad. I'm not getting it. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteI take your meaning that you find the ad offensive. YMMV.
Maybe it is just a Wyoming thing.
ReplyDeleteAs I've said elsewhere, I find this ad extremely offensive. First, it immediately does bring to mind the anti-abortion ads, and aside from my own gut feelings about that, it is likely to play right into what all the surveys show about people thinking that Christians are bigots and obsessed with sexual issues and determined to legislate their views of morality on others. Thus, it sends a really negative message about Christmas to the both the unchurched and those who are sensitive about anti-abortion ads. Just because some churchgoing Christians think it clever or even powerful does not mean that they should be insensitive to or dismissive of how the message may be received by those whom they claim to want to evangelize.
ReplyDeleteSecond, it envisions the birth of Jesus in terms of the way a lab technician would view an unborn child in utero in the late 20th and early 21st century. Mary trusted God and was confident in the blessedness of her pregnancy and its divine origin, and had every reason to expect that her son would be born healthy and would live to carry out God's purposes, but that doesn't mean that she had no human maternal feelings and concerns, or that she had no anxiety about the birth, especially at a time when women often died in childbirth, when she apparently was not attendeded by women from her family or a midwife. The Christmas story is about a woman who had no assurances like a sonogram that all was well. Instead she was one who braved both a scandalous conception and giving birth to her child amongst the animals in a stable. This was a far, far cry from the kind of neo-natal care represented by a sonogram (and often only obtainable by those of financial means and/or good health insurance plans). Such a contemporary, upscale, technological snapshot of a human fetus (albeit with halo aloft) in its uterine sack also detracts from the miracle and mystery of God being born of a woman, young in years and in humble circumstances, more than two thousand years ago.
So, honestly, Mimi, what good does it do to sneer at those who truly may be put off by this ad? There is so much talk IN the church about reaching those who are outside, yet no one seems to have spent much time either being outside or getting to know how outsiders may think and feel about something like this -- an in-your-face poster that does look like an anti-abortion ad, and, in any event, just screams, yea, we really believe that God popped out of Mary's vagina. Is that how to get people to appreciate what the Incarnation is all about? I shudder to think of what kind of ad will come next for "selling" how we eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus.
This kind of literalism is what keeps the Hitchens on the lecture circuit and on the best-seller list. If I'm going to be branded as being crazy to be a Christian, I would hope it would be because of acting in seemingly reckless love and compassion, not because of an insistence that anyone contemplating visiting or joining my faith community immediately and completely subscribe to a "belief" that the Bible stories "really" happened just as written, historically and scientifically. And is that what we want to teach both believers and non-believers about Christmas? That the most important thing is believing that God was in a woman's uterus? The Star of Bethelehem, the baby in the manger, the shepherds, and later the Wise Men is, I think, a picture that needs no re-thinking or re-imagining by creative advertisers.
On his way.. All human been are starts with this
ReplyDelete"If the ad will put people off Christmas, then perhaps it may increase the membership in your society, which would be all to the good from your point of view." I also think you misunderstand what the National Secular Society stands for -- which is separation of Church and State, NOT atheism.
ReplyDeleteSee http://www.secularism.org.uk/whatissecularism.html and
http://www.secularism.org.uk/messagefromkeithporteouswood.html
Yes, they can get pretty ticked off at Christians, who are the most privileged religous group in the U.K. (indeed, as the established state religion). But they are not anti-Christian nor anti-Christmas -- they just want to disestablish the C of E and keep religion in the churches and out of the public, political sphere. You may not agree with the degree of separation they hope to achieve. but it is neither nor accurate to lump the secularists with the atheists.
(neither fair nor accurate)
ReplyDeleteThanks for your opinions Awesome Guy and Klady.
ReplyDeleteSo, honestly, Mimi, what good does it do to sneer at those who truly may be put off by this ad?
Klady, no good at all. You have a point there.
I sent Grandmere the link because I thought it was relevant to the idea that Christmas is, after all, about birth, one of the unchangeable facts of human life. Whether one takes the Christmas story literally, or as Garry Wills says, believe that it is to be understood theologically rather than gynecologically, there was a birth. I do agree with those for whom a sonogram has sad connotations, that seeing one can be upsetting, and pray that healing of those emotions may occur. I don't agree with not posting it. Actually, I would have had second thoughts about the ad campaign myself, but I would have approved it if it had been up to me. If anyone remembers the "bus shelter nativity" ads from two years ago, I admit I liked those better.
ReplyDeleteAnn V, thanks for your commentary. As a former librarian, I'm leery of censorship, so I will leave the post as is. I'm grateful for all the opinions expressed here, and I regret offense given.
ReplyDeleteFrom the website of the National Secular Society:
ReplyDeleteThe National Secular Society is the leading campaigning organisation defending the rights of non-believers from the demands of religious power-seekers. The NSS works both in the UK and in Europe to combat the influence of religion on governments. We want to ensure that Human Rights always come before religious rights, and we fight the massive exemptions religious bodies demand - and are sometimes granted - from discrimination laws that everyone else is subject to. Every privilege has its victims.
We campaign for a society where everyone is free to practise their faith, change it or not have one. Belief or lack of it should not be an advantage or a disadvantage. Religion should be a private matter, for the home and place of worship; it must not have privileged influence in the public and political arenas where it can too easily become an excuse for conflict, inequality and injustice.
I can certainly agree with the statements above by the NSS.
Klady, I totally disagree about the National Secular Society. Whatever they may claim they are about, Terry Sanderson's main purpose in life is manifestly exporting a form of fundamentalist atheism. You don't have to follow too many of their announcements to pick this up.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I don't think he did first think the ad was anti-abortion - I suspect the first thing that struck him was the halo.
Cathy, Sanderson's reaction seemed off the wall and ridiculous to me, but as you see in the comments, others reacted in the same way to the ad.
ReplyDeleteOf course, you undoubtedly know more about the NSS than any of us, being a Little Englander and all.
Mimi, the ad may well be badly thought out. I don't mind it, but then I've not had an abortion or a baby, which probably puts me in a minority. The issue of whether the ad is bad and the issue of whether the NSS's reaction to it is reasonable are two different issues, however. At least, I think they are, and I always take anything the NSS has to say with a hefty dose of cynicism.
ReplyDeleteI think the ad is clever, but not the best idea in the world, surely. I haven't had an abortion, nor a miscarriage. Perhaps I would feel differently if I'd had either, and the ad would bother me.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm not arguing with that, really. But I'm not arguing with your comment that "some people will use any excuse to get their knickers in a wad", either :-)
ReplyDeleteThe fundamentalists on both sides, both atheist and religious, seem to be constantly on the prowl searching for something about which they can take offense.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. They're kind of well matched, I guess.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mimi, for the space to air my views and your, as ever, gracious response even in the face of what must sounded like sharp criticism. Please know that I would NEVER suggest what you should not post something (nor can I imagine ever suggesting you remove something - both out of repsect for you, in particular, and free speech among bloggers in general - well, at least among the thoughtful writers, like you - mpt going to jump into the wikileak fray).
ReplyDeleteMy comments were intended to address the wisdom of using the photo and poster for a promoting Christ in Christmas ad campaign. They were also in the context of someone in our parish using it for our Christmas Eve service here in the U.S. -- in an area where pro-lifers are very vocal (though not violent, as far as I know) and have been picketing our local Planned Parenthood daily for many, many years. So part of my concern was not the risk of offending those who have had abortions (or those who, for any other reason, have mixed or negative feeings about the sight of a sonogram given their own experiences with seeing them in connection to troubled pregnancies and/or birth defects), but rather whether unchurched people and/or those strongly pro-choice would be strongly turned off by the image on the poster. While I have some reservations about use of such advertising or otherwise engaging in the Christmas culture wars, I do appreciate that it can be uplifting for those bombarded by the commercial aspects of Christmas. I just would agree that the earlier ad campaign with the Nativity scene in the bus station was more appealing -- at least to me, and perhaps to others.
Thus, my concern was mainly the use of this poster here in the U.S. Cathy, I suspected that you and/or Jonathan might have more to say about the NSS, so I wasn't sure if they were as "neutral" regarding religion as they claim to be. The context may be far different in the U.K., where I don't think (correct me if I'm wrong), that you have the same kind of visibility of and controversy over pro-life ad campaigns and protests or such close links between such advocates and extremists in both religion and politics. Here we have not only the usual stuff but also the spectre of the crazy Westboro Baptist folks "protesting" at Elizbeth Edwards' funeral. In the U.S., where many more people are regular churchgoers than in the U.K., where the anti-religion and atheists are not nearly so popular, nor reported so much in the mainstream press, where some right-wingnuts (including Fox News - and the likes of Glenn Beck and even Bill O'Reilly, not to mention the radio folks like Limabaugh), regularly try to stir up controversy over Christmas (going much further than trying to bring Jesus back into it), I just think that a poster that evokes right-wing, pro-Life advertising, is likely to turn off many of the people we'd most like to evangelize to -- as they are not likely to be able to distinguish (or take the time to discern) the difference between the "good" kinds of promotion of Christmas and those with right-wing political or social agendas.
No doubt you are all done with discussing this by now, but what I've been really curious about is whether anyone really finds this particular poster ad appealing. I know some, like, Shel, have thought it clever and creative, and thus, I gather, like the way it evokes the unexpected and does not shy away from the fact that most Christians really DO believe in the Incarnation or, even if they take the poster metaphorically, will think of the joy and wonder of anticpating the birth of their children, grandchildren, neices, nephews, and children of friends, and can relate that to Advent and Christmas. But, I still wonder whether the positives that might come from such an ad will be outweighed by those who, for various different reasons, may view it negatively when they might not otherwise be inclined to be anti-religion or anti-Christmas or Christians.
ReplyDeleteWhile Anderson and the NSS may be about their "usual business," whether one likes them or not, could it be that they actually might have a better take on how folks in the middle -- neither "for" or "against" religon in general or Christianty in particular, or even lapsed churchgoers or those who identify as "Christian" but never or hardly ever go to church - might react to the ad?
The assumption is that a sonogram somehow demonstrates that Christians are "with it" and well into the 21st c., and we do not have a faith in something that simply recalls ancient people anmd events and is wholly irrelevant to the present. But as someone who spent a decade or two outside the church and very much a secularist (due to the time I spent in academia and my skepticism about institutions generally), I often am puzzled by what churchpeople seem to think (or sometimes don't even bother to think) about how outsiders see them and what they need to do to tappeal to them. Parts, at least, of TEC seem to be predominated by folks with one or more graduate degrees of the Baby Boom generations, with graying or snowy hair, blue jeans (at least for casual dress), and an aversion to anything that smacks of "traditional" Christian images, music, and worship, and a seemingly contrived excitement and delight over the prospect of winning over the younger generations with their(our) so blatantly "hip" attitudes, not realizing that they/we often just come across at the stereotype younger people have of the Baby Boomers (so self-consciously "hip"). do not begin to understand their eclectic flow from contemporay to traditional, and their insistence that people be real and who they are, and not "with it", at least in the old 60's - 70's sense, and their, at least sometimes, desire for the "traditional" aspects of Christianity as being more genuine and something that they'd like to honestly engage with, whether they are yet "sold" on it or have any interest in taking part in the institutional church.
I realize, of course, Mimi that this is not your approach (nor your generation, for that matter), but I am genuinely interested in what you and others think when you see such ad campaigns, both in terms of your own, individual response as a "believer," and in terms of what you think the ad campaigns are supposed to accomplish and how they will be received by whomever the intended recipients of the message are.
So... end of this bout of the "Lady of Silences" mammoth editoralizing..... Thank you so much for the space and patience for me to do so.
Kathy
Yikes, I hate to add anything to this, but the comment above was actually "Part 2." Don't know what happened to "Part 1", which showed up before as posted.
ReplyDeleteLet's see if I can summarize it briefly (!). What I wanted to say was first, I never intended by "offense" at the ad to be taken as a request to remove your post, Mimi (can't imagine ever suggesting you do so under any circusmtances). My concern was and is use of the poster in the U.S. for advertising or evangelism to the general public (not with regard to blog essayists or anyone else who just wants to make note of the ad or chat about). The context was that someone in our parish used the same poster (before I even saw it here) to adverstise our Christmas Eve midnight mass -- and we live in an area where anti-abortion protesting is part of everyday lives (the picketing of the local Planned Parenthood has been going on DAILY for decades, with some special days of larger parades, protests, and press coverage). While I don't think anyone local has been violent or protested in such a way as to encourage violence (though I don't really know), nevertheless, in this context, as well as with the spectre before the weekend of the Westboro Baptist protests at Elizabeth Edwards' funeral, I just had a very negative and concerned reaction to something that I thought would drive people away from our church rather than draw people to it.
Second, as I posted on FB about this originally, I think the context is quite different here (and thus more troubling) than in the U.K., where the atheists regularly get a lot of publicity, where their advertising on buses, etc., have been around longer and more prominent (do we even have such ads here???), and where churchgoing is very low for the population as a whole. At the same time, (correct me if I'm wrong), I don't think the U.K. has the same kind of melding of the pro-Life forces with the political right, not to mention the kind of Christmas cultural warriers we have in the Fox News and conservative talk radio line-ups.
So, while I did wonder if, as Cathy has pointed out, whether the NSS is somewhat disengenuous about their supposed neutrality with regards to religion, I think their point was well-taken with regard to the likely effectiveness of the ad compaign -- only, as far as I'm concerned, much more so here in the U.S. than the U.K. We've seen plenty of polling and survey results posted at The Lead about how much of the public, especially the younger generataions, think of Christians primarily in terms of the righ-wingnuts who seek to use the civil political process and public platforms for forcing their moral views on the whole of the American people. So my concern was whether, in a U.S. context, many people would see the poster and immediately think it must come from the Radical Right, rather than mainstream or mainline churches (or worse yet, somehow associate the latter with the former).
[My apologies again for taking up so much space... Slinking out of here and looking to be buried in the Big Snow. If internet goes out, you'll be spared further comments from me. ;) ]
Klady, no apologies necessary for your comments. When I saw the picture and read the article, my first and impulsive reaction was that I liked the ad. And that's when I wrote the post. I'm an insider, but hardly a hip insider Episcopalian. Whether the ad will attract outsiders into the church or draw those who have left back into the church, I don't know.
ReplyDeleteAs I've already said, Sanderson seemed to be looking for an excuse to launch an attack against religion. After I posted, I learned that Christians also reacted negatively to the ad. So I allow for that. The ad is not the best choice, if sincere people will be offended by it.