Sacrilege and Blasphemy

I saw the BJU fashion show images … I didn’t find them either sacrilegious or blasphemous.

Tasteless and frivolous would be how I would characterize them

[Craig Toliver]

I saw the BJU fashion show images … I didn’t find them either sacrilegious or blasphemous.

Tasteless and frivolous would be how I would characterize them

When you make our Holy God tasteless and frivolous, that is the sine qua non of sacrilege and blasphemy.

And… it doesn’t matter how you find them. It matters how God finds them. God struck Uzzah dead for touching the ark of the covenant. What do you think God thinks of this situation? That’s the question.

If BJU is going to have a fashion major … expect weirdness

However, the points still stand.

…we had fashion shows at BJU in the early 1980s. I know because I was involved in setting up the stages, lights, and audio in the Concert Center. Thing is, back then, I don’t remember any guys involved — they could’ve been, I guess, but I don’t remember. Also, the clothing was, you know, all girly stuff — dresses, wedding gowns, etc.
It figures a guy would be the one screwing up the fashion show for the gals. What guy - what person - would figure a “Jesus Goes to Hollywood” get-up (complete with a crown of some type) would be acceptable at “The Fortress of Faith?” This is the same BJU that protested the local opening of Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” — and, to be honest, I don’t see a whole lot of difference between Python’s “Brian” and BJU’s Fashion Jesus.
That being said, the faculty member(s) that allowed this should be the ones getting the heat — not the student(s). I hope Dr. Petit isn’t too old to remember that if the faculty allow the inmates (a.k.a., students) to run the asylum, this is what you get…

Don, it was a fashion show, and I don’t know that anyone was doing much theological at all, let alone making God frivolous or tasteless. In my view, the show missed the goal of providing a distinctly Christian take on fashion, and also erred with a certain amount of political commentary that was ill advised. Can’t we leave it at that?

(really, given the list of embarrassing things to come out of BJU—interracial dating ban until 2000, seriously?—I think we ought to be glad that it wasn’t much, much worse)

Regarding the fashion,a bit of how it missed the mark. For starters, at least two of the garments showcased were of the genre “strapless evening gown with the bust and shoulders covered up with a bit of fabric”, as has been seen at fundamental high school and college “formals” for decades. I can’t figure out (my wife does a fair amount of sewing including customizing garments for me, including draping) whether the students actually learned the basics of tucks and darts to fit the feminine form, or whether they simply bought off the rack and tacked some things on. Same thing with the two other dresses which fit into the classification of “looser-fitting knit dress with some sparkly doo-dads tacked on.” And then the mask with apparently a bloody handprint on it….mmmkay….

For the guys, we’ve got one in more or less a smoking jacket, another who found an oversized Nordic sweater at the thrift store, and finally someone who took a brother’s polyester jacket and apparently merged it with a Hefty bag. Both ladies and gentlemen are trying to affect the walks they see on the runways in London, New York, and Paris.

The overall impression is that BJU’s fashion school is following the world’s pattern of not requiring students to learn to actually sew and create the garments, that they’re putting on “bling” instead of that skill, and that “bling” actually tends to draw the eye to critical areas in exactly the same way as a prom dress.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad that BJU is trying to work in this area, but I don’t know that they’re anywhere near achieving a distinctive “Christian” kind of fashion which combines the importance of fit/attractiveness, function, durability, and the like. I wish them well.

You clearly don’t understand what this is about, so probably best to sit this one out.

[Don Johnson]

You clearly don’t understand what this is about, so probably best to sit this one out.

I don’t understand what this is about either.
Maybe you should explain?
I didn’t even see any links in that cryptic post.

I had no idea what was going on until I did a little digging. Setting aside the unfortunate reality that BJU is still somewhat in the clutches of “hard-core” fundamentalists and, hence, the school needs to continue to look over their shoulder to gauge the fury of those “hard-core” fundamentalists who are increasingly further and further behind them, the phrase tempest in a teapot comes to mind.

In my digging around, I read the student’s statement that he posted on Facebook. It’s a long, thoughtful defense of his design choices and renderings.

High fashion makes an easy target for most of us to mock. I admit that I don’t get/appreciate or even like high fashion, but I have enough epistemic humility to recognize that my response may owe a debt to my ignorance and not be valid. That being said, even considering my general eye-rolling disdain for high fashion, I still appreciate the student designer’s intent to use his medium as a way to tell the story of Redemption. Whether he succeeded or not is a debate worth having (and a debate most of us are not qualified to participate in considering our/my ignorance of high fashion). Throwing this kid to the wolves is beyond uncharitable.

By the way, there is no such thing as Christian fashion. There are Christians working in fashion and they answer to God for how they use their skills and participate in their craft. Ethical questions are appropriate, though. For example, are they honoring God and loving others as they image God in the specific discipline the Spirit has placed them? Again, though, that’s a question that those of us who do not understand high fashion may want to tread very lightly around.

https://www.facebook.com/matthew.foxx.319

Good evening everybody! So, as hath transpired over the last few days, a select few pictures of my capstone collection have outraged the vast and diverse hellscape of social media. These pictures provided no context for the garments I created, and the response by the masses is a little embarrassing, so I’d like to provide a backstory as well as design context to my collection in light of the public statements lodged against it; with visual aids because we NEEED them at this point.

Right, so during junior year my friends in the fashion program and I were briefed on our senior show, and we had all kinds of themes in mind for the clothes we were gonna design and it was great and fine and dandy. We all wanted to communicate ideals for ourselves or express our current emotions and thought processes and it was beautiful. For me, I was struggling with a few different issues interpersonally and academically, and I had a very intense guttural scream that wanted to break forth, and I knew that I wanted it to reach deep from my soul into the souls of other people and speak of absolute beauty and do and be the most, like most fashion people do.

I also wanted my collection to impact the culture at BJU and help people see that fashion is just as valid and capable of an art form to communicate beauty; beyond the superficial gender-performative box that it’s put in on campus (Really not trying to raise hell on the gender front, we are just more than the sum of our parts.). I wanted my work to sing with a beauty and intensity that reached the depths of the despair I felt and embodied and resolved that for others to see. So I chose to illustrate the gospel. On the bodies of other people. I wanted people to look at bodies; not to condemn the boobs and collarbones or tightness of pants or length of skirts. I wanted people to see the image of God. I wanted people to see the beauty and scandal of a Holy God becoming His creation in order to redeem it. I wanted to bridge our mental separation of the Being of God from the physical body that He keeps. In this day and age we worship kings and capitalists as if they exist by divine right, and our separation from those kings drives so many of us further away from the King of Kings.

I didn’t fully grasp all of this until the clothes were almost all made tho.

Covid started the first semester we began constructing our looks. Our themes had been approved and the show was being planned. 2020 was a really rough year on many fronts. I was stressing out about a lot of different things, friendships were crumbling, and in July, I decided I had had enough. I quit school, and I was intent to stay gone and never come back. I went to my friends’ senior show, and they did an amazing job. I watched them graduate. A couple of them got married. I put away my pile of fabric and sat out indefinitely.

God let me know we had unfinished business though. There was always the “what if,” and “this could also be important” and whether by my own pride or an act of Divinity, I was convinced I had to go back and finish my collection. So back at square one, I re-designed most of it. Through model sourcing and accessorizing, some things changed and added more depth to each look conceptually, but the complete message stayed the same. God became a physical man to suffer and redeem His fallen Creation, and the truth and intensity of that message now more than ever need not be played down to fit a finite neglectful social construct.

Throughout the almost 6 years trying obtain this wretched piece of paper, God has been teaching me so much about living as an embodied Christian. Thank God our redemption isn’t just cerebral. Our ability to reason isn’t the only beauty that brings God glory. As we have been given dominion over His beautiful creation, so we are also responsible to use that beauty, however marred it may be currently, to adorn our physical selves with hope and call it sacred.

On to the looks. I have a picture of the artist statement for everyone to read and I’ll tell you all the feeling meant for each look.

I used Romantic and Baroque era paintings and illustrative prints for Paradise Lost by John Martin and Anthony Van Dyck, because I thought they were beautiful, as well as in a sense, already speaking in a language that the BJU crowd was familiar with. Throughout all the garments in my collection, certain style lines and colors are repeated to call to mind certain themes like divinity, perfection, and restoration/redemption.

First up is Eve. She is shocking. On the runway, she’s covered in blood. She has a handprint on her face and a shredded outfit to show the violence of the fall enacted physically on a perfect creation. Her skirt fabric is royal blue, (like the new creation skirt,) and in the shifting light, the color turns to brown; a very dead and decaying sort of color.

Next up is Satan. You’re supposed to hate him. I had originally thought of having blood dripping from his hands, but I didn’t wanna make a mess on the runway, amongst the chaos of other things happening by the time the show came around. Satan is void of color and markedly different from everything in his style lines. The hem of his pants is shredded to bind him to the destruction he’s caused. The villainy lays plain.

Up until this point in the line-up, you’re meant to be disgusted and horrified and shocked. Sin hurts everyone deeply.

Third is Jesus. He’s not wearing a dress. It’s a wrap coat. It’s red to signify blood. Jesus bled and died. He covered our sins; completely and fully like a wrap coat covers the body completely and fully. By now I would hope we are all speaking the same language of allegory, and not literally idolizing the model wearing the crown. He wouldn’t like that. This is the beauty of fashion that I wanted to illuminate my culture to. That it’s more than gender signifiers and sex-barricades. Dignity and sanctity are woven into our expression and communication through dress. God taking on a body weaves divine dignity and sanctity into our defiled bodies. The crown of thorns on the model was supposed to be a dose of reality to our view of the crucifixion. I wanted to solidify Jesus’s death as a physical violent act of redemption and not just something we see in old paintings and get kind of excited about at Easter.

Next is sainthood. Pretty much the same style lines of Eve mixed with the added flair of the Judgement look following it. It’s completely white except for the black top and red jewels. We’ve been given immeasurable riches through imparted righteousness in Jesus’s death and resurrection.

Fifth is Judgement. She’s regal. Intense. The wrath of God is being poured out on the unrighteous and sin is meeting its final resolution. God’s power is tangible and sin and death are cast away forever.

And lastly, the New Creation. The skirt is a waterfall of blue satin and joy and beauty and perfection abounds on a physical form. Heaven and earth meet again and this is the hope of joy and restoration that keeps us going as Christians.

I’ve seen some people mad that fashion is even available to study at BJU. To which I can only say we weren’t created to live in sackcloth and ashes. There is a time and purpose for everything under heaven, and the beauty of our bodies is a gift to be celebrated beyond the confines of sex. We can perform truth physically and be thankful for it and rest in the absolute knowledge that Jesus paid for not just the inside but the outside too.

In the comments I’ll attach the music that played during the catwalk. Tchaikovsky’s Hymn of the Cherubim. This is was meant to be a contemplative and spiritual experience for people to connect to; not a consumerist dogpile of merchandise to wonder if you could go swimming in. There isn’t an ounce of blasphemy meant by anything that I’ve made. I only wished to bring the tangible beauty of the Gospel back to people who keep it as a weapon or only in their head. It was meant for the entire edification of all of us.

Thank you all and have a blessed evening.

The young man was kicked to the curb and shoved under a bus

Consider the language and the philosophy behind it.

Doesn’t sound to me like something BJU should continue to produce.

[Don Johnson]

Doesn’t sound to me like something BJU should continue to produce.

BJU did not ‘produce’ it. The young man, a fashion artist, produced it.

[Don Johnson]

Craig Toliver wrote:

I saw the BJU fashion show images … I didn’t find them either sacrilegious or blasphemous.

Tasteless and frivolous would be how I would characterize them

When you make our Holy God tasteless and frivolous, that is the sine qua non of sacrilege and blasphemy.

And… it doesn’t matter how you find them. It matters how God finds them. God struck Uzzah dead for touching the ark of the covenant. What do you think God thinks of this situation? That’s the question.

I’m having trouble connecting the lines between the images and blasphemy and sacrilege.

Take the image of Jesus on the cross on the red jacket. The image looks to be from a piece of art, which for all I know is hanging in the BJU art gallery.
There doesn’t seem to have been an attempt to trivialize or shame or anything like that.

I myself have a very skeptical view of fashion in general. If you take fashion advice from me, you will wear khakis and a polo every day. So it’s hard for me to understand how someone can think of clothes as a place to make any kind of statement. But if you accept that notion, I don’t really see the content of what was done here as evil.

IMO, if BJU has done anything wrong here, it was accepting money from someone and in return giving him a degree in “fashion.”

[Dan Miller]

IMO, if BJU has done anything wrong here, it was accepting money from someone and in return giving him a degree in “fashion.”

Yup!

[Craig Toliver]

Don Johnson wrote:

Doesn’t sound to me like something BJU should continue to produce.

BJU did not ‘produce’ it. The young man, a fashion artist, produced it.

To clarify, I meant the young man himself, he is the product of BJU’s education (at least partially), and the “fashion” major as well.