An alleged “art display” at Rutgers University featuring a figure of Jesus Christ on a dartboard, with darts inserted where He was wounded on the Cross, is being held up as a contradiction of the school’s professed commitment to diversity.
Natalie Caruso, who describes herself as a former Rutgers student, posted a photo to a Facebook group for the Class of 2016 showing the display, which she claimed is currently hanging in the Art Library on College Ave.
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The post quickly gained traction on social media, inspiring numerous Campus Reform readers to share their own (uniformly disapproving) reactions.
“As a Catholic this is not tolerable and very disgusting,” one reader opined, adding, “I thought Rutgers was about embracing diversity?”
“I am a potential Rutgers student but I am largely considering not even APPLYING … because of what I’ve seen on social media,” said another. “Christians on campus must be ashamed of the school they go to after seeing this.”
So, it must be the dartboard.
’cause there are a number of churches here with 20+ foot Jesuses-on-sticks displayed outside with floodlights
(if this Jesus was a little smaller, that would be a decent score)
Perhaps they would like it to be illegal to insult their religion? Hey, I have an idea for them: move to Bangladesh!
I find crucifixes, crucifixion, and crosses as Christian symbols to be very disrespectful of diversity. Hundreds of thousands of people were crucified by the Romans, but the Christians have co-opted the idea as if it only happened to their guy. All the others get ignored. The two thieves that were next to Jesus sometimes get a mention, but they are called thieves, and their suffering is ignored. Part of Christ’s suffering is getting treated like a criminal, which implies that everyone else who was ever crucified deserved it.
Many of the crucified were fighting against oppression by the Roman Empire, and we would be glad to claim them as ancestors. Thanks to genetic mixing, we can claim them as our ancestors. Those who died childless were cousins of people whose genes we now bear. Our people died on those million crosses, and we should not allow them to be ignored.
Chigau:
Yes. It must scream irreverence or something.
Menyambal:
I have always found the Christ onna stick distasteful and ghoulish, and I grew up Catholic, had to do stations of the cross and all that crap. The whole thing is celebrating a form of execution, while completely erasing all the actual people who were executed in that manner, as you say. That’s Christians for you, so narrowly tunnel visioned, they are damn near blind.
The Christian symbol should be the stone rolled away. That only happened one time, and only to their guy (so they say). That was when it all went divine, that was where the wonder started.
Jesus dying for our sins is a not strictly Biblical. He was more dying as a protest against tyranny, and as an example of how we should live for justice. The idea that God was going to kill us, but Jesus died (like so many others have), and then maybe was in Hell for maybe 36 hours, and that somehow pays for all, is goofy on the face of it, and not in the scriptures -- it’s a belief that developed.
Early Christians did not use crosses. I’m all for killing gods, but waving around the thing the guy died on is kind of tacky. Jesus probably has a bad flashback every time he sees a cross -- which may explain his failure to return. That or the fact that his name is now associated with the kind of people who crucified him.
I remember buying a Catholic cross at a California mission in elementary school, and my fundie Christian mom freaking out about it, because Jesus is only still regularly shown on the cross in Catholic symbolism, not Protestant/Evangelical symbols.
The empty cross is supposed to be different/better, and also avoid being a Catholic icon (or idol/graven image to Protestants).
“Jesus is alive, he’s not still on the cross like Catholics want him” is basically how I remember it going.
Soooo not sure how unified the Christian opposition to this will be.
It’s likely other Christian sects probably don’t like this anyway, even if they sometimes did things like pinning your listed sins to a physical cross in front of everyone to remind you that you killed Jesus too…
This reminds me of a saying my coleague says.
“If Jesus was drowned, catholics would hang aquariums over their beds.”
It is peculiar that people do not see it as offensive to shove their religious symbols to everyones face, but get all offended when someone makes fun of them.
Charly @ 7:
:falls over laughing: I love that. I have a bunch of old aquariums all over. I think I have a 10 gallon somewhere…all I need is dead Jesus.
[sung to the tune of DEAD PUPPIES] “Dead Jesus… dead Jesus… Dead Jesus, isn’t much fun…”
I can understand someone saying that it’s blasphemous or offensive or tasteless, but ‘this doesn’t promote diversity?’ Seems like an odd charge. If the argument is ‘this is offensive to Christians, therefore it is anti-diversity’ there is a good chance Christians are already a pretty large % of the campus. That’s like saying that at a school where black students are only a single digit percent, that an event highlighting the nasty history of white supremacy is ‘against diversity’ by making white students less likely to attend when they’re already the majority. You don’t increase diversity by catering to the majority.