Iconoclasm - Rev.Jerry Eve
Statues have been in the news these past few weeks, and I’d like to talk about that. But before I do, just one of the ways family members have of poking fun at me is that I’m quite prone to mentioning someone as a hero in Church one day only for there to then be revelations to the contrary, if not the next day (and that has happened) shortly thereafter.
The most recent example of this is Jean Vanier, who was a Canadian Christian; and who, as a theologian, wrote about 30 books in all. I’ve read a few of them. He died last May aged 90, and is most famous for founding L’Arche in 1964, which is French for ‘The Ark’: L’Arche communities are places where both people with and without learning difficulties are able to live together, side by side, helping and learning from each other. And nowadays there are 153 of these in 38 countries on 5 continents.
Well, in February of this year – less than a year after Jean Vanier’s death – L’Arche themselves published a report they’d commissioned from a UK consultancy firm. It was an investigation into independent allegations that Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche, had sexually abused women without learning difficulties living in these communities. In the context of giving spiritual guidance, the report concluded that over a number of decades Jean Vanier had indeed behaved manipulatively towards women; that he’d been both physically and emotionally abusive, and that these sexual relationships had had a significant negative impact on these women and on their personal lives and subsequent relationships.
This man was once ranked twelfth following a poll conducted by the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) in a list of greatest Canadians – in 2004. He’s even had an asteroid named after him. I’ve often quoted from his work. I love what he stood for. But since February I’ve been left disappointed and disillusioned. The point being, I think, that it doesn’t matter who we place on pedestals (Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Ghandi; even Jesus if we continue to render Christ as a white, male, adult Christian), we do need to be prepared for them to be knocked off these perches and plinths. I want to knock Jean Vanier off myself; not in the Edward Colston sense of being dumped in the harbour – I’m not sure if there is an actual sculpture of Jean Vanier – but I do want that asteroid to be renamed.
Before we look out the rope and grappling irons (Robert Baden-Powell is someone I’ve spoken of in a positive light on numerous occasions, and given that his statue in Poole in Dorset now requires guarding by scouts, he’s someone whose legacy I’m going to have to consider much more closely before, and if I’m ever going to, mention him again) I do think it’s helpful for us to remember what happened here in Scotland in the 16th century at the time of the Reformation . . .
. . . when our churches were full of art. They were adorned with sculpture and painting, and while many of the figures who were depicted were saints, patrons would often ask artists to incorporate portraits of themselves into these works of art. These were almost all, and almost without exception, completely destroyed. There is an ‘Our Lady of Aberdeen’ ( a statuette of Mary and Jesus) which managed to find its way to Brussels, and which attests to the incredible skill and beauty of some of the work that was lost.
But while many of us would have been wary of the superstition surrounding these objects, and critical of their vanity then, I for one would wish now that far more of these pieces had been saved, albeit that we’d find them in a museum these days rather than in a church. And I feel it’s the same – I’m not saying that we should now make a statue to Jean Vanier, for example, but some of those that do exist might well serve as a warning to future generations not to idealise anyone, Amen.
