Panel Discussion: The Arts and Religion
Art exhibits, novels, films, and plays are often attacked on religious grounds as blasphemous, indecent, or even idolatrous. Two recent cases -- Sensation, the exhibition of contemporary British art at the Brooklyn Museum, and director Kevin Smith's film Dogma, which interprets Catholic themes -- have sparked recent examples of debates which go back centuries about the creation, distribution, and exhibition of art which offends some religious sensibilities. Do you feel that public religious sentiment should or should not play a role in the distribution or exhibition of works of art? Why or why not? What is the background -- historical, cultural, theological -- against which such decisions are made?