SPAIN Although religious women have long been told that humans are made in God’s image, they have also long known that when their creator chose a human body for its earthly manifestation, it was a man’s. For some women, this has created a conflict concerning their own place within the human/divine hierarchy and a feeling of distance from the deity. When artists have attempted to amend this by depicting the Christian savior as female, public reaction has often been swift and critical. Although God may be genderless and his embodiment a celibate male, the fact Christ was male has been interpreted as less the pragmatic results of a 50/50 decision and more the proof of one gender’s superiority over the other — something that has merely reinforced many women’s feelings of isolation and insignificance.

When artists have strayed outside of the bounds of mainstream religious iconographic acceptance at tax payer expense, the outcry has been even stronger.

Such is currently the case in Spain, where two books that include photos of models depicting religious characters within a sexual context were produced using public funds. Now that it’s election time, the books have become a hot topic.

Co-financed by the socialist regional government of Estremadure in southwest Spain, the books — published eight and five years ago — have caught the attention of the Right-wing Popular Party, which calls the tax payer financed publications “an offense, a serious attack on everyone’s ethical and aesthetic sensibilities.”

Although conservative critics have questioned how such an expense would be authorized in such a Catholic area of the country, the regional government have responded by insisting that the work, which includes photos of a nude and female Jesus, as well as photos by Jose Antonio “Jam” Montoya of Jesus and his mother, represents “artistic expressions (that) should not be submitted to personal political criteria.”

Montoya considers the entire thing to be politically motivated nonsense. “This controversy has been provoked intentionally by the PP with the coming elections in mind.”

Among the images that have supposedly rattled members of the Popular Party are erotic recreations of religious scenes found in famous paintings such as the Angel Gabriel approaching a nude and seated Virgin Mary while holding his penis and Saint Bernard nursing at the breast of a veiled Mary.

Montoya insists his intent was never to offend Catholics, but to point out what he sees as hypocrisy within the Roman Catholic Church, including its policies of discrimination against women and homosexuals. “The only reaction that I wanted to provoke was for people to become aware of the facts that truly cause harm to Christianity.”

While some may disagree with Montoya’s message as well as his method, whether those facts will wreak havoc in the voting booth is yet to be determined.