Shelburne faith column: A centuries-long belly button brawl

What a blessing it was for Amarillo to get to host the digital Sistine Chapel art exhibit! I didn’t get to visit it. Over four decades ago I did get to wander through the actual chapel and gaze at Michelangelo’s fabulous artwork on its ceiling, but all the people I talked to said the digital exhibit let them see details of the art they never would have spotted from the chapel floor.

All the remarks I heard from exhibit visitors were positive. Effusively so. And, as far as I know, not one of our local Sistine viewers echoed the original complaints about the artist’s depiction of Adam.

Years ago I heard a lot of American tourists with Puritan roots mouthing disapproval of the nudity in Renaissance art. The Sistine chapel Adam is no exception. He’s naked as a jaybird.

When Michelangelo unveiled the chapel paintings in 1512, however, his critics didn’t say a word about Adam’s indecent exposure.

What got the artist in trouble was his decision to paint Adam with a belly button. Because of that very visible navel, conservative theologians censored the new artwork, called Michelangelo a heretic, and threatened to disqualify him for future projects.

If God created Adam full-grown, did he need (or have) a navel? Uptight church leaders had been fussing about this for several hundred years before Michelangelo was born. Over a century after the artist painted Adam, Sir Thomas Browne’s book on false teachings included an entire chapter denying that Adam had a navel.

This theological tiff reminds me of some of the idiotic conflicts that were raging in the churches I grew up in.

Some of our pioneer preachers were so mindlessly literal that they became one-cuppers. After all, the Bible says Jesus took “the cup,” so any congregation that used more than one communion vessel should be shunned, they insisted. Back when we had only one Bible version, some of our radicals denounced anybody who dared to refer to church leaders or rituals by non-King James terms.

We outgrew those hangups, but others took their place. If you have been active in any church, you probably can think of similar clashes over mindless trivialities.

How much wiser (and more attractive) all our churches would be if we stopped splitting hairs and, as the apostle Paul did, embraced the single goal of knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection so that we can become like him.

Gene Shelburne is pastor emeritus of the Anna Street Church of Christ, 2310 Anna Street, Amarillo, Texas. Contact him at [email protected], or get his books and magazines at www.christianappeal.com. His column has run on the Faith page for almost four decades.

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Shelburne faith column: A centuries-long belly button brawl