The Story: For many Christians, the first thought that Lent brings to mind is giving something up. But Chris Seay, pastor at Ecclesia Church in Houston, Texas, asked his congregation to get something for Lent: tattoos.
The Background: Seay recently asked congregants to get a tattoo corresponding with one of the Stations of the Cross, the collection of images that depict scenes in Jesus’ journey to his crucifixion.
“The tendency we have as Christians is to skip past Jesus’ suffering,” Seay told CNN. “Not only do tattoos come with a bit of suffering, they are also an art form that has not fully been embraced.”
To help with the project, Seay enlisted Scott Erickson, artist-in-residence at his church, who designed 10 distinct Stations of the Cross tattoos, leaving out four stations that Seay said changed in context when you are asking someone to get something permanently drawn on their body.
Seay says that more than 50 people are now brandishing one of Erickson’s designs on their bodies.
Why It Matters: Although Christians have been getting inked for centuries, the recent rise in popularity and mainstream acceptance of tattoos is leading many Christians to reflect on the meaning and prudence of the practice.
“Nearly 40 percent of young adults aged 18-28 have tattoos now, which is more than four times the number in the Baby Boom generation,” noted Matthew Lee Anderson in his book Earthen Vessels: Why our Bodies Matter for our Faith. “While tattoos mark a desire for significance within a destabilized world, they are a live option for most young people precisely because we have not escaped the clutches of the consumerism and the individualism that are so often criticized.”
Similarly, Timothy Dalrymple, a philosopher and scholar of modern western religious thought, wrote last year about the practice of tattooing Bible verses or biblical or theological phrases on our bodies:
This is especially interesting in the light of the theology of the LOGOS and the incarnation. In the incarnation, the LOGOS, the eternal Word, became flesh. The LOGOS transcended the world and its changefulness, representing the eternal truth and the power by which all things were called into Creation. But when a Christian tattoos a Bible verse or a faith-phrase upon her body, she makes her body into a text. She reverses the incarnation of Christ; in her de-incarnation she is making the body, what is prone to messiness and effluvia and decay, into a true and eternal Word. They are turning themselves into the Bible, or a part thereof.
There’s something laudable in this: stating that these truths are the ultimate and unchanging truths of who I am. Yet I also wonder if they represent a running away from our carnality, a running away from the things that Christ affirmed in the incarnation. I wonder too whether tattoos like these — and all tattoos — might sometimes work like frosting upon a store window — presenting a surface that seeks not to externalize but to conceal what lies within. Does the person who stamps “God’s Son” upon his skin really believe it?