Posted on 09/18/2017 7:32:24 PM PDT by marshmallow
Everyone has almost certainly heard of Oscar Wilde, the witty Victorian-era Irish playwright whose many affairs with other men landed him in a British jail and eventual self-exile in France, where he died in 1900 at the age of 46.
He’s been a hero to some to the point where there’s actually a United Methodist worship space dedicated to him in the symbolic heart of New York City gay culture. Tara Burton, Vox.com’s new religion writer describes it for us.
The key, as you read this feature, is to look for any sign of dissenting voices questioning its big themes. Look for conservative Methodists defending their church's teachings on sexuality, experts on Wilde's final repentance and conversion to Catholicism. That kind of thing.
Hidden in the basement of New York’s Church of the Village, a Methodist church in Greenwich Village, is an entirely unconventional worship space.
The aesthetic – a neo-Gothic stained glass window, a devotional statue, a series of paintings depicting the life and suffering of a martyr – is perfectly familiar. The chapel’s advertised uses -- weddings, memorial services, contemplation -- are likewise commonplace. The subject, however, is not.
At the Oscar Wilde Temple, a religiously themed installation project by McDermott & McGough, the art-world tag of artists David McDermott and Peter McGough, the central statue and the figure of worship is of Wilde himself: the 19th-century Anglo-Irish novelist and playwright whose name has become synonymous with LGBTQ liberation.
(Excerpt) Read more at getreligion.org ...
Wilde had one of the famous last lines ever: The wallpaper and I are having a battle. Either it has to go, or I have to go.” (IIRC)
Wilde knew what he was doing was wrong. As a consequence he was able to write about evil (The Picture of Dorian Grey) in an honest and powerful way.
My guess is he transitioned.
As a Catholic convert, Wilde would probably get a kick out of being made a saint but I think he would have hated the low-class gay rights movement.
Milo? What an insult to Wilde!
My favorite about Niagara Falls: the second largest disappointment of the bride.
The UMC is officially anti-gay and pro-life
Upstairs, in the attic, is a picture of that chapel, which shows what it REALLY is.
Its officials are not.
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