James Morrow: Sacred or secular, Aunty’s agonising over Easter

How did you celebrate Easter? Did you go church and celebrate the story of the resurrection of Jesus, or did you take the kids to an Easter egg hunt? Or, like the ABC, did you decide it was a time to push identity politics and fret about the environment?

HOW did you celebrate Easter? Did you go church and celebrate the story of the resurrection of Jesus, or did you take the kids to an Easter egg hunt?

Or did you, like the ABC, decide that the holiest period in the Christian calendar was the perfect opportunity to push identity politics and fret about the environment?

The day before Good Friday, when Christians around the world were marking the most sombre day of the year, ABC News websites featured a report via The Conversation entitled, “Jesus wasn’t white: he was a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern Jew. Here’s why that matters.”

Jesus played by actor Alec Green carries the cross during a re-enactment in Sydney on Good Friday. Picture: AAP

If you answered, “Because it further proves the Jewish faith’s millennia-old connection to the land of Israel,” you might technically be right. But of course that’s not the answer they’re looking for.

Instead, according to Robyn J. Whitaker, the author of the piece, it matters because artistic depictions of Jesus indicate a “European bias in depicting a white-skinned Jesus”.

Whitaker goes on to draw a link between a lack of minority role models in the media and depictions of Jesus in classical art and suggests that if we look at a masterpiece like Leonardo’s Last Supper, or Caravaggio’s Taking Of Jesus, or a more recent (and probably, to be fair, less artistic) depiction of Jesus with white European features, we are less likely to be sympathetic to asylum seekers.

It’s Christianity as identity politics, not a universal message of hope.

But what if you’re not religious, and just like Easter for the candy and the long weekend?

Aunty’s got you covered there, too. You see, that chocolate bunny you’re probably still feeling the after-effects of is not just killing your diet.

It’s killing the planet, too, one delicious bite at a time.

Archbishop Anthony Fisher during Easter Sunday Mass held at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney. Picture: The Australian

“There’s another reason you might feel guilty about your chocolate binge this Easter, and it could surprise you,” the ABC reported last Wednesday.

“A Perth expert in environmental engineering says the amount of water used to produce chocolate and the average Easter egg far exceeds any other food product on the market.”

According to the ABC expert, a kilogram of chocolate has a “water footprint” of 24,000 litres, enough to fill an average suburban swimming pool.

Of course, it’s hard to imagine the ABC giving the same treatment to the religious festivals of other groups in our communities.

There won’t be a special report, “Debunking Diwali”, any time soon (do you have any idea what the carbon footprint is of all those lights and candles?).

Nor can we expect an expose, “Rethinking Ramadan”, that looks at the life of Mohammed through contemporary social mores.

Now in a secular country like ours it is undeniably a good thing that our journalists report on issues of faith without fear or favour.

It’s just more evidence the national broadcaster has been captured by a dreary substitute for thought that sees everything as a power hierarchy. Anything traditional — be it a classical depiction of Jesus or the Easter bunny’s chocolate eggs — needs to be torn down. To put it another way, nothing is sacred — but some things are less sacred than others.