Mormon Artist Jon McNaughton

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There is an artist, Jon McNaughton, who is an incredible painter. He paints a lot of political stuff as well as scenery and religious stuff. He is conservative politically. I like his stuff.

Recently, he pulled all his paintings from BYU Bookstore because they decided his paintings about the Constitution were too conservative. Really?

Anyway, here is a site where McNaughton discusses what happened. Most interesting are the comments that follow.

blog.jonmcnaughton.com/2011/04/byu-censors-artwork-for-being-too.html

some examples of the responses:

Leisa WatkinsApril 25, 2011 at 4:38 PM

I come from a long line of Cougars and my own children are current Cougars. I can’t help but think that if Jeff Holland (a family member) were still at BYU this would never have been allowed to happen. I am so saddened by BYU’s responses, Jon. When the LDS church organizations start denying the Constitution in any way, then it is most assuredly a sign of the times.

Aunt BeaApril 25, 2011 at 7:58 PM

Oh, Jon, I am so distressed by this… but not surprised. My husband and I have always been faithful to the Church teachings, but we have seen that the Church itself is run by men who use their offices for political and social prominence rather than to support, teach, and defend the teachings of Jesus Christ. Your paintings have been exact depictions of all that we were taught in Sunday School and MIA; so close in fact that we have both commented on “That is exactly how I pictured it!”

Until and unless every office, every branch, every Priesthood-holder goes back to the Doctrine and Covenants, the Book of Mormon, and even Jesus the Christ, and realizes that the Church is not built by man and his power, but on the word of Christ, the LDS Church will continue to lose its members and its stronghold in the bedrock faith that is Jesus. Only that faith will lead them out of these dark times - not their temporal belief in power and mammon. They will become like the Pharisees, “I say unto you, verily, they have their reward.”

Keep the faith, Jon. We love your art.

anyway, pretty interesting.

And if you want to see some good paintings, look at his stuff.
 
I think that it is a beautiful painting. Christ holding the Constitution surrounded by Patriots.
 
I thought art was supposed to shock and offend? 🙂

While I don’t like his work myself, I have to admit it’s thought-provoking, and I’m sure there are as many people offended by his work as there are offended by certain pieces of art I won’t name that offend Christians to no end. And I have to admit his work has a highly artistic style. I won’t necessarily say we could learn something from his art itself, but it’s a shame we can’t learn from discussing it, and what it means to us.
 
The only reason I don’t like it is because it gives into this idea that God favors the US over any other country. As a Catholic, I love my country, but I love my church more, and I feel that while governments change and fall, Christ’s church won’t fall.

I will admit they are kind of cool paintings though, in spite of the message
 
WildCatholic said:
The only reason I don’t like it is because it gives into this idea that God favors the US over any other country. As a Catholic, I love my country, but I love my church more, and I feel that while governments change and fall, Christ’s church won’t fall.

I will admit they are kind of cool paintings though, in spite of the message
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I never took it that way. I just took it to mean that Christ has a hand in this Country and the Constitution.
 
It can be difficult to express one’s belief through paintings sometimes , because people can interpret them so many different ways.

In the posted painting, I especially like the idea of the child being in the forefront pointing out something in the Constitution - it reminds me of Isaiah 11:6 :

[NAB]
Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them.
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🙂
 
This speaks to a larger problem many of our church’s institutions becoming secular, and being used by secularist to promulgate their ideas to our children and to our fellow church members.

We had Gonzaga reject the KoC student group.
We just had an ELCA Lutheran collage reject an LCMS Lutheran President for holding too closely to his church’s doctrine.
Now our Mormon friends have to deal with this.

I know for my LCMS church, we tend to require people in positions of authority to be LCMS members - right down to the individual teachers. It’s helped, but we still have problems with secularists promulgating their agenda.

Not sure what the solution is, my only advice to get involved in our institutions to combat this problem we all face.
 
TexanKnight said:
I never took it that way. I just took it to mean that Christ has a hand in this Country and the Constitution.
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I see that in the painting too. I just can’t get past the over-the top politics. In this painting, it’s the strawman-esque depictions of ‘the media’, ‘the liberal professors’, etc in the corner with Satan. I know plenty of good, even wonderful liberals, and it’s awkward at best to look at this painting and think of them. I also can’t disassociate this painting from the artist’s others, like the even-more-political one of President Obama burning the Constitution. The politics in this painting irks and bothers me, and I believe denigrates the religious aspect of the painting.

Why I think this painting is good, though, is that it raises to an art form all the political extremes we are capable of in America. Whether we’re offended by it or not, the feelings it evokes are something we’ll experience repeatedly in life. I believe this tendency to politicize (and as I think, abuse religion) is capable of the right or the left, the religious or athiest, young and old, etc. And because of that, I think it’s something we need to recognize, acknowledge, and discuss.
 
TexanKnight said:
I never took it that way. I just took it to mean that Christ has a hand in this Country and the Constitution.
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I know, but I guess I feel that while we are a Christian nation in the sense our people are (or were) Christian and for most of our history had those values, its not like we have a hold on God. I feel that when nations do this its dangerous. Kind of like how Kings used to have the whole belief they were ordained by God.

Thats just me though.
 
RebeccaJ said:
This painting is the one that is referenced:

http://jonmcnaughton.com/content/ZoomDetailPages/OneNationUnderGod_files/one_nation_under_God.jpg

It’s very much in line with Mormon belief/doctrine. It is way over the top conservative, that’s for sure.

For a school that has a fair number of non-US students, I can see how the nationalism might put people off.
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I read something on another board about this art.

People were unhappy with it, mormon and non, because the subject of proxy baptisms came up. Every famous person you can identify in there has been baptized by proxy.

Was that a subliminal message? I don’t know. I guess it could be. 🤷
 
Personally I don’t care for that particular painting because I don’t care much for representational art.

We have had cameras for over 150 years that can do the same thing so why not use them?

But in this one case it would be impossible to photograph since the people all lived at separate times.

I remember years ago reading a humorous book that poked fun of a supposed religion called “Americanity”, this painting puts me in mind of that book.
 
I find his actual quality amateurish, and there’s no doubt that the content is over-the-top political. Even as a practicing Mormon I couldn’t stand his artwork. I say BYU did well here. I’m honestly quite surprised to find certain Catholics here that are OK with the Americanization of Jesus like this. Sort of takes away from the whole Catholicity of the Church, no?
 
Is that Black guy on Jesus’ right holding The Five Thousand Year Leap?

I don’t think you guys appreciate exactly how Mormon this painting is.
 
St_Nephi said:
I find his actual quality amateurish, and there’s no doubt that the content is over-the-top political. … I’m honestly quite surprised to find certain Catholics here that are OK with the Americanization of Jesus like this. Sort of takes away from the whole Catholicity of the Church, no?
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I’ve always found Mormon depiction interesting - the sarcastic part of my mind thinks of him as looking almost like a commencal super-hero.

This gentleman’s art in my opinion has it’s virtues but would never be purchased by me, frankly. But I think it would be fair to say that the art depicts a common Mormon outlook, and that a Mormon school banned it say more about the difficulty of Chruches maintaining their institutional message than it does anything about art.

I’ll give an example here in Washington State - my son’s Lutheran school has Catholic children in it even though there’s a Catholic school a block away. I was talking with one of the parents about it and asked him why - he shrugged his shoulders and said that if he sent his child to that particular Catholic school, that the teachers are so “non-Caholic” that he worried that his child would probably fall away from his faith.
 
I love it. The painting is too Mormon to be sold in a Mormon bookstore. That’s really funny, and incredibly sad.

I wonder what’ll happen if the trend toward secularization for the LDS Church continues. Will it cause people to fall away or will they just go with it?
 
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