The Chancellor of Hereford Cathedral has been in touch to clear up the cartoon confusion.

First of all, the Cathedral did contact the original publisher of the cartoon for permission, but I didn’t get any message about it. These things sometimes happen.

Secondly it should be made clear that the cartoon was used, not as I (jokingly) suggested in my last post as an image perpetuating distortion, prejudice etc, but rather as one ‘challenging us all to see discriminatory injustice cloaked under the guise of theology.‘

Mr Walker’s excellent cartoon is in the exhibition as it satirises the very point with which we want people to engage: that if we distort the humanity of another person we may somehow justify unreasonable, prejudiced behaviour. The position of this contemporary work alongside `old books` is to try to raise the consciousness of people to current distorted images with their consequent current injustices, and not allow a semi-comfortable historical focus which shows the mistakes of those in previous generations but does not encourage us to look at our own attitudes towards those we marginalize. Far from perpetuating such distortion, Mr Walker’s cartoon succinctly captures its presence amongst some of our church leaders today.

Apologies for misleading anyone with my larking around in the previous post.

To be honest the licence fee aspect of it doesn’t really bother me. The Diocese of Hereford has enough to be worrying about at the moment in responding to the terrible flooding situation that that part of the country has been dealing with.

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