Epic Christian painting of historical figures and "lefty" archetypes

Mother Jones shared the joy of "One Nation Under God," an epic religious painting by contemporary artist Jon McNaughton. You can scroll over the painting to ID the various folks, ranging from historical figures to symbolic characters such as the "Liberal News Reporter" who embodies how "most of the media today are biased towards the left and try to shape the thinking and actions of Americans in that direction." My favorite is the "Professor" gripping his copy of "Origin of Species." According to McNaughton, the Professor "represents the liberal lefts control of our educational system." Hidden in the shadows is none other than... Satan! "One Nation Under God" by Jon McNaughton

• [Leon]

  Whitey White Mc White. Jesus is so white. (Sorry, not trolling, just angry at that horrid picture.)

• [lejon astray]

  so where did jesus sign the constitution?

  is there a first amendment in the bible?

• [primofex]

  fixed

• [bjacques]

  He’s no Kincaid.

• [jfrancis]

  In in the center is the biggest Lefty archetype: Jesus

• [Maggie Koerth-Baker]

  Seems like a good place to link to this fabulous Onion story: “Evolutionists Flock to Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain”

  http://www.theonion.com/content/news/evolutionists_flock_to_darwin

• [Noel Stalker]

  Check out Jesus worshipper Greg Boyd’s denunciation of this painting.

• [Deceptibob]

  Now if we could only get someone to photoshop Optimus Prime into that picture… After all, He died for our sins!

• [PixelFish]

  As I pointed out on Facebook and Pharygula, Jesus appears to be descended from Aragorn, son of Arathorn, as he has a Tree of Gondor on his chest.

  Also, McNaughton has included a number of Deists and the godless, including Paine, whose name he misspells.

  This painting provides twice as much joy as the painting of the Republican Presidents playing poker together: http://www.eleganthorsepictures.com/thomas-grand.html

• [haz]

  Alexander Hamilton: “Anyone wanna rassle?”

• [echolocate chocolate]

  I think this artists’ religion is not Christianity but American imperialism. This painting is pure idolatry.

• [Andrew Bell]

  How about the much-improved annotations of the Shortpacked edition?

  http://www.shortpacked.com/McNaughton%20Fine%20Art.htm

• [AnoniMouse]

  one more reason this picture is ridiculous; all the historically relevant black people ARE IN THE BACK, barely visible.

• [funtax]

  I greatly prefer the modified version over at Shortpacked:

  http://www.shortpacked.com/McNaughton%20Fine%20Art.htm

• [Professor Peewee]

  Alternate version found here: http://www.shortpacked.com/McNaughton%20Fine%20Art.htm

• [Anonymous]

  College Student: Good!
  Professor: Bad!

  Hm.

• [bwaterhouse]

  What’s Jefferson, the Unitarian, doing up there?

• [Supergenius]

  Over the past several days we’ve hosted a haiku contest about this particular piece of art. It’s terrible.

• [danlalan]

  I think this guys religion is money.

  This self described “fine art” on his website, all pretty well over the top on the mawkish end of the scale, is clearly aimed at a very specific subset of people with tastes in art and probably all else in life that are, to not be too harsh, naively unsophisticated. The prints of this picture, “signed” but not numbered, are 30 bucks for a 10X15 paper print or 130 bucks for a 12X18 pseudo-canvas print. Unframed. Not out of the ballpark unreasonable for truly fine art, but kinda on the high side for a “dogs playing poker” analogue.

• [primofex]

  One Nation Under Elder Gods

  • [historyman68]

    awesome!

• [Chris]

  Mmmmmm, delicious kitsch.

  So, will Viggo Mortensen (centre) be suing for misuse of his likeness?

• [Hanglyman]

  I like how somehow the teacher is portrayed as vital to the future of America, but the professor is evil. Apparently education is very important, until you get educated enough to question the existence of God.

• [IronyElemental]

  I love how every square inch of that painting is a cliche.

• [RedShirt77]

  Prof. PW,

  Thank you, that made my lunch break.

• [coaxial]

  Wow, the self-contradictions and lack of historical and symbolic meanings are rampant in that. Truly, an artwork for the contemporary American theocrat.

• [Rick]

  Since when is Jesus descended from Swedes?

• [Anonymous]

  From the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously in the Senate and signed by [John] Adams into law, 1797: “The United States of America is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion.”

  Works Cited:
  1)
  Huberman, Jack. The Quotable Atheist. New York: Nation Books, 2007.

  Why does no one do homework on our Founding Fathers?

• [sobreiro]

  So utterly ironic! American Right-wing lunatics like to accuse lukewarm democrats of being fascists, yet this painting could easily be a Russian Social Realism propaganda painting, switching Stalin for Jay-Cee.

• [Glossolalia Black]

  Man, I wish it had more billowing flames in the background, and maybe clouds opening up and sun shining down on J-man, there… maybe some lions and lambs. Then we’d have a WATCHTOWER cover for sure!

• [dbarak]

  In an alternate universe…

  http://whiskerstreet.com/painting/

• [sirkowski]

  The artist might be a Mormon. The black guy in the lower left is holding a book. The Five Thousand Year Leap, by Cleon Skousen, a mormon conspiracy theorist and favorite author of Glenn Beck.

• [Justin]

  Jon McNaughton runs a gallery in the mall near my house (All the greats sell their work in the mall). I have a friend who worked there while he was completing this painting, and saw it in progress several times. Interesting tidbit, the black soldier standing next to Ronald Reagan was originally Martin Luther King Jr., but I guess he is too “lefty” so he slapped a helmet and some camo on him – BLAMO! Iraq war casualty.

  • [jfrancis]

    LOL The name tag on his uniform actually reads ‘King’

• [Anonymous]

  This is totally unbelievable. The Capitol Building and the Supreme Court Building are shown in the wrong orientation and relative position. What ever happened to artistic integrity?

• [Anonymous]

  This artist is, in fact, Mormon. He has a section of paintings of Mormon temples on his site. I was raised Mormon, and I was taught in Sunday school that God provided for a country (the United States) to be created that allowed for religious freedom, enabling the founding and the success of the one true religion–Mormonism.

  The college student on the left side of this image holds the book “The Five Thousand Year Leap” which the artist calls “the most important book written of why America is so great and how it has influenced the world.” The book is by anti-communist “historian” and Mormon right-wing extremist Cleon Skousen, favorite author of Glenn Beck, who is a convert to Mormonism.

  There’s a movement afoot to re-write history to portray our founding fathers as Christian prophets.

  Extreme right-wing Mormon views are playing a role in the obstruction of health care reform currently. I know they seem like really nice people, but tons of Mormons go for some really far-out stuff, and remember: they have stockpiles of provisions in their cellars in preparation for Armageddon, which they would happily bring about. It’s true. My family did.

• [Alan]

  Since McNaughton and the American right seem to think deifying mid-18th century rich guys is the only proper thing to do, I thought I’d point out the first commandment:

  “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

• [Anonymous]

  I’m annoyed that I “can’t” rightclick on anything! Thank goodness I have some HTML knowledge… which I will gladly pass on:

  1) click “View” on your menu bar.
  2) find “Source” and click on that.
  3) Itching to download something off his site? Follow the next set of instructions.

  How to yank crap off this guy’s site:
  1) open notepad or the mac equivalent
  2) use this code:
  html
  body
  a href=”URL of what you want to jack” STFU /a
  /body
  /html
  3) replace what I put in quotes with whatever this guy put online
  4) Put html, body, /body, /html, a href=”URL of what you want to jack”, and /a in between “less than” and “greater than” symbols, making it look like two mouths are eating the words. (These symbols are made by hitting Shift and , or . )
  5) Laugh heartily

  Copyrighted material does not mean you can prevent others from citing you or ridiculing you (see Short Stacked link). Further, you put something on the internet? Are you serious? You don’t want others to have it or “steal” it? Good luck, numbkins.

  P.S. I realize many people who peruse bb probably know this. Just wanted all those that didn’t to have it.

• [Alexander]

  Excerpt of an awesome comment about this on Metafilter:
  “And quite frankly, no matter what your political beliefs, McNaughton’s conceit, that the US Constitution is a literal God-inspired miracle, is dangerous. Forget that in his notes on the painting, McNaughton lauds John Bircher Cleon Skousen, the Glenn Beck of the nineteen sixties, while excluding from the pantheon Martin Luther King — the American whose struggle and martyrdom finally made us uphold the Constitution for all races — and then giving an anonymous black soldier the nametag “King” to make sure his backhanded swipe isn’t unnoticed. Forget that he subordinates the real authors of that blueprint for governance, Madison, Jay, and Hamilton, to Ronald Reagan, Jesus, and the caricatures of “liberals” McNaughton feels the need to demonize.”

  http://www.metafilter.com/85637/Can-you-find-Satan#2769661

• [das memsen]

  You can’t beat the Immigrant, realizing he’s been worshiping the wrong God. I’m assuming he’s Asian? A Chinese Communist? I love his attempts at not being racist: “The blacks had it tough back then- they really did! But they did their duty! Yes’m!”

• [Anonymous]

  Funny thing is that a lot of those founding fathers depicted above are atheists!

• [Alessandro Cima]

  Who’s the rich retard in the middle?

• [DWittSF]

  I don’t get it–where is God here? All I see is a holy man who lived approximately 2000 years ago.

• [Borghead]

  @ PixelFish: Yes! Thats the first thing I thought of when seeing this.

  I see some blockbuster mash-up here… The Return of the King of Kings. Starring Viggo Mortensen as Jesus!

• [Anonymous]

  Why does Ted Nugent have a gold colored White tree of Gondor on his chest?

• [Enoch Root]

  Note: Henceforth all ‘handicap’ children are to be considered right-wing.

• [Moriarty]

  The glowing guy in the center can’t possibly be Jesus, guys. Does he look like a Middle Eastern Jew to you? As pointed out above, he appears to be King of Gondor. I still don’t really get what’s supposed to be happening, though.

• [Kieran O’Neill]

  Does anyone else think that “satan” looks just like the emperor from Star Wars?

• [Anonymous]

  What are the odds, over at WoW.com (World of Warcraft blog), a contributer posted the Cthulhu version

  http://s841.photobucket.com/albums/zz333/Extemporanus/?action=view&current=One_Nation_Under_Cthulhu.jpg