Category: Art, Blasphemy, and Humanism

September 30 marks International Blasphemy Rights Day (IBRD), which the Center for Inquiry has observed since its beginning.¹ IBRD celebrates the right of authors, artists, and dissidents to treat religious matters as they see fit, even to the point of offending believers.

I am a blasphemer. Even now, some forty-five years after tossing the last vestiges of my Catholic indoctrination into the dustbin of childhood beliefs, this is still an oddly unsettling thing to write.

Pat Oleszko is an accomplished performance artist whose work often trespasses on “forbidden” religious ground. Her sensibility is absurdist; her methods encompass raucous costuming, rowdy street theater, and puppetry of sometimes breathtaking complexity.

The walls surrounding me were adorned with Arabic calligraphy and an image of a beautiful, large mosque beneath a bright blue sky. As a child, I would gaze at these images, admiring the intricacies of the calligraphy, every line and squiggle elegantly limned with shimmering silver paint.

Every Tuesday afternoon, five friends played pickup basketball, then went to their favorite bar and grill for a bite to eat. They made quite the melting pot: a Roman Catholic, a Protestant evangelical, a Jewish guy, a Muslim, and an East Indian Hindu.