Catholicism has become youth culture. As I write this, American youth are fetishizing the Catholic Church (what the New York Times called “New York’s Hottest Club”). Gen Zers are converting to Catholicism and posting about “sedevacantism,” the fringe-traditionalist Catholic belief that the papacy has been illegitimate since the Second Vatican. A Harvard University study showed that more Gen Zers are identifying as Catholic (up 6% between 2022 and 2023) due to what the New York Post described as “an answer to loneliness, cultural drift and a search for purpose.” And, I’d argue, due to the culture wars (fueled by cancel culture).

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There’s plenty of scholarly support for the post-secular pivot, but popular culture’s role in the pivot is fresh scholarly terrain. Art, faith, sex, and “religious-inflected” controversies are the pillars of the post-secular origin story and subtitle of Paul Elie’s latest book: The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the ‘80s, a near-500 page cultural history of the Reagan-era and the non-canonical works of art that defined its “crypto-religious” turn. 

For example, that period saw Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video blurring the lines between adoration and “carnal devotion.” Roberto de Mattei, an Italian Roman Catholic historian, described the video as “a blasphemy and insult” for showing “immorals inside a church.” Secular feminists were aghast: Madonna was being too Catholic, horny, and objectified (her cleavage wasn’t properly holstered). The Vatican censured the video and waged a mini-culture war in the wake of Vatican II, which had attempted to modernize Catholicism. “Twenty years after Vatican II de-emphasized Old World Catholic practices,” writes Elie, “images from the left-behind Catholic ghetto were still alive and well in American popular culture.”

When was the last time the Vatican condemned a pop star? When was the last time a pop star sexualized the act of worship? Lana Del Rey genuflecting in front of a John Wayne hologram in 2013’s Tropico? The 1980s were a time when traditional Catholicism clashed with popular culture in ways we’ve never seen before or since. But why? This is the schismatic flashpoint Elie’s book aims not only to explain but weave into today’s culture wars. Elie, a Roman Catholic scholar and senior fellow at Georgetown’s Berkley Center of Religion, situates crypto-religiosity squarely in the ‘80s. He calls this period a “liminal space between belief and disbelief” that produced boundary-pushing art that confronted some of the dogmas of the day with “cryptically” religious art. The dogmas include the Catholic Church declaring homosexuality a “disorder” in 1986 and its callousness toward AIDS — the dark cloud that hovers over every chapter of this book.

In answer, he provides a cultural history. But the real thesis of the book is an argument that everyone who approaches the past or the present of art without looking to religion is simply mistaken. “What’s striking in retrospect isn’t just that artists are making reference to religion in their work,” writes Elie. “It is that they take the religious point of view seriously and personally. They aren’t set against religious authority … they aren’t anti-religious or irreligious. They’re crypto-religious.”

The crypto-religious turn began, according to Elie, in 1979, with Bob Dylan’s rebirth as an evangelical Christian on Slow Train Coming, which was followed by other examples of crypto-religiosity. These included Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” photograph, Robert Mapplethorpe’s “The Perfect Moment” (a retrospective of homoerotic S&M photography partially funded by the National Endowment of the Arts — a flashpoint in the culture wars), Andy Warhol’s Last Supper series, Prince combining “music, sex, and the sacred,” Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, and Sinéad O’Connor ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live (1992). 

These figures and others color Elie’s subtextual arguments, including his belief that the “secret chord” of crypto-religiousness in popular art has been historically ignored by critics. Elie’s implicit argument is that the cultural friction between the Catholic Church (boosted by the Moral Majority’s position that sex and religion shouldn’t go together) and gay catholics (e.g., Robert Mapplethorpe) produced transgressive art that ignited culture wars. 

Last Supper thus excavates cultural history from a specific timeline: 1979 to 1992. The cultural commentary is mostly “cryptic” and purposefully siloed from the present. This leaves unanswered why the post-secular, crypto-religious revival today is not particularly controversial or shocking. Our own era, after all, has plenty of potentially controversy-igniting blasphemous cultural production that plays off of religious iconography: Lana Del Rey’s “Say Yes to Heaven,” Ethel Cain’s Southern Gothic gaze, Justin Bieber and Hillsong, Honor Levy converting to Catholicism, Red Scare, MAGA Catholics, Dogma’s sexually explicit cover of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” 

This is enough to make the sort of person who might read a history of modern culture wars at the places where pop culture and religion touch feel itchy. 

DOES ANYBODY KNOW JOHNNY CARSON?

Our collectively culture wars-addled brain begs Elie for more provocation and punditry — to take a strong position. Nearly 500 pages of culture wars history, and feminism is mentioned just once or twice, never critically. Why? Perhaps a tinge of self-censorship, as Elie knows his audience (and gatekeepers).

The Last Supper is, then, an imperfect cultural study that relies too often on “close reading.” But Elie also accomplishes something remarkable and necessary: a cultural pilgrimage that foregrounds the extraordinary and ineffable in the popular arts, demonstrating how the “religious point of view” is deeply entwined with the artistic desires to make sense of the world, or subvert it. When Brian Wilson described making music as hearing “God’s voice,” he might have been taken more seriously by people who mistakenly consider art to be a secular practice.

Art Tavana is the author of Goodbye, Guns N’ Roses and a former columnist at L.A. Weekly and Playboy.