Using swear words in church is an abuse of God," said the prosecutor, demanding three years jail for the punk band Pussy Riot following their 40-second protest in Moscow's Orthodox cathedral. Their crime was to sing "Mother of God, chase Putin out", invoking that young Palestinian woman who desired that the mighty be brought down, the lowly lifted up and the hungry fed. Her story, and that of her son, was also to end up in court. And the charge against him was not wholly dissimilar.
To many, swear words are more than mere rudeness. Profanity is a theological category generated by the binary opposition of sacred and profane. As expressed in the book of Leviticus, the things of God are strictly to be separated from the moral and physical corruption of the world. Death, shit and blood represent a threat to God's perfection, just as dirty fingers threaten the perfection of a blank piece of paper. Thus the complex rites of purification for those who would approach the holy.
In my own church, St Mary's, Newington, a low altar rail separates the pews from the sanctuary. When a child toddles up towards the altar for a better view of the action, a frisson of uncertainty pervades the congregation. Beyond the altar rail is the holy bit. To some, it feels like the wrong place for nappies and Haribos. And even less appropriate a place for a band called Pussy Riot.
It's worth acknowledging that some things feel like they do require particular (though not necessarily legal) protection. Earlier this week my girls had their annual holiday fight. As tempers were lost, one spat on the other's blanket. And by blanket I mean that precious transitional object children cling to as comfort and reassurance. On one level, saliva on a square of muslin hardly feels like the most terrible offence. Yet when a blanket is recognised as a vital part of existential formation, it is an act of particular unpleasantness. Some things are indeed special.
The problem comes when the holy is employed as a cover to evade critical scrutiny. Even more so when questionable moral or political ideologies are smuggled into the holy – from menstruating women being ritually unclean (thus unable to be priests doing holy stuff in the sanctuary) to the Orthodox church's support for Putin. For values thus inscribed within the holy can easily come to regulate the politics of a community in ways that resist any sort of challenge. Then religion becomes an adjunct of totalitarianism. And when this happens a pussy riot is an absolute moral necessity.
The legal case against Jesus was that he violated the holy. He was criticised for allowing his disciples to eat without washing properly and for picking corn on the day set aside as holy. He said he was God yet he was born in a filthy stable and willingly laid hands on lepers. He had no problem with being touched by menstruating women or eating with those regarded as unwholesome. In the context of second temple Judaism, this constituted a thoroughgoing deconstruction of holiness – or, specifically, of the way unquestioned holiness had become an alibi for political injustice. The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures made exactly the same challenge. And being profane is precisely the point.
"We are grateful to those who pray for us," said Pussy Riot's lead singer, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. Yet in so manipulated a political environment as contemporary Russia, it seems too much to hope that these brave women will have a more impartial judge than that blasphemous Hebrew who so upset the state and the religious authorities of his day.
Twitter: @giles_fraser
