Actually, no. He is a Latter Day Saint.
But here is a taste of Get Religion’s Douglas LeBlanc’s take on art historian Jennifer Greenhill’s recent Atlantic piece on pro-Trump artist Jon McNaughton:
Being described as a court anything to President Donald Trump qualifies as apostasy among his snarkiest critics. Consider, for example, historian John Fea’s frequent designation of “court evangelical” on his weblog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home.
Greenhill, professor of art history at the University of Southern California, concentrates her remarks largely on painter Jon McNaughton’s full-barreled support of Donald Trump and his pointed depictions of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, even Woodrow Wilson.
I have lived through the past several years without realizing that McNaughton does so much to provoke the cultural left, including art critic Jerry Saltz of New York magazine. Saltz, as Greenhill mentions, called one McNaughton painting (of a glowering President Obama holding a burning Constitution) “bad academic derivative realism,” “typical propaganda art, drop-dead obvious in message” and “visually dead as a doornail.” (Props to the TV affiliate CBS DC for seeking his thoughts.)
Greenhill too quickly moves on from McNaughton being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (his attending Brigham Young University is one clue). This is the one church that teaches the most exalted perspective on the nation’s founding.
Consider Article of Faith #10 on the church’s website, Come unto Christ: “We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.”
Read the rest here.
