Paul Elie — The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s - with Daniel Burke

The 1980s are usually seen as a slick, shrill decade. The Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers urged "Death to America"; Ronald Reagan was in the White House, backed by the Moral Majority; John Paul II was asserting Catholic traditionalism and denouncing homosexuality, as were the televangelists on cable TV. And yet "crypto-religious" artists pushed back against the spirit of the age, venturing into vexed areas where politicians and clergy were loath to go--and anticipating the postsecular age we are living in today.That is the story Paul Elie tells in this enthralling group portrait. Here's Leonard Cohen writing "Hallelujah" in a Times Square hotel room; Andy Warhol adapting Leonardo's The Last Supper in response to the AIDS crisis; Prince making the cross and altar into "signs of the times." Through Toni Morrison the spirits of the enslaved speak from the grave; Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen deepen the tent-revival intensity of their work; U2, Morrissey, and Sinéad O'Connor give voice to the anguish of young people who were raised religious; Wim Wenders offers an angel's-eye view of Berlin. And Martin Scorsese overcomes fundamentalist opposition to make The Last Temptation of Christ--a struggle that anticipates Salman Rushdie's struggle with Islam in The Satanic Verses.Much of that work drew controversy, and episodes such as the boycott sparked by Madonna's "Like a Prayer" video and the tearing up of Andres Serrano's Piss Christ in Congress were early skirmishes in the culture wars. But in this book's interlocking tales of the crypto-religious, the artists are the protagonists, and their work speaks to us because it deals with matters of the spirit that are too complex to be reduced to doctrines and headlines.Stirring, immersive, The Last Supper traces the beginning of our age, in which religion is both surging and in decline. And it presents an outlook--open to belief but wary of it--that those artists and today's readers have in common.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780374272920?ic_referral=_hiYase6eV7C_gAM6anzcHZIbuAZbt6DuWp9T4-sfdMwMzlRVWe57XckMthXT3b0OHR_K6UMvauZYccNXspZp3nx9Qml1_pr9IjsvGQtgjyWYYswv_ZhK3gPHYJh9s2lwFVD_APaul Elie is the author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own (2003) and Reinventing Bach (2012), both National Book Critics Circle Award finalists. He is a senior fellow in Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He lives in Brooklyn.Elie is in conversation with Daniel Burke, the Senior Editor of Religion & Spirituality at NPR. Previously, he was CNN's religion editor, where he led coverage of religion for the website and network. He contributes reviews of books on religion and spirituality for The Washington Post, The Revealer and a number of other publications.*recorded 5/28/2025