I’m more accustomed to plain crosses. Worn around the neck or on a church wall. I am Baptist.
Some faiths (Catholics?) Use crosses with Jesus nailed to them. I find that a bit unnerving. Especially the big crosses on a wall.
https://goo.gl/images/E6ws8s
What is the significance of the two types of Crosses?
Do specific religions use one type of cross? AFAIK Baptists use a plain cross. But I haven’t taken any surveys.
Different interpretations of the rule about graven images.
I would guess that a cross without Jesus is easier to manufacture, and also looks more streamlined .
Catholics use plain crosses as well, but some protestant denominations don’t. It’s linked to the general push to reject decorations, in two directions: iconoclasm (a general rejection of human images in religious contexts) and a perception of the RCC as “a greedy whore” and therefore rejection of decorations as “papist” (which was the case for example with the earliest Calvinists; the areas where they were strongest saw a lot of religious images destroyed).
Within Catholicism it’s both a matter of aesthetics and one of theology; the Augustine fathers are pretty iconoclast as a matter of principle, for example, so any chapel they keep will tend to be quite bare. I’ve got three crosses in my house and all of them are crosses, but I also happen to have a Sacred Heart (which my mother disliked and I like for the same reason: He’s cross-eyed) and an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Velocity, a bare cross can be quite complicated and curlicued. One of mine is talavera poblana, polycromated ceramics over wood: I wouldn’t call it “simple”.
If I might add an additional question: Are there any Christian sects that eschew the cross symbol altogether?
I’ve heard the theory that Christ has risen. He’s not on the cross anymore.
OTOH Depicting Christ on the Cross reminds us of his suffering for mankind.
It does seem to depend on the branch of Christianity.
I wasn’t sure if this was part of the Protestant Reformation or not.
Some non-denominational churches use the fish. But it doesn’t replace the cross.
Traditionally it’s thought the early Christians drew the fish in the sand to identify themselves to other Christians.
https://goo.gl/images/UxAhCX
And some faiths don’t worship Jesus at all…
(The OP uses “faiths” and “religions” as synonyms for the spectrum of Christianity…)
Jehovah’s Witnesses, if you are willing to accept them under the tent.
It’s always struck me as bizarre that Christianity has the instrument used to torture Jesus to death as their symbol. Yeah yeah “his suffering was necessary to redeem our sins”, it’s all rather morbid. Personally I find the main buddhist symbols of the buddha peacefully meditating rather more inspiring.
I’m an atheist. AFAIC, until an official rulebook is written and universal governing committee is recognized by all, any group that self-identifies as “Christian” is acceptable to me.
Blood sacrifice goes back to the very earliest rituals of most cultures.
The Cross is Christianity’s symbolic version.
There’s also the question of whether it was Jesus’ death or resurrection that’s more theologically significant. I’m no comparative theologian, but I imagine that opinions of various sects differ on that.
Carried to the extreme by some crucifixes that wouldn’t look out of place in a slasher movie.
This is where my thinking went also. Was the saving work of Christ accomplished on the cross, or in the tomb? Different Christian traditions will give different answers or no answer.
But I do think that Nava’s reference to iconoclasm is also an important factor.
By the way, the icon with Christ nailed to the cross is usually referred to as a crucifix to distinguish it from a plain cross.
Above the altar at my home church - Episcopal - hangs a very large Christus Rex. It’s a sculpture of Jesus on the cross, but not suffering in rags with nails in his hands and feet and a crown of thorns. He’s on the cross, standing erect with his arms outstretched, in full regal garb including flowing robes and a golden crown.
That’s always been my interpretation. Catholics are big on the suffering of Jesus as being The Most Important Thing. Protestants are more about the resurrection.
I was raised in the Baptist church (Southern), and for example I had never heard of the “Twelve Stations of the Cross” until I was well into my thirties.
The question of suffering, especially voluntary suffering for a greater good (self-sacrifice) has always been held in tension among various Christian dogmas.
Catholics have always been a literal bunch. We don’t shy away from the gory. Real blood, real body you know. As Flannery O’Connor once famously said about communion, “If it’s just a metaphor, the hell with it”.
I once stepped into a tiny church in Mexico which displayed right inside the door a life-sized wax figure of dead Jesus – with real hair and eyebrows – lying in a casket. Yow.
It’s Catholicism which also is still devoted to relics of the saints (bones etc), and arduous pilgrimages, still accepts that the stigmata can actually be conferred (although extremely rarely), that the image of the Virgin can appear on a tortilla. In some parts of the world people lash themselves with whips and carry heavy crosses on Good Friday, in as a literal attempt to imitate Christ’s Passion. The realistic dead corpus on the crucifix is just part of that whole ancient brutal non-literate mode of teaching – like the torments of the damned which decorate the outer doors of medieval churches.
The sanitized, smoothed, let’s just think about the happy parts, type of Protestantism has no appeal for me. No blood, no mysticism. Boring. Tastes differ.
The National Museum of Sculpture in Valladolid includes some where the sculptor had way too much fun with anatomy. Part of the issue is that those statues weren’t intended to be seen from close up as we do in the museum, but several have information indicating that the overwrought style was very polemic back when the sculpture was made.
The ones without color tend to be more exaggerated in expression, which makes sense: it’s like looking at the acting and makeup in silent movies, vs black and white but with sound and much better image, vs color. A better medium lends itself to less exaggerated execution.
The death is not the most important thing (it’s meaningless without the resurrection), but the suffering is part of the whole “true man” thing. “And He became a man, and set His tent among us”. Some people seem to think that it’s inappropriate to think of Him as suffering: well, He suffered, and He shat, and His shit stinked - because that’s all part of being true man.
I went in (what I assume to have been) an interdenominational chapel in a hospital once - in the high central position on the wall where you might normally expect to see a cross was a lifesize uncanny-valley figure of Christ, naked except a loincloth with arms sort of outstretched as if on the cross (but there was no cross), reaching forward a little, with this weird staring, yearning look on its face. Terrifying.