Tattoos And Faith: Christians Weigh Identity, Grief And Redemption
(ANALYSIS) Struggling with the loss of her child, a mother asked Father Peter Jon Gillquist a question that pastors are hearing more often — about getting a tattoo.
“When her child died,” he explained, she “wanted to have the child's name tattooed across her heart. Why? Grief. She wanted to always carry the name of that child as close to her heart as she could possibly get ... and bear it.”
Getting, or keeping, a tattoo is “not a legalistic thing,” he said during a forum recorded at All Saints Orthodox Church, his parish in Bloomington, Indiana. “The question is, ‘If you have a tattoo, why do you have a tattoo? What is it for?’”
READ: What Tattoos Of World Cup Players Reveals About Their Religious Beliefs
Searchers find clashing answers online. Many believers quote Leviticus: “You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh ... nor tattoo any marks on you.”
Others note this biblical instruction to the Corinthians: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?”
Some believers, noted Gillquist, argue that since their body is a temple, they can decorate it. Others say tattoos are linked to paganism or, in the Roman world, represented punishment, torture or identity, such as markings on soldiers or slaves.
For some Christians, such as Egyptian Copts, tattoos — inked on wrists — are more than symbols. Cross tattoos tell persecutors, “To remove these crosses, you will have to cut our wrists.”
Identity issues dominate Baylor University research promoted in a feature entitled, “They Aren’t Just Tattoos — They’re Testimonies: Study Shows How Tattoos Are Becoming Sacred Symbols for a New Generation.” The research challenged stereotypes that religious people avoid tattoos, which is certainly not true for young believers.
“What we're seeing is that tattoos are becoming modern-day sacred objects,” noted sociologist and co-author of the research Jerome Koch. “They’re permanent, deeply personal and often worn as both a proclamation of faith and a private reminder of belief.”
In a 2023 Pew Research Center study, 1 in 3 Americans reported having a tattoo, and more than 1 in 5 had more than one.
Adding “tats” was more common among the young, people with less formal education, those with lower incomes and women — especially young women. In the 2023 study, researchers were stunned that 56% of women ages 18 to 29 said they had tattoos. In 2010, young women were much less likely to be inked.
It's easy to see these trends in real life while serving at the Christian Women's Job Corps center in the Texas Hill Country, said Deana Mattingly Blackburn, my sister who lives in Kerrville. This was especially true with women who served time in the Texas Department of Corrections.
During nearly two decades teaching the “Healthy Relationships” class, Blackburn worked with women with “tats which were representative of love, likely gone bad, but all with some memories attached.” Many of the women had tattoos that were "satanic, related to drug culture or racist," she said via email.
During discussions with these women about choices that defined their lives, “we dealt with how the tats did or did not represent who they are now.” This was even true with tattoos linked to “what they had thought were good memories and relationships.”
The bottom line: Many of these women faced decisions about what to do — quite literally — with their tattoos when their new lives took them into mainstream workspaces. Some of the women wanted to know how to handle questions in church pews. Everyone knew that the process to remove tattoos was expensive and painful.
Often, Blackburn said, it helped to “think outside the box. It became a joke and a challenge to go tat by tat to see how each work of art could be morphed into images of their new lives of joy and victory.”
With the help of volunteers, they often were able to create designs that altered tattoos, turning ugly images into beautiful trees or a fiery image of evil into something resembling a biblical burning bush.
“A tweak here and there is doable,” said Blackburn. “There really is a market out there for this! Especially if it's done alongside counseling, prayer and ongoing support so that the tattee does not feel shamed or pulled down by the process.”
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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.