Religion: Vexing Christa

The Maundy Thursday services at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan included such now familiar symbols of a progressive liturgy as a dramatic reading and a symbolic dance. But when a four-foot bronze statue of Jesus on the cross was unveiled, gasps could be heard throughout the main chapel. The Christus was, in fact, a Christa, complete with undraped breasts and rounded hips.

The work, created in 1975 by Sculptor Edwina Sandys, 45, for the United Nations' Decade for Women, had been shown in galleries and art exhibits, but it had never before been displayed in a church....