God Ink

The growing trend to tattoo your faith on your sleeve

by Tara Ramroop

Eyes of friends and strangers alike immediately fall to the arm, the shoulder, the back, or perhaps even to the unnaturally elongated earlobe - sometimes a question follows, sometimes it doesn't.

The tattooed and the pierced have signed up for it all, deeming a stamp of meaning or originality worth the cost, the pain, the permanence and the perpetual need to cover their artwork for job interviews. As tattoo shops spring up in suburbia and as tattoos become standard fare in offices, researchers and industry professionals are finding many willing to go under the needle do so in the name of some god. In many other instances, they do so in the name of their own personal philosophy of faith.

“Anecdotally, yes, it seems more and more people are becoming modified: tattooed, scarred, and pierced,” according to Jaime Wright, who completed a master's thesis in 2006 on the topic of religion and body modification, while studying at the Graduate Theological Union.  He notes the presence of TV shows such as Miami Ink and One Punk Under God, a show featuring the Generation X preacher son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who donned tattoos and a sub-cultural style to better connect with a younger generation.

Tattooing has a storied history ranging from early scarring – cuts rubbed with herbs and ash – that were found on Ötzi the Iceman, whose body dates back possibly to 3300 BCE, to simple designs popularized by military men who boasted a love of God, country and buxom blondes on their biceps, Wright said. There is still a prevalence of religious emblems - the most obvious being crosses and rosaries still popular among the tattooed – but tattooing and the permanence thereof often allows people to redefine themselves and their spirituality on their own terms.

Clearly, not everyone who decides on a tattoo does so for religious reasons. But findings from a research group at Texas Tech University appear to back up the theory that among college-age students who go under the needle, religious emblems are common choices for their artwork. Dr. Jerome Koch, who has a Master’s Degree in Divinity and teaches sociology at Texas Tech, is delving into the topic of body

modification and how it relates to deviance with a research team comprising himself, Alden Roberts, Myrna Armstrong and Donna Owen, all TTU professors.  Their initial findings -- research is ongoing -- were presented at the annual meeting of the Religious Research Association in Nov. 2007, in Tampa, Fla.

Findings from the group's 2004 and 2005 studies both found that religiousness did not have much of an impact on people's desire to get a tattoo or piercing. Later, in the group's ongoing study, "Religiosity, Fundamentalism, Deviance and Body Art," Koch and his group measured "religiosity" by asking college-age students from four different campuses about churchgoing habits, amount of prayer and Bible reading, among other things.  The study sample was roughly 1,700 students large, equally divided among two religious schools, Baylor University and the University of Notre Dame, and two state schools, Texas Tech and Purdue University, Koch said

The group found that people with tattoos and piercings had religiosity

scores that were roughly 10 percent lower than those without body art. These findings suggest that people with tattoos and piercings were roughly eight to 10 percent less religious than their peers, Koch said.

Still, 44 percent of tattoos at Baylor were religious symbols. At Texas Tech, a non-religious school, only 28 percent were religious in nature, Koch said. These findings suggest that religion itself doesn't necessarily play into the decision-making process of getting a tattoo. But religious students -- at Baylor and Notre Dame -- found tattooing a good way to express their religiosity

"These tattoos are symbols that suggest they're going to be religious their whole life -- that religion is a permanent part of their identities," Koch said. "Sometimes they're memorials, sometimes they're reminders of faith."

Religious tattoos were memorials of deceased family or friends, permanent reminders of personal faith or signs of commitment, according to the study. One male student, 19, said it reminds him “that God is always with me, no matter what.” One female student and Sunday school teacher, 20, said the cross on her right foot reinforces her “very strong” Catholic faith.

Read Part 2 >>

View a Slide Show of Religious Tattoos

Tara Ramroop is a San Francisco-based, freelance reporter who contributes to a handful of travel, culture and lifestyle publications and websites including Planet Magazine and vezeo.com. She wrote daily local and regional news in California on a wide range of subjects--including government, business, the University of California, religion and travel--from 2001 to 2007.

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