JD Vance, Elon Musk rebuke Church of England for mocking God

A new exhibit at the historic Canterbury Cathedral in the United Kingdom that features graffiti questioning God’s goodness prompted Vice President J.D. Vance, Elon Musk and others to claim the Church of England is humiliating itself.

The art exhibit, titled “Hear Us,” features temporary graffiti in the church that aims to highlight minorities while posing difficult questions to God, according to a press release from the cathedral.

“This project focuses on partnering with marginalized communities — such as Punjabi, black and brown diaspora, neurodivergent, and LGBTQIA+ groups — to collaboratively create handwritten literature responding to the question, ‘What would you ask God?'” said the cathedral, whose dean, the Very Rev. David Monteith, approved of the project.

Welcome to the UK’s most famous cathedral…Canterbury Cathedral. ??

The Cathedral, which was founded over 1400 years ago, has been covered in graffiti art as part of an exhibition by an artist who identities as an ‘agender goblin’, non-binary and a ‘queer vegan.’ pic.twitter.com/Q2OXKRTR7B

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) October 10, 2025

“Are you there?” and “Why did you create hate when love is by far more powerful?” are among the questions posed by the exhibit headed by Alex Vellis, a poet who identifies as a queer vegan and uses they/them pronouns. Other messages include, “Does everything have a soul?” and “Do you regret your creation?”

“Is illness sin?” said another message. Others asked, “Why all the suffering?” and “If you made us all in your own form, why the violence killing storm?”

Given that some of the graffiti scrawled on the cathedral’s stone pillars appeared to question God’s existence and even taunt Him, some claimed the exhibit was effectively an act of sacrilege, blasphemy and desecration that is symptomatic of spiritual rot in the U.K.

“It is weird to me that these people don’t see the irony of honoring ‘marginalized communities’ by making a beautiful historical building really ugly,” Vance tweeted.

“It’s tragic how great nations are fallen,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. “Consumed by self-destructive pathologies embraced by their ‘elites.’ God help England.”

X and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk weighed in on the situation multiple times on social media, calling the display “shameful.”

“They have debased themselves,” Musk wrote under one tweet that featured footage of the graffiti.

“Relentless anti-Western propaganda has made so many people in the West want to suicide their own culture. Unfortunately, propaganda works,” Musk wrote in another tweet. He also expressed agreement with an X user who asserted that the Church of England is “just [an] anti-white cult at this point.”

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said the exhibit “rivals the dumbest things I have ever heard.”

“And they wonder why Christians don’t bother going to churches anymore,” wrote conservative political commentator Ann Coulter.

The Rev. Dr. Gavin Ashenden, former chaplain to the late Queen Elizabeth II, told The Telegraph he was “shocked” by the graffiti, which he said “belongs more to the architecture for a car park or a modern church.”

Ashenden, who left Anglicanism for the Roman Catholic Church and recently condemned the Church of England as an apostate body with “nothing at the center,” said the God-mocking graffiti in its most prominent church indicates “decay, rebellion and anger.”

“How is that congruent with the art of a cathedral?” he asked. “It’s undermining. It has a different kind of aesthetic dissonance which I don’t think helps with the quest for God.”

One of the oldest Christian buildings in England, Canterbury Cathedral was founded by Augustine of Canterbury, who became the first archbishop of Canterbury in A.D. 597 after Pope Gregory I dispatched him to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons.

The cathedral was rebuilt in the 1070s and featured prominently in the history of English Christianity, perhaps most notably when former Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket was murdered in the northwest transept by four knights of King Henry II in 1170.

The cathedral graffiti comes a week after the Church of England announced Dame Sarah Mullally as the first female archbishop of Canterbury. The installation of Mullally, who has openly affirmed abortion and homosexuality, prompted some within the global Anglican Communion to claim that the Church of England has been given over to apostasy.