I had never seen the two religious-themed Van Gogh paintings shown in this article, and apparently there are many more, which museums generally keep locked in the basement. His religious-themed correspondence, also suppressed for many years, also suggests that many of his well known paintings embodied for him a religious subtext.

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Vincent Van Gogh was crazy – for Christ
Exclusive: Marisa Martin reveals museums hiding master's faith from public

"The best way to know God is to love many things," said Vincent Van Gogh.

Most of us know the sordid story of a lovelorn Van Gogh chopping off his own ear.

Yet Van Gogh’s original heartbreak didn’t come from a French prostitute or the estrangement from his fellow painter Paul Gauguin, but from the church.

The frayed narrative of Van Gogh’s crummy love life and repeated rejection at the hands of les femmes, ignores his original great passion in life – the ministry of Jesus Christ (or Jezus Christus in Dutch).

Vincent was a socially progressive and idealistic young pastor who clashed with the rigid respectability of the Dutch Reformed Church in 1878. Ministering to starving miners and roughnecks, he suffered along in complete solidarity – ill-fed, dirty, cold and ugly. The church at the time didn’t much care for his scandalous empathy and abruptly cut off all support.

With this, Van Gogh turned to art. Clearly not his first love, but he found the success he missed with the ladies and the church. Vincent was also shown the only acceptance and respect he would experience in this world from other painters, other than his brother Theo.

Speaking of the church he wrote to Theo, “I wish they would only take me as I am,” and expressed bitterness over his rejection.

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http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/vincent-van-gogh-was-crazy-for-christ/