The sunlight pouring into the airy Blum Gallery at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor this week couldn’t dispel a sense of urgency and gloom that is cast by the exhibit “Religion and Politics/Church and State.”

The Union of Maine Visual Artists features works that examine the relationship between religion and politics and between the church and the state – relationships that are portrayed by the participating artists as so dark and turbulent that it seems doubtful that even the love guru of red-state America, Dr. Phil, could save them.

Brooklin artist Robert Shillady’s comic-book style triptych, “The Expulsion of the Secular Humanists from Providence,” is a striking example of the cultural disconnect that seems to be – literally – separating the artists from the others as red and blue America creep ever farther apart.

In the first panel, the bright primary colors and busy action belie exactly what’s going on: People lugging books, paintings and a trumpet are being chased out of an industrial-looking city by a cluster of fist-shaking angry folks. A billboard looming on a brick factory building reads: “Wealth is God’s way of rewarding those who put him first. Join the moral majority.”

The large middle panel, the heart of the work, shows a church with a preacher, his fist raised high, too, but apparently in triumph. He’s speaking to a packed house that includes a television crew filming the sermon for broadcast.

But in the final panel the themes of the other two – the expulsion, the anger, the preaching – come home to roost. A family is gathered around a television set watching the sermon, the father cradling what appears to be a beer can while sitting in his easy chair. The mother wears a flimsy dress and a worried look.

The children, though, are the most alarming.

They’re playing with war toys that look as real as anything else in this allegorical cartoon of a painting. One boy is pointing a gun at his mother; another aims his weapon at his father’s head. An abandoned doll lies beneath the television set, arms and legs flung akimbo like Jesus on the cross.

And so goes life in Providence without its secular humanists – hypocritical and plainly dangerous.

Another smaller piece drove its point quietly home without nearly so much narrative drama but with plenty of visual impact.

The icon-like “With God On Our Side” by Denise Barbieri of Ellsworth shows a cross made of dollar bills that has been inlaid with bullets and red glass beads evocative of blood or teardrops.

The small, powerful piece seems quite ordinary if viewed from a distance. But up close, it subversively – and eloquently – shows Barbieri’s opinion of the interconnection of religion, war and money.

Barbieri asks why there isn’t moral outrage from the Christian community over the war in Iraq. It’s a question that is posed another way by Peter McFarland of Camden in his two-panel oil painting “Afflations.”

Dark in subject matter as well as color choice, the large work shows a footlit stage on which cowers a naked, hooded torture victim. A soldier in full regalia towers over him. The rest of the theater is full of chaotic images straight from a nightmare – men in chains sit at the edges of a swirling black hole, a minister holds a gun to the head of a corpse, a girl in a belly-baring T-shirt dances in apparent ecstasy, oblivious to the mayhem surrounding her.

In the comment book, one visitor wrote, “Wow! Boy am I depressed,” after viewing the show. Another called the pieces “great” and “compelling.”

One thing is clear: The show won’t leave you cold, unless it’s the cold of chills creeping down your spine.

Maine’s artists are concerned about preserving freedom of expression and freedom of religion in America. It’s well worth going to the Blum Gallery to see what you think.

Dr. Phil wouldn’t provide nearly so much food for thought.

The exhibit is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Friday, March 17, at College of the Atlantic’s Blum Gallery.