By Ryan Stander<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(retrieved from the Wayback Machine https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20170908165314\/inallthings.org\/the-relationship-between-faith-and-art\/)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an undergraduate art student, stranded in a snowstorm somewhere along I-80 in Indiana, I had a life-changing encounter with four Baptist ministers \u2013 a conversion of sorts. I was told that faithful Christians could not like Andy Warhol<\/a>\u2019s artwork because of his \u201clife choices.\u201d Instead, Christians must pursue the \u201cgood, true, and beautiful\u201d1<\/a><\/sup> and make only \u201cChristian\u201d art from biblically inspired content. In their estimation, my love of Warhol put me decidedly beyond the Christian pale. And yet, while I deeply disagreed with them, I was not able to give any sound biblical, theological, or art historical response to justify my position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That inability to utter a coherent response pushed me to care deeply about the relationships between faith and art. Ultimately, it brought me to seminary and on to a Master of Fine Arts program. This unique educational path has helped me explore the idea and possibility of \u201cChristian\u201d artists and art. I want to suggest that labels of \u201cChristian\u201d and \u201cnon-Christian\u201d are not viable paths, and to be honest, I think they are detrimental.There is something unsettling in this process of defining the arts as \u201cChristian\u201d that compromises both the artist and the art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few years ago I was talking with John Hitchcock, professor of printmaking at the University of Wisconsin, about often being labeled as a \u201cNative-American artist.\u201d John\u2019s visceral reaction and rejection of the term \u201cNative Artist\u201d recall my own issues with the label of \u201cChristian\u201d artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Categories such as \u201cNative\u201d, \u201cBlack\u201d, \u201cFeminist\u201d, or \u201cWomanist\u201d arts are a double-edged sword, obscuring as much as they reveal. Certainly some labels are chosen, yet others are imposed interpretive structures given by the powers of the art world. For John, the label of \u201cNative Artist\u201d was tied to a controlling white, Western, colonialist, art world. While such terms may help us mentally order and engage the arts, they also function differently than other stylistic terms like cubism or realism, which point to the product. Categories like \u201cNative\u201d or \u201cBlack\u201d relate to an inherent nature of the artist and reduce that nature into a peripheral niche of the art world. While there are important distinctions that should be made between labels of \u201cChristian\u201d and those of race and gender, I sense a parallel with the label of \u201cChristian\u201d art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is something unsettling in this process of defining the arts as \u201cChristian\u201d that compromises both the artist and the art. Such categories have a ghettoizing effect that pigeonholes the artist and product. More importantly for Christians, it ignores central doctrinal teachings on God\u2019s relationship with creation, God\u2019s sovereignty, and the Incarnation to name a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My truck stop interrogators divided their world into two rigid spheres: sacred and secular. For them, Warhol\u2019s life and work was decidedly secular offering nothing even potentially redemptive. Perhaps it is this hardened dichotomy that troubles me about certain corners of Evangelicalism\u2019s cultural affairs.2<\/a><\/sup> The divide disrupts our perception of God\u2019s creation and reorders it by making categorical distinctions between things, people, and places that are holy and those that are not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, as Christians, we do not need to live under this self-imposed dichotomy. Let me suggest a few ways to bridge the divide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Presbyterian theologian Douglas Ottati, draws upon the Psalmist and St. Paul\u2019s claims, \u201cThe earth is the Lord\u2019s and fullness thereof\u201d3<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0to articulate God\u2019s stance toward creation. He argues that nothing is truly godless or profane because \u201cGod always stands in relation to all.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0In this, all things, including the arts, exist as part of God\u2019s \u201cintricate and encompassing web of divine power, presence, and grace.\u201d5<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Nothing stands wholly apart from God\u2019s presence regardless of how we may try to define who and what is part of God\u2019s redemptive plan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Likewise, H.R. Rookmaaker also looked toward creation in one of the modern classics on art and theology. Rookmaaker argued \u201cart needs no justification\u201d and is intrinsically worthy of our attention because it is part of the created order.6<\/a><\/sup> Art, and human creativity come from God, reflect God\u2019s purposes for humanity, and thus need nothing extra to sanctify them.7<\/a><\/sup> Artists glorify God and serve humanity, not by heaping Christian content into their work, but by pursuing the fullness of their talents with their heart, mind, and spirit.8<\/a><\/sup> Rookmaaker suggests that while the arts express many things, they are a good unto themselves and should be enjoyed for their own sake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Rookmaaker roots the validity of the arts in the created order of the world, and Ottati in God\u2019s own disposition toward creation, another well-worn path places the arts under the redemptive nature of the incarnation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Madeline L\u2019Engle is widely known for her fiction work, A Wrinkle in Time<\/a><\/em>, but during her life she also wrestled with her faith and calling as a writer. She reminds us that God has often acted in peculiar and unsuspected ways. One of God\u2019s surprise moves in the story of redemption was to enter fallen creation through the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth. The incarnation suggests that nothing, including human flesh is too fallen for adoption into God\u2019s purposes. L\u2019Engle argued, \u201cthere can be no categories such as \u2018religious\u2019 art and \u2018secular\u2019 art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore \u2018religious.\u2019\u201d9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n She warns that we live in the comfortable sacred\/secular boundaries at our own peril. Codifying God by demarcating spheres of presence and absence closes us off from surprise movements of God\u2019s Spirit in the world around us. It closes our eyes and ears from seeing Christ at play in 10,000 different places.10<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n If the earth is<\/em> the Lord\u2019s and fullness thereof, everything in it belongs to our Creator and Redeemer. For culture, and particularly the arts, this means we do not need make judgments upon what is and isn\u2019t Christian. Whether it is Warner Sallman\u2019s Head of Christ<\/em> <\/a>or Robert Rauschenberg\u2019s Combines<\/em><\/a>, art is simply art. It all stands under God\u2019s created order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How ought we to engage this expanded world of art? In addition to the usual forms of art criticism or evaluation that begin with thinking about the form, content, and the artist, perhaps Christians ought to follow up with another line of questioning.11<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Does it resonate with or illuminate some aspect of our faith?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Does it cause us to see the world and God\u2019s people in new ways?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Does the work of art challenge or critique our lives, faith, or the church?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Does it nourish our hearts and minds?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Does it cause us to pick up our cross and follow?<\/em>12<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n This way of approaching and interpreting art takes hard work. We must go beyond shallow and literal interpretations that scratch no deeper than the surface. Instead, the imagination must delve into what the artist is attempting to say (which is not always apparent). We must then work to make meaningful points of contact among our faith, the work of art, and the artist. In doing this, I believe we will see traces or hear echoes of God\u2019s far-reaching presence in the world. Many are likely to see God\u2019s presence in great works of Caravaggio, Rubens, Byzantine mosaics and icons but we may also catch glimpses of God calling for justice in Daniel Heyman\u2019s gut wrenching interview portraits of Abu Ghraib prisoners. We may sense the cloud of witnesses and the communion of saints in Christian Boltanski\u2019s installations of clothing and found photographs. Edward Burtynsky\u2018s photographs may lead us into deeper conversations on stewardship of the earth. We may look at these works with our eyes, but the challenging work begins with connecting them to our hearts and minds formed not in fear of the world, but by the beauty and power of the Gospel.<\/p>\n\n\n By Ryan Stander (retrieved from the Wayback Machine https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20170908165314\/inallthings.org\/the-relationship-between-faith-and-art\/) As an undergraduate art student, stranded in a snowstorm somewhere along I-80 in Indiana, I had a life-changing encounter with four Baptist ministers \u2013 a conversion of sorts. I was told that faithful Christians could not like Andy Warhol\u2019s artwork because of his \u201clife choices.\u201d Instead, Christians … Continue reading The Relationship Between Faith and Art<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"A reference from\u00a0Philippians 4.8-9<\/a>.\",\"id\":\"433a1bc6-4371-46d5-af4e-7a925c5d6bb3\"},{\"content\":\"Our concepts of sacred and secular are a standing legacy from the Cartesian shift. Originally, the \u201cLatin\u00a0saeculum<\/em>\u00a0did not refer to a space or realm separate from the religious or sacred, but to the temporal period between the fall and eschaton, and thus to the here and now [meanwhile] the church thought of itself as the\u00a0civitas peregrina<\/em>, the city of God whose pilgrimage through this temporal order marked the period of the\u00a0saeculum<\/em>. According to this account, everything that happens in the realm of time and space \u2013 every person, community, and event, every institution, practice, and disposition, every rock and tree and rabbit \u2013 finds its place and significance within the narrative framework of biblical protology and eschatology.\u201d Barry Harvey,\u00a0Another City: An Ecclesiological Primer for a Post-Chrstian World<\/em><\/a>, (Harrisburg, PA, Trinity Press International, 1999), 103.\",\"id\":\"7736c851-01ed-40ea-9578-82322c401d1a\"},{\"content\":\"Psalm 24:1<\/a>,\u00a01 Corinthians 10:6<\/a>\u00a0\",\"id\":\"b13cabea-bcfe-45e8-8d75-3b307b28780d\"},{\"content\":\"Douglas F. Ottati,\u00a0Reforming Protestantism: Christian Commitment in Today\u2019s World<\/em><\/a>, (Louisville, KY., Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 65.\",\"id\":\"63515dbb-1984-489d-a6f2-567d02e2e8b8\"},{\"content\":\"Ottatti, 65.\",\"id\":\"41dc8623-7051-4686-a3f8-a47929609c96\"},{\"content\":\"H.R. Rookmaaker,\u00a0Art Needs No Justification<\/em><\/a>, (Downers Grove, IL. Inter-Varsity Press, 1978), 32.\",\"id\":\"24c569df-5ec4-4d12-b1e6-47680dc441fb\"},{\"content\":\"\u201cThings and actions and human endeavor only get their meaning from their relationship to God; if Christ came to make us human, the humanity and the reality of art find their foundation in him.\u201d Rookmaaker, 30.\",\"id\":\"dad5b858-1ef6-4a34-8a5c-35eca1346d6e\"},{\"content\":\"Rookmaaker, 33.\",\"id\":\"28daaf71-0cc6-4daa-a8eb-e4bfde4725a9\"},{\"content\":\"Madeline L\u2019Engle,\u00a0Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(New York, North Point Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980), 25. Most of L\u2019Engle\u2019s second chapter is an attempt to dismantle the divisive tendency of the sacred \/ secular divide.\",\"id\":\"810f0810-62a7-48a3-a091-e2ac3b554927\"},{\"content\":\"Kingfishers Catch Fire\u201d,\u00a0In the Poems of Gerard Manly Hopkins<\/em><\/a>, ed. W.H. Gardner and N.H. Mackenzie (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 90.\u00a0\",\"id\":\"ebd8e9c8-5c55-4e45-b8ee-32e5444b2e74\"},{\"content\":\"The order here is very important or it becomes a matter of placing the cart before the horse. Interpretation of art combines objective and subjective aspects. We must let the art speak for itself without imposing Christian interpretations upon it. To do so, co-opts the work. Instead, we look to name resonances, rather than to try to possess the work.\",\"id\":\"45ecdd1d-ae0c-4fef-8fe3-c708ddc4de73\"},{\"content\":\"A question might follow, \u201cwhat do we do with art that does not lead us to deeper faith?\u201d L\u2019Engle provides an initial response. She states, \u201cWhat is a true icon of God to one person may be blasphemy to another\u2026The smarmy picture of Jesus which I find nauseating may be for someone else, a true icon. (L\u2019Engle, 48-49).\",\"id\":\"cc958127-5805-4973-935f-f2cead3a9a37\"}]"},"class_list":["post-257","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n