When­ever we drive in another city, my wife and I get lost. It could be down­town Chicago or Guelph, Ontario; regard­less of where we start from, we will some­how become dis­ori­ented and diverge from our neatly printed direc­tions. A street will sud­denly become one-​​way and spirit our car off to a dis­tant sub­urb, miles away from our intended des­ti­na­tion. Boule­vards and avenues will start to criss-​​cross each other with no sem­blance of pat­tern or design, their names and direc­tions con­stantly chang­ing in an unpre­dictable tan­gle. The map invari­ably turns out to be hope­lessly out of date, or not detailed enough to get us where we want to go. In such cases, as hap­pened to my wife and I in Dublin, Ire­land, the only solu­tion (although admit­tedly a bad one) was to drive the opposite/​wrong way on a one-​​way street back to where we had started.

This feel­ing of being lost in an unfa­mil­iar city is sim­i­lar to how many Chris­tians feel when it comes to the “world” of the arts: paint­ing, sculp­ture, film, dance, music and the var­i­ous insti­tu­tions of “cul­ture” (muse­ums, gal­leries, uni­ver­sity art depart­ments) which serve as the gate­keep­ers to this realm. There are a num­ber of his­tor­i­cal rea­sons for our unease in this ‘for­eign’ ter­ri­tory, some of which are just as acute now as they were hun­dreds of years ago. How­ever, just as travel to other places expands our minds and helps us appre­ci­ate the world in a new way, so too art and the “art world” are worth explor­ing as Chris­tians even if there might be some nec­es­sary dis­com­fort and dis­ori­en­ta­tion as we find our way around. Besides, the need to “get out” of the church and into the world is one of the most impor­tant aspects of “mis­sional” engage­ment with cul­ture; just as the Son eter­nally pro­ceeds from the Father, and within human his­tory is “sent” into the world in the “form of a ser­vant” (Phil 2:7), so the church is sim­i­larly “sent” in the power of the Spirit as part of the great mis­sio Dei, not to be served (as if the world and its cul­tural riches were given to us to exploit) but to serve.

Off the Map

One of the great­est obsta­cles to “find­ing our way” around the world of the arts from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive is the his­tor­i­cal real­ity that the­olo­gians have not always been enthu­si­as­tic about the capac­ity of the arts to “draw us in.” Augus­tine, for exam­ple, clearly appre­ci­ated the power of beau­ti­ful music but was con­cerned that earthly beauty might draw us away from the glo­ries of heaven, becom­ing an end in itself rather than a “stair­way” to the divine. Through the cen­turies, var­i­ous icon­o­clas­tic move­ments in the church (such as the one spear­headed by Leo III in the eighth cen­tury) have argued against the visual in wor­ship, con­cerned that mak­ing images of Christ or the saints would lead to idol­a­try. This ten­dency re-​​emerged with par­tic­u­lar force dur­ing the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion, where Catholic churches once full of sacred art were van­dal­ized and painted over; some later extrem­ists even argued against any inclu­sion of music, espe­cially instru­men­tal music, in church ser­vices. This, of course, does not rep­re­sent the full range of the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion, which has given rise to some of the great­est art ever made: Byzan­tine icons, medieval cathe­drals, Bach, Palest­rina, Rem­brandt, Dante. But it has been a recur­ring ques­tion in the his­tory of Chris­tian­ity, per­haps espe­cially appar­ent with the post-​​Enlightenment move­ment of West­ern art out­side of the insti­tu­tional church to the “sec­u­lar” sphere of cul­ture, whether art and reli­gion are essen­tially incom­pat­i­ble. For many Chris­tians even today, art and cre­ativ­ity are at best an idle dis­trac­tion and at worst a dan­ger­ous men­ace to gen­uine faith. When it comes to the unfa­mil­iar “city” of art, many Chris­tians may come to the con­clu­sion that it is bet­ter to stay home – who wants to get lost in a place where you can’t even read the street signs!

A sec­ond aspect of art which has trou­bled twentieth-​​century evan­gel­i­cals in par­tic­u­lar is a the­o­log­i­cal sys­tem, inher­ited from fig­ures like Carl F. H. Henry, in which “propo­si­tional” truths are the only valid means of speak­ing about God and cre­ation. How­ever, the truth that con­fronts us in a work of art is any­thing but propo­si­tional, instead draw­ing us into mys­tery and won­der; only the most pedes­trian, lit­er­al­is­tic art is “propo­si­tional,” illus­trat­ing a sim­ple fac­tual state­ment. We will miss out on what art has to offer us if we want it to always be straight­for­ward, clear-​​cut, an obvi­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a Bible story with a con­cise, eas­ily sum­ma­rized “point.” In other words, if we spend too much time try­ing to fig­ure out where we are and what we are sup­posed to be look­ing for, we are liable to miss the street we are sup­posed to turn on as well as the breath­tak­ing scenery that awaits us around every cor­ner. Being a lit­tle bit lost may be uncom­fort­able, but you might end up stum­bling upon a won­der­ful place you never would have found oth­er­wise. Sec­ondly, get­ting lost might even help you find a bet­ter route to your des­ti­na­tion… although if you’re trav­el­ing with me, it will more likely lead to a lengthy (but scenic) detour.

To go one step fur­ther in this anal­ogy, we might want to sug­gest that the Bible is the roadmap which helps us find our bear­ings in the com­plex world of cul­ture. But – although, we need to be cau­tious here, because maps are indis­pens­able – if all we do is look at the map, we’ll never get a feel for the city! Going on a trip is not just about reach­ing your final des­ti­na­tion, but the expe­ri­ence of the jour­ney itself.

New Direc­tions

The world of art has changed over the cen­turies, as has the Chris­t­ian church. For­tu­nately, Chris­t­ian thinkers from many dif­fer­ent, pre­vi­ously insu­lar church tra­di­tions are begin­ning to think (or per­haps re-​​think) through the rela­tion­ship between the­ol­ogy and art. On the grass­roots level, many churches are think­ing of cre­ative ways to intro­duce the arts into the life of the com­mu­nity. Some have art gal­leries, in the foyer or a sep­a­rate space, where art by artists from the con­gre­ga­tion is dis­played through­out the year. The church I attended in Van­cou­ver, for exam­ple, had “art cafes” once a month where artists from the com­mu­nity could per­form music, show a short film, exhibit art­work and dis­cuss their work. In the UK, an orga­ni­za­tion called Eccle­siart has launched a bold ven­ture to dis­play works by promi­nent con­tem­po­rary artists in church spaces (for exam­ple, Yoko Ono at St. Paul’s). A sim­i­lar ven­ture brought video artist Bill Viola to exhibit work in Durham Cathe­dral a few years ago. Such col­lab­o­ra­tions are not too wide­spread in Canada, but that may change! Other churches choose to incor­po­rate the fine arts into their wor­ship ser­vices, which can be an incred­i­ble deep­en­ing of com­mu­nal wor­ship or, on the other hand, a strange and uncom­fort­able expe­ri­ence. I remem­ber try­ing to show an “exper­i­men­tal” video of an ultra­sound in church to con­vey the mys­tery of the Incar­na­tion; after­wards, con­fused con­gre­gants asked me if it was sup­posed to be an alien.

The oppo­site pole of this eccle­sial move­ment is an out­ward, mis­sional engage­ment with art in cul­ture, a project which is still in its infancy. In the 1950s, my grand­par­ents had to sneak around when they wanted to go to the movies for fear that their pas­tor would accost them on the street out­side the the­atre. Although that cul­tural sit­u­a­tion has dras­ti­cally changed and most Chris­tians (includ­ing evan­gel­i­cals) are will­ing to lis­ten to “sec­u­lar” music and watch “sec­u­lar” films, dance, visual art, and drama still seem to be largely avoided by the church. This doesn’t mean, how­ever, that spir­i­tual themes aren’t being explored in the “art world” quite apart from the Chris­t­ian church. To give just one exam­ple, the British artist Damian Hirst has become incred­i­bly famous over the last few years for his med­i­ta­tions on mor­tal­ity, reli­gion and mean­ing. His “For the Love of God” (2007) is a human skull encrusted with over eight thou­sand dia­monds, a provoca­tive state­ment about death and the age-​​old truth that “you can’t take it with you.” Hirst’s other work is often morose, and with its empha­sis on decom­po­si­tion and decay cer­tainly may be off-​​putting to Chris­tians who have in the back of their minds Paul’s words about “what­ever is lovely” (Phil 4:8). But just as the cru­ci­fix­ion of Christ was any­thing but “lovely” and “noble,” so art that plumbs the low­est depths of human expe­ri­ence is spir­i­tu­ally valu­able because it enriches our under­stand­ing of our imper­fect but still cre­ated world. As the late Pope John Paul II noted in his 1999 “Let­ter to Artists,” art is a “bridge to reli­gious expe­ri­ence” as it draws peo­ple into beauty, mys­tery and the “uni­ver­sal desire for redemp­tion.” “Sec­u­lar” art doesn’t just illus­trate its own lack of God and good­ness but is a good gift of God that we ought to receive, inter­pret and enjoy with grace.

Mov­ing Forward

As Augus­tine rec­og­nized, art, or at least good art, draws us in to an expe­ri­ence involv­ing our senses, cog­ni­tion, emo­tions; indeed, our whole, embod­ied selves. We don’t want to just sit back and wait for a well-​​made play or film to be over; it “moves” us in both senses of the word, tak­ing us along with the story as it unfolds and involv­ing us as sub­jects in a pro­found, often emo­tive way. Even though we may stay fixed in our seats, or remain stand­ing in the gallery, we are taken on a trans­for­ma­tive jour­ney. A paint­ing like El Greco’s “Bur­ial of Count Orgaz,” for exam­ple, takes us up into itself by draw­ing our eyes from the sta­tic, earthly real­ity of death in the bot­tom of the image lit­er­ally up to the swirling, dynamic beauty of heaven. Jack­son Pollock’s “No. 5, 1948” draws us into a com­plex, pul­sat­ing space of inter­weav­ing lines and colours, immers­ing us in the “inner world” of the artist. If we are will­ing to be taken on these jour­neys, open­ing our­selves to the intim­i­dat­ing prospect of explor­ing a for­eign city, we might find that the ini­tial feel­ing of dis­com­fort and dis­ori­en­ta­tion pays off, and that we can enjoy becom­ing famil­iar with new ter­ri­tory. As with travel, we don’t just visit a new city to steal its cul­tural riches; instead, we do our best to under­stand and appre­ci­ate the beauty of what we are see­ing, of course bring­ing our unique per­son­al­i­ties and dis­po­si­tions to bear on our sur­round­ings. A mis­sional, “sent” approach to the world must not be impe­ri­al­is­tic and exploita­tive, but will­ing to “let go”; we need to find our way around the best that art and cul­ture have to offer with minds, hearts and senses open to the experience.

Fur­ther Reading

• Elkins, James. On the Strange Place of Reli­gion in Con­tem­po­rary Art. New York: Rout­ledge, 2004.
• John Paul II. Let­ter to Artists. Avail­able from http://​www​.vat​i​can​.va/​h​o​l​y​_​f​a​t​h​e​r​/​j​o​h​n​_​p​a​u​l​_​i​i​/​l​e​t​t​e​r​s​/​d​o​c​u​m​e​n​t​s​/​h​f​_​j​p​-​i​i​_​l​e​t​_​2​3​0​4​1​9​9​9​_​a​r​t​i​s​t​s​_​e​n​.​h​tml.
• Siedell, Daniel A. God in the Gallery: A Chris­t­ian Embrace of Mod­ern Art. Grand Rapids: Baker Aca­d­e­mic, 2008.
• Tay­lor, W. David O., ed. For the Beauty of the Church: Cast­ing a Vision for the Arts. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2010.
• Vilade­sau, Richard. The­o­log­i­cal Aes­thet­ics: God in Imag­i­na­tion, Beauty, and Art. New York: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1999.