{"id":19582,"date":"2018-10-18T15:26:40","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T22:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=19582"},"modified":"2018-10-18T15:26:40","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T22:26:40","slug":"theology-in-the-margins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/theology-in-the-margins\/","title":{"rendered":"Theology in the Margins"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Dyrness\u2019 Visual Faith<\/em> challenges evangelical Protestant leaders to add an artistic eye-lens when viewing how to do church and claims that art reflects order and wholeness to God\u2019s creation. \u00a0I immediately associated with the visual art forms connected with Scripture. For example, \u201cyou can\u2019t walk on water if you don\u2019t get out of the boat\u201d that some Christian\u2019s have drawn in their Bible margins in the book of Matthew.[1]<\/a> I have high hopes and\"\"<\/a> expectations that I will find God honoring artistic forms that will help me help others to both understand and withstand the schemes of the devil in spiritual warfare. This post will use a Bayard technique to \u201corient\u201d myself to the author and book; yet maintain a peripheral position so I can wonder, reflect, and connect the themes and ideas of Dyrness with other authors themes and ideas.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

First, I was inspired by Dyrness\u2019 challenge to \u201cmake our unique image\u201d to praise God.[3]<\/a> I wondered what it might be like to see present-day Christians putting on each piece of the armor of God. Like athletes in the locker room, Christians are called to put on their spiritual defense uniforms, one piece at a time. Putting on Christ metaphorically as a personal armor of God wardrobe is how the Holy Spirit prepares Christians to both understand and withstand the evil schemes of the devil. I see this process as a pre-battle spiritual checklist that can be expressed in an artistic manner. One example of this is the armor of God challenge coin that serves as an ethnographic tool and practical spiritual aid on how to defend against spiritual warfare.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Second, I did some deep work reflecting on the attributes of God. I took intentional time to ponder and think about the awesome attributes of God\u2019s power, knowledge, and presence. Out of this supernatural context I considered how to take up the whole armor of God from Paul\u2019s 1st<\/sup> Century command to stand firm and withstand in the evil day.[4]<\/a> My goal, with the help of my artistic wife, is to envision and design a type of Magna art form. We hope to use it to help connect spiritual ideas, theological principles, and appropriate Scripture for Christian leaders so they can train, equip, shepherd, and prepare their congregants to survive in the evil day.<\/p>\n

Third, I connected reviews and articles on Dryness to see how he fits into the greater body of scholarship focusing on art and theology. According to Jones\u2019 review Dryness is rather \u201cesoteric\u201d for his British readers because he focuses mostly on American art.[5]<\/a> Nevertheless, he does commend Dyrness\u2019 second half of the book with positive theological principles that help Christian ministers verbalize and reorient themselves to how visual arts may help enhance ministry and worship.[6]<\/a> Lemke points out that Dyrness overstates his historical claim that Protestantism gave up on the \u201cvisual arts.\u201d[7]<\/a> Lemke reasons that while the Reformers took a strong position against the Catholic\u2019s misuse of art objects, he believes the Protestants still found graceful ways to make \u201cvaluable artistic contributions.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/a>Sokolove describes Dyrness\u2019 \u201cnew vision\u201d for artistic theology as a type of grassroots movement to help reintroduce a historically alienated ministry art tool to further the spread of the Gospel.[9]<\/a> He praises Dyrness for identifying the \u201cReformation divorce between art and the church\u201d and believes the time is right to bridge the gap between the artistic beauty of God\u2019s creation and the idea of doing church differently.[10]<\/a> I agree with Sokolove\u2019s assessment but I am not sure what that looks like yet in my marketplace ministry context? \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I am certain there is plenty of room to expand the Gospel message using various honoring and appropriate art forms. Yang says that when combining \u201cimage and text\u201d in new Gospel formats that it may help bridge the gap between the \u201cmedia we watch and the media we read.\u201d[11]<\/a> Exorcism is not something we often think about when describing Evangelical art forms, but Yang expressed the Eastern idea of exorcism in his depiction of \u201cBig Belly.\u201d[12]<\/a> Yang\u2019s graphic novel with Big Belly\u2019s exorcism can be ethnographically compared to Scriptural accounts like the one when Jesus Christ purged a legion of demons and drove them from the bodies of possessed men into a herd of pigs that ran off a cliff into the water and drown.[13]<\/a><\/p>\n

I believe we can integrate Pink\u2019s image-linked ideas with Dryness\u2019 goal to do church better by adding new and creative artistic genres that pass the theological sniff-test. While Pink\u2019s goal is to expand visual anthropology into the 21st<\/sup> Century scientific community I think her ethnographic techniques can be leveraged to help expand Visual Faith\u2019s <\/em>connection to a rapidly changing ministry context.[14]<\/a> I like her approach to information; the intentional process of exploring the \u201crelationships\u201d between visual, verbal, and other forms of knowledge, which I believe can become new theological artforms to advance the Good News.[15]<\/a> In summary, Visual Faith<\/em> inspired in me wonderment, reflective thinking, and connect-the-Gospel to new and creative expressions of how to do ministry and worship. Let’s all get out the crayons and start marking up the margins of our Bibles. \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Stand firm,<\/p>\n

M. Webb<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Matt. 14:25-33 Jesus walks on the water and Peter got out of the boat in faith and walked on water.<\/h6>\n
[2]<\/a> Pierre Bayard. How to talk about books you haven’t read<\/em>. (Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2007) Kindle Edition, Location 207.<\/h6>\n
[3]<\/a> William A. Dyrness. Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue Engaging Culture<\/em>. Kindle ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001) 160.<\/h6>\n
[4]<\/a> Eph. 6:13.<\/h6>\n
[5]<\/a> Tom D. Jones. “Visual Faith: Art, Theology and Worship in Dialogue.(Book Review).” Theology 105, no. 827 (2002): 387.<\/h6>\n
[6]<\/a> Ibid.<\/h6>\n
[7]<\/a> Steve Lemke. “Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 46, no. 1 (2003): 147.<\/h6>\n
[8]<\/a> Ibid.<\/h6>\n
[9]<\/a> Deborah Sokolove and William Dyrness. “Artistic Vision. (Books).(Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue)(Book Review).” Cross Currents 52, no. 3 (2002): 418.<\/h6>\n
[10]<\/a> Ibid.<\/h6>\n
[11]<\/a> Gene Yang. “Graphic Novels in the Classroom.” Language Arts<\/em> 85, no. 3 (2008): 187.<\/h6>\n
[12]<\/a> Gene L. Yang. Boxers and Saints<\/em>. (New York: First Second, 2013) 110.<\/h6>\n
[13]<\/a> Mark 5:12, Luke 8:33, Matt. 8:31.<\/h6>\n
[14]<\/a> Sarah Pink. Doing Visual Ethnography<\/em>. (London: Sage Publications, 2013) 6.<\/h6>\n
[15]<\/a> Ibid., 96.<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Dyrness\u2019 Visual Faith challenges evangelical Protestant leaders to add an artistic eye-lens when viewing how to do church and claims that art reflects order and wholeness to God\u2019s creation. \u00a0I immediately associated with the visual art forms connected with Scripture. For example, \u201cyou can\u2019t walk on water if you don\u2019t get out of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1370,485,1039],"class_list":["post-19582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art-and-theology","tag-dryness","tag-spiritual-warfare","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19582"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19588,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19582\/revisions\/19588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}