{"id":6360,"date":"2015-11-05T15:53:16","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T23:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=6360"},"modified":"2015-11-05T15:56:47","modified_gmt":"2015-11-05T23:56:47","slug":"an-empty-communication-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/an-empty-communication-space\/","title":{"rendered":"An Empty Communication Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before I begin the serious talk\u2026 I just had to share this.\u00a0 Anybody every heard of \u201cBraco the Gazer?\u201d\u00a0 If not, check this out and be ready to laugh, and cry a little when you realize just how desperate people are to believe ANYTHING!\u00a0 Braco doesn\u2019t actually talk, he just stands and gazes at the crowds (sometimes numbering in the thousands), bringing healing and comfort.\u00a0 PEOPLE PAY TO BE GAZED AT!\u00a0 But it\u2019s hard to accept the truth of the Gospel, right?<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.braco.net\/events<\/a><\/p>\n

Is that a \u201cSacred Gaze\u2026?\u201d<\/i>\u00a0 Hmmm\u2026<\/p>\n

Ok, back to business\u2026<\/p>\n

A few weeks back we discussed how faith, expressed visually, has occupied the second chair since the Reformation.\u00a0 Spoken\/written expressions of truth have risen in prominence as the only valid forms of declaration of the Word of God.\u00a0 I would like here to pick up on the line of thinking that I swerved into during our ensuing conversation strand\u2026 Why?<\/p>\n

Why is it that visual (and other creative) expressions of the gospel have been so violently shunned, banned, even anathematized in the Protestant church?\u00a0 Is it as simple as fear?\u00a0 The fear of accidentally slipping into idolatry certainly is ever-present among the people of God, it always has been.\u00a0 Think about it, No sooner had the Hebrew people begun adding teachers and organized schools of thought, they began building the Gezeirah \u2014 fences around<\/i> the Law \u2014 to help the people of God avoid accidentally violating divine commands.\u00a0 The fear of sliding into idolatry is real.\u00a0 So is that it?\u00a0 Just plain old, simple fear?\u00a0 That\u2019s probably some of it, but I think there may be a deeper, systemic cause worthy of exploration as well.<\/p>\n

William Dyrness pointed out that \u201cafter the Reformation the arts were no longer welcomed into the church.\u201d1 \u00a0Why?\u00a0 Maybe because the general attitude toward artistic expressions by the Reformers could be summed up in the statement by Calvin: \u201cImages can teach us nothing about Christian truth, since they are the product of the human imagination\u2026\u201d2 \u00a0So, I wonder, why would Calvin make that assertion?\u00a0 Follow the logic.\u00a0 The prevailing hermeneutic utterly disqualified women from ordination or speaking publicly in the assembly.\u00a0 Since only men could declare the inspired Word of God, it follows that only very \u201cmanly\u201d communication methods would be elevated.<\/p>\n

Now, I may swerve into some stereotyping here but in my view, communication methods of an artistic or creative nature are generally viewed as being more feminine, even if just a little, softer.\u00a0 <\/i>One residual effect of the aforementioned hermeneutic is that feminine influence in the Protestant church remains minimal at best.\u00a0 Even to this day in a full \u201cegalitarian\u201d movement such as The Foursquare Church, it really is a man\u2019s world.\u00a0 So have we missed out on the contributions of around half the world\u2019s population because their fundamental orientation toward communication is not verbal?\u00a0 Could it be that the communication space that should be occupied by the artistic\/creative remains largely empty in the Protestant Church?<\/p>\n

I think we may be missing some important Gospel messages because we are silencing some potentially vital media.\u00a0 I\u2019m finding myself agreeing with the late seventh-century Armenian icon painters who declared \u201c[o]ur art is light itself, for young and old each understand it, while only few can read the Holy Scriptures.\u201d3 \u00a0In most arenas, human communication is largely non-verbal so why should it be that in this one space, the sacred space, it should be so different?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  1. William A. Dyrness, Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue<\/i> (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), Kindle. Loc. 181.<\/li>\n
  2. David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice<\/i> (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005)<\/li>\n
  3. Ibid. 18.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Before I begin the serious talk\u2026 I just had to share this.\u00a0 Anybody every heard of \u201cBraco the Gazer?\u201d\u00a0 If not, check this out and be ready to laugh, and cry a little when you realize just how desperate people are to believe ANYTHING!\u00a0 Braco doesn\u2019t actually talk, he just stands and gazes at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"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":[475,284],"class_list":["post-6360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lgp5-2","tag-morgan","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6360","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\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6362,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6360\/revisions\/6362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}