{"id":749,"date":"2013-09-05T15:52:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-05T15:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=749"},"modified":"2014-10-28T17:45:19","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T17:45:19","slug":"a-presbyterian-reflection-on-mission-beauty-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-presbyterian-reflection-on-mission-beauty-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"A Presbyterian Reflection on Mission, Beauty, Truth, and Banksy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I grew up in the mainly drab evangelical Bible Church\/Southern Baptist religious confines of functionality and perhaps a sewn banner with a Bible verse on it.\u00a0 The visual and art were of little consequential value, perhaps only found in the dying faith and idolatry of ornate Catholicism.\u00a0 It was in college when I began to attend a Presbyterian church that I was almost scandalized by the beauty of the architecture of a near hundred year old building with soaring spires, colorful stained glass, and a golden cross that was marched down the aisle before and after each service.\u00a0 Had I joined a Catholic church?<\/p>\n

But, this church was not some newcomer to the visual show, attempting to piggy back onto the culture of the postmodern shift to images, as so many others.\u00a0 No these were Presbyterians, proudly tracing their heritage back to Calvin and Knox.\u00a0 A church of city elites it had a long history of support for the arts and also missions.\u00a0 It hosts a continual art gallery on its campus (with rotating exhibits) to show the intersection of faith and beauty.\u00a0 It has also sent out hundreds of missionaries all over the world, and was the financial seed bed for the Jesus Film.\u00a0 There I have become friends with sculptors, actors, directors, and painters, and faith defying missionaries.<\/p>\n

Our pastor Dr. Rev. Ron Scates, who recently retired from the pulpit, in his closing sermon challenged the congregation to make the gospel known through a commitment to embodying truth and beauty in all that we do, and whatever God has called us to do\u2026 whether a banker, a race car driver, or a painter.\u00a0 Mission and art are not mutually exclusive, perhaps they are vitally intertwined.<\/p>\n

William Dyrness in\u00a0Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue<\/em>\u00a0had me thinking of the intersection of mission and visual art, that I believe my Presbyterian church understands better than most.\u00a0 Dyrness laments the separation of word from visual meaning that occurred in the Reformation and prefaced the modernist turn.\u00a0 If anything, it seems the elevation of word over visual was perfected by the American evangelical boom into hundreds of denominations all trying to be something newer and less like their predecessors.\u00a0 American evangelicalism is functionally still very modernist, although it certainly struggled grasping modern art, and it is only now with the postmodern turn and a cultural fascination with surface, image, and video that the church is attempting to play catch up.\u00a0 Although, it still feels to me that the American church\u2019s new appropriation of the visual is often without reflection or deeper critique.\u00a0 It has almost become trite that every sermon will be accompanied by a movie clip.\u00a0 Perhaps the mainline denominations have done a better job, having partially kept a finger in that Catholic mentality, and often being populated by cultural and intellectual elites.\u00a0 Although the non-evangelical mainline have seen the ignoring of mission lead to its growing decline, another harbinger of the importance of art and mission as connected.\u00a0 I also wonder how evangelical engagement with the arts differs from culture to culture, here I am thinking of my adopted culture (Spain) where beauty and art are everywhere and in everything.<\/p>\n

Are Christians engaging with the arts?\u00a0 Are they dealing with the big questions that art is dealing with today?\u00a0 One of the fastest growing areas of the visual arts pertains to street art.\u00a0 What was once mere graffiti (the tags of gangs or maladjusted teens) is now the provenance of avant garde artists questions the status quo, making political statements, making statements about artistic intent, permanence, consumerism, legality and creating beauty and truth amongst urban landscapes.\u00a0 Street evangelists.\u00a0 One of the most famous street artists is Banksy (his true identity is still in question) has become something of a prankish conceptual artist, whose work is highly sought after.\u00a0 Pastor Sandy did a good write up on him from last semester here:\u00a0http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/post\/59050013092\/street-art<\/a><\/p>\n

Banksy is known for street art that makes a strong political and social statement, while often being quite playful or biting.\u00a0 His work even occurred on the West Bank wall dividing Israel from the Palestinians.\u00a0 The simple and beautiful image of a girl gliding up the wall to freedom is evocative.\u00a0 But, if Bansky\u2019s work is political, it is also controversial as it poses the question along with Dyrness of the divide between high art and low (or pop) art.\u00a0 Can something painted on the underpass of a bridge be art?\u00a0 Can something that is not permanent and essentially appropriates other artist\u2019s work be art?\u00a0 Can something illegal be art?\u00a0 Can an anonymous street artist who sells his \u201cillegal\u201d works for millions of dollars truly be an authentic artist?<\/p>\n

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In the postmodern shift of art in the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century, Christians must be ready to enter into these questions of the visual?\u00a0 These are the questions (or at least the de facto understandings) of much of our world\u2026 beauty and truth, or who has it, and what is it?\u00a0 In one sense, these are waters of opportunity, new ways of expressing and connecting truth and beauty, and certainly our postmodern world is looking for truth, but also the expression of that truth in a visual form.\u00a0 Rev. Scates explained that \u201cbeauty without truth is fantasy, truth without beauty is dead orthodoxy.\u201d\u00a0 The world is screaming for the combination but so often finds itself only caught up in the emptiness of fantasy, or the choking dust of dead orthodoxy.\u00a0 Christianity stands as the best hope of merging the two, and understanding how through common grace even a renegade like Banksy can communicate God\u2019s truth and beauty.\u00a0 These are not easy waters, and churches and Christians are needed who can legitimately reflect and create art that is not tacky, trite, or utilitarian like so much evangelical bric-a-brac.\u00a0 I think of my friend Jesus Orsorio who carries a Ph.D in fine art and does week long projects with actors, artists, and videographers on the streets of Europe.\u00a0 Through a series of visual performances humanity\u2019s state of broken relationship is communicated.\u00a0 Also, I recall my friend NiKo, who lives in a missional community of other Christian artists in Madrid, making his own street art. An integration of art and mission.<\/p>\n

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Banksy also has made a film called\u00a0Exit Through the Gift Shop.\u00a0<\/em>http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oHJBdDSTbLw<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0It tells the unlikely tale of the burgeoning street art movement and a French man named Thierry becomes the obsessive videographer of the movement, making friends with such famed artists as Shepherd Fairy and Banksy.\u00a0 The documentary starts off as love letter to street art and what it can do, and its growing popularity and acceptance.\u00a0 However, half way through the documentary takes a strange and ultimately comically poignant turn.\u00a0 Banksy under the guise or wresting the film archives away from Thierry sends him back off to California to produce his own street art.\u00a0 Rapidly Thierry transforms himself into Mr. Brainwash splattering his visual images across LA, preparing for his own massive showing, hiring artists to create his almost comical and trite conceptual images into reality.\u00a0 Through his efforts at larger than life circus hype, and the reluctant endorsements of Fairy and Banksy, Mr. Brainwash pulls off a massive financial coup selling millions of dollars of prints of his supposed work, much of it looking like knock offs of Banksy and Andy Warhol.\u00a0 Moreover, the scheduled show, originally meant to run for a few days, stays open for a couple of months.<\/p>\n

Of course, the joke is on us.\u00a0 Thierry by his own admission (post documentary) explains that he is Banksy\u2019s greatest creation.\u00a0 A living conceptual piece of art.\u00a0 It seems no one picked up on the name Mr. Brainwash, and that this was just an elaborate prank by Banksy\u2026 continuting to push the boundaries, but also asking important question of artistic agency and value.\u00a0 Moreover, he delves into the consumption and consumerism of art.\u00a0 Banksy has shown that hype and perceived value create the consumer market for much of art. \u00a0For an anonymous street artist he has made an essential point, neither monetary value, nor critical whim can place a value on beauty and truth.\u00a0 True art can be anywhere, even on the side of a wall, or it can be nowhere, even in a gallery selling for millions of dollars.\u00a0 Postmodernity once again shatters the categories that we want to maintain.\u00a0 A democratization of art, the visual in everything, but the question of beauty and truth versus fantasy and dead orthodoxy still is the question all are grasping for.\u00a0 It is into this space that Christians can step into in mission, and ask and answer these very same questions hopefully pointing many to truth.<\/p>\n

But, here is the rub.\u00a0 We must avoid from seeing art as a strategy.\u00a0 It must be holistic and a natural extension of who we are, any artist will agree.\u00a0 On the flip side, mission must not be a strategy (although most certainly most Christians see it as such).\u00a0 No mission, like art, must be a natural ontology of who we are as Christians, the communication of beauty and truth to transform lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I grew up in the mainly drab evangelical Bible Church\/Southern Baptist religious confines of functionality and perhaps a sewn banner with a Bible verse on it.\u00a0 The visual and art were of little consequential value, perhaps only found in the dying faith and idolatry of ornate Catholicism.\u00a0 It was in college when I began to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"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":[80,301,2,289,300],"class_list":["post-749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art","tag-banksy","tag-dminlgp","tag-dyrness","tag-street-art","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749","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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2939,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions\/2939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}