{"id":753,"date":"2013-09-05T13:04:26","date_gmt":"2013-09-05T13:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=753"},"modified":"2014-10-28T17:46:28","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T17:46:28","slug":"visual-arts-and-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/visual-arts-and-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Visual Arts and the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not an art buff. In grade school, I couldn\u2019t even color in the lines.\u00a0 Despite my great lack of art knowledge and ability, I\u2019ve always appreciated art.\u00a0I love seeing the art and architecture of ancient churches.\u00a0I enjoy going to galleries and looking at the creativeness of others. \u00a0I can still vividly remember a painting of a mountain scene, in Seoul\u2019s Hongdae Artist Market<\/a> that typifies the beauty of Asia (at least in my mind).\u00a0 My wife and I still occasionally lament the fact that we didn\u2019t purchase it.<\/p>\n

This week I read Visual Faith: Art Theology and Worship in Dialogue<\/em> by William A. Dyrness. He takes several chapters and examines the development of art, from the early church to the 21st century. Then, he reflects on the Biblical drama and art and then, to art and contemporary church.<\/p>\n

The church I grew up in didn\u2019t value the arts, in fact, I don\u2019t know of any churches in my hometown that valued them. The only art that was promoted or given the \u2018okay\u2019 were those that were wrapped in explicitly cheesy Christian language or images. For instance, check out these lyrics from the Newsboys \u201cBreakfast Song.\u201d<\/a> There wasn\u2019t anything that pulled at my soul, truly transcended the moment or really forced me to grapple with things bigger than myself. It was Jesustainment and a way for me to consume and show others how Christian I was.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t to say that value is only found in the \u2018secular\u2019 art world (be it music, painting etc.). I think one look at Miley Ray Cyrus and her twerking endeavor at the VMA\u2019s recently has dispelled that notion. Art isn\u2019t owned by one group or segment of society.<\/p>\n

Near the end of this book Dryness asks, \u201cThe real question, however, is why can\u2019t we forge a new alliance between word and image that will help us meet the challenge of this generation?\u201d (loc 1765).\u00a0 I lament that the Protestant Reformation went to war with the arts, and the causality was that the arts (on a broad scale) lost any recognizable mooring to the Christian Faith. I think we need to reconnect art and beauty to the Gospel, or as an expression of the Gospel (in some sense it\u2019s an act of Mission reminiscent of God creating).<\/p>\n

How then do we reconnect art and the Christian Faith?\u00a0 Here are some questions that have been running through my mind:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How does one get people to care about the arts when they\u2019ve never really placed an emphasis on them before?<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What churches are doing a good job of reconnecting art and faith? What are they doing?<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How does a church build inroads into the art community when no roads exist?<\/p>\n

The spoken word is important, but so is art. It has the ability to connect to our soul in ways that words cannot. We as Christians should seek to be the biggest supporters of the arts because it\u2019s our response to a creative God and because it should point to God.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not an art buff. In grade school, I couldn\u2019t even color in the lines.\u00a0 Despite my great lack of art knowledge and ability, I\u2019ve always appreciated art.\u00a0I love seeing the art and architecture of ancient churches.\u00a0I enjoy going to galleries and looking at the creativeness of others. \u00a0I can still vividly remember a painting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"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":[2,289],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-dyrness","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2942,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/2942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}