respecting the medium
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I was recently re-reading the excellent It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God and came across these quotes from Theodore Prescott
While it is understandable that Christians think a Christian [artistic] expression may act redemptively in culture, this idea founders on our culture’s actual uses of art.
…
I’ve found that Christians tend to have expectations about what art can do, and what it will look like when Christians do it, that ignore the real terrain of art.
This has linked up with a few other thoughts running around my head — both about art and cultural participation more generally: When we are participating in culture we have respect they way that different media, etc. are actually used and work with that.
We have a tendency to see everything as a route for communicating what we believe. But, we have to be wary of coming with our ‘message’, forcing it on some unsuspecting cultural practice and expect the two to work together seamlessly. We have to respect the diversity that God has embedded in our cultural tendencies. We have to realise that not all cultural enterprises are appropriate as message-carriers. Even if they once were, this may no longer be the case in the current ‘terrain’.
As well as Prescott’s example of the visual arts, we might also consider the well-known observation that ‘politics is downstream from culture’. We have to understand what politics ‘is for’, what its limitations are, etc. and act appropriately.
Or perhaps better ‘serve appropriately’. Perhaps we need to look at cultural practices and ask ‘how can we best serve in this area of culture?’ It may be by presenting a clear message; it may be by working quietly for justice; it may be by being provocative.
To come back to our original example, Prescott suggests that
Our culture’s arts are very effective at mediating experiences of beauty, passion, mystery, intellectual engagement, or cultural challenge. But they are not capable of cultural redemption, unless society as a whole shares in the Christian longing for signs of the kingdom.
I think it’s fair to say that God is not divorced from beauty, passion, mystery, intellectual engagement or cultural challenge. So, this is not to suggest that we throw away what we believe, only that we see culture as it is and work appropriately.
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...