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27 May 2011

The church's role in art

My little piece about church patronage of the arts just appeared in Comment's online journal. I would love to hear your thoughts! Please go read it, then come back and comment, if you will. Thanks!

8 comments:

Истина said...

Excellent! If we were to incorporate each of these bits of advice, I believe the church would look much more like she should. Also, people in- and outside of the church could enjoy seeing the embodiment of beauty that should characterize Christianity. Thank you for share this & I hope many of us start practicing art…

millinerd said...

This is a balanced, informed, and instructive piece - thank you. I especially like the piece about the need for Americans to be historically alert. American have an impressive 19th century ecclesial architectural heritage as well which can help ground us.

(Good to meet you at Kalamazoo!)

Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker said...

Great article! So great, that I posted it on the ArtWay website (www.artway.eu) as well, i.e. the introduction with a link to your blog and the Cardus site. Sorry for this unorthodox way to communicate with you, but I hope you can appreciate my action. All of this in this way, as I was unable to track down your email address. (you can take this off as soon as you have read it). Thank you for your good work, Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker from the Netherlands

Sørina Higgins said...

Thank you, Истина! Can you share this piece with some of the pastors with whom you work, especially at your home church and those in your area?? Feel free to print it out and hand it around.

Sørina Higgins said...

Matthew: Great to hear from you! Sorry I didn't email you yet. Thanks for this comment, especially for pointing out the fact about 19th century architecture.

Does your church do a good job of integrating the arts?

(Do you want to collaborate on a paper about Charles Williams' use of Byzantine imagery??)

Sørina Higgins said...

Marleen:

Thank you for this comment and thanks especially for posting my article on your excellent, beautiful website! I've added a link to your site in my sidebar. But you didn't leave me an email address either, so I'm posting your comment. If you want to talk private, write to iambic dot admonit at gmail dot com (turning dot into a dot and at into an at sign, of course). Cheers!

Anonymous said...

I think you are on to an important debate here within the church and in overall society. Keep it up!

Rebecca Tirrell Talbot said...

Excellent article! I particularly liked the idea of artists tithing their work...I want to reflect on how writers could do this. Your point about Dante and Bach refusing theological or aesthetic compromise also struck me. What do you think of this quote from David Foster Wallace in relation to that? "It's very hard to talk about people's relationship with any kind of God, in any book later than like Dostoyevsky. I mean the culture, it's all wrong for it now" (in Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself). The discourse has shifted since Dante and Bach, but the hunger for a relationship with God persists, and a shifted discourse is certainly not a reason to make heterodox art. I'd love to hear your thoughts, my friend... have been pondering that quote for a while.