Dave writes:
Consequently, committed
> Christian artists will be out of step with the current state of affairs.
I could not agree more. Good Christian art, if there is to be such a thing,
will be implicitly prophetic in my view, speaking to the culture, within the
culture, identifying what in the culture advances the Kingdom and what
stands over against it. Given the current state of affairs, I believe that
good Christian art in all its forms will stand over against.
Bob S.
----- Original Message -----
From: "D. F. Siemens, Jr." <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>
To: <shuanr@boo.net>
Cc: <billyates@billyates.com>; <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 2:53 PM
Subject: Re: Creativity query
>
> On Tue, 30 Jul 2002 10:50:46 -0400 "Shuan Rose" <shuanr@boo.net> writes:
> >
> >
> > Hey, we are making contributions in the field of arts. Think
> > of the
> > wonderful, best selling Left Behind series. CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien,
> > move over
> > :-)
> > More seriously, you are correct in that a distinctively Christian
> > contribution to the arts seems mostly absent, except from the field
> > of music
> > (Christian contemporary & gospel). I don't know of any major
> > contribution by
> > Christians in the field of painting, sculpture, or the
> > representational arts
> > in the last 100 years. There have been a number of Christian
> > writers.But
> > compared to medevial and Renaisance times, Christianity is not doing
> > a lot
> > the arts these days, and we should be doing more.
>
> I'm not that certain of the contributions to music. What I encounter in
> contemporary secular and religious music is cacophonous vapidity. In this
> the artists reflect the malaise of our culture, with Islamic
> fundamentalists trying to destroy freedom, the West with no fixed point
> of moral reference, etc. This is not to say that the popular church music
> of the past was all that great. A friend of mine pointed out that "What
> Can Wash Away My Sin?" has words and music that are incompatible. The
> text is serious and the tune is better adapted to something like Gilbert
> and Sullivan's "The Birdies that Sing in the Spring, Tra-la." I cannot
> commend the poetic depth of the words, except that the message is
> serious.
>
> I recall someone claiming that one can separate the poet from the
> producer of doggerel by a simple question: are the words or the message
> of primary importance. The one who loves the language may produce a poem.
> The one who has to communicate a message will never write poetry, just
> verse. I believe that Dorothy Sayers, whom David Campbell notes, would
> argue that something similar holds between story and message. Her The
> Mind of the Maker is highly relevant to this point. It seem obvious that,
> whenever an actor comes front and center and harangues the audience, the
> drama has degenerated into propaganda. This may also happen more
> subtilely.
>
> We may not echo Browning's "God's in His heaven, all's well with the
> world" except with the qualification that he will ultimately intervene to
> produce order out of the chaos men have produced. But this is the
> ultimate Christian commitment. Meanwhile, he has established the
> principles by which the redeemed should live. Consequently, committed
> Christian artists will be out of step with the current state of affairs.
> Dave
>
>
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