Artists use talents for glory of God

Deep into the heart of Texas, 2,500 writers, poets and scholars brought their creative hunger in February for a big helping of “Art and Soul,” an international festival of religious faith and literary art.
   
In the basement of New York’s Empire State Building, 400 painters, actors and musicians from 14 states and three countries gathered in March for a weeklong conference on “Art as Prayer, Prayer as Art.”
   
And this summer, from Hollywood, Calif., and Santa Fe, N.M., to Minneapolis, Minn., and Washington, hundreds of other artistic souls will bring their creative passions together for one purpose: Jesus.
   
It seems the evangelical church giant is beginning to stir from its long aesthetic sleep. For the first time in decades, artists are finding new opportunities for expression in their Christian communities.
   
Since the early 1990s, an arts movement among evangelicals has gained momentum, confronting decades of legalistic ostracism and producing scores of publications, books, Web sites, festivals and associations addressing the issues of Christian faith and art. This year alone, more than two dozen gatherings for evangelical artists are scheduled across the country — many at Christian college campuses and churches.
   
Sculptors, songwriters and filmmakers are discovering new opportunities to bring Jesus into the artistic process.
   
But why now? What has changed in evangelicalism, and what impact will such a creative movement have on U.S. culture and the evangelical church at large?
   
In the case of Baylor University’s “Art and Soul” Conference in Texas, Greg Garrett convinced his Baptist board — comprised mainly of nonartistically inclined Southern white men — that “we could create a community of writers and artists that don’t have many places to go.” The conference’s success, he said, was due largely to those same board members, who were willing to take risks in achieving their goal of “being at the forefront of Christian colleges. I think they began to see it is possible to be a Christian and an artist.”
   
Steve Skipper, a member of Bethelehem Baptist Church in Bessemer, paints and draws various sports athletes, including professional golfer Tiger Woods, former University of Alabama running back Shaun Alexander and Christian portraits. He feels his talents are an “avenue to open up the Word of God that’s being preached” and feed others. He said God anoints artwork and that “a picture says a thousand words pertaining to Christ.”
   
One such painting was of NASCAR driver Davey Allison, who died in a tragic helicopter accident. Skipper painted Allison praying two weeks before the accident, which he said impacted many.
His work may be viewed at www.anointedhomesart.com.
   
Samford University art department chair Lowell Vann has been presenting the gospel through chalk drawings 1,600 times at such places as worship services, crusades, retreats and youth revivals. He believes an artist can use a variety of subject matters and themes that uplift to illustrate the gospel. “A person has to have what they want to accomplish and set that by how they work,” said Vann, who is also pastor of Rocky Ridge First Baptist, Hoover.
   
Ted Whisenhunt, assistant professor of art at Judson College, Marion, feels that colleges can use the tradition of Christian subject matter throughout art’s history to make students aware of many biblical studies.
   
“The earliest Christians in Rome painted religous scenes on the ceilings of catacombs where they would meet in secret,” said Whisenhunt. “Gothic cathedrals are meant to inspire Christians and glorify God. Cathedrals are filled with sculptures of religous figures and stained glass windows which were meant to communicate to the illiterate.”
   
Luci Shaw, a poet, author and pioneer in the arts movement among evangelicals, said the efforts of artists are starting to pay off: “Artists have had to prove themselves true servants of the church, faithful and responsible in areas other than their art, before being acknowledged as artists with gifts that can enrich the church community.”
   
Various Christian arts groups — Christians in the Visual Arts, Ad Lib and Christians in the Theatre Arts — have formed, initially for mutual support and later for outreach. Gradually, others joined the battle: Calvin College’s Festival of Writing and Faith, Act One Screenwriting workshops, and magazines and journals like IMAGE, Mars Hill Review and Christianity & the Arts.
   
“Even though they’ve struggled, these (efforts) have raised the profile of the arts for serious Christian thinkers and provided a forum for the contributions of artists and a discussion of their value,” Shaw said.
   
New York-based International Arts Movement founder Mako Fujimura believes the role of the artist who is Christian is to “propose a new framework for creativity. I believe Christians can show a new paradigm to artists that is not self-reverential but liberating.”
   
Some believe the arts movement has grown out of a disillusionment with the legalistic spirituality many evangelicals grew up in, churches that labeled art as bad, worldly and “of the flesh.” They say today’s arts movement is partly a reaction to such rigid religion and partly a result of the popularity of art in mainstream culture.
   
Some pastors say that when evangelicals lost their sense of tradition in the arts almost a century ago, they began to view such rituals from an anti-intellectual skepticism and discouraged members from participating in the arts.
   
Consequently, Brent Beasley, pastor of First Baptist Church of Eagle Lake, Texas, said evangelicals today “have bare, multipurpose worship centers that double as the gym. There’s 45 minutes of choruses, 45 minutes of preaching and then you go home. People want more.”
   
His congregation has reintroduced the Christian calendar as a way of getting back in touch with the larger liturgical traditions of the church.
   
Beasley’s seminary friend, Chris Ceay, is pastor of a young evangelical church in Houston known as Ecclesia Christian Church, targeting artists in their 20s. Last year, they purchased a building that includes a gallery so members can showcase their works.
   
“Christians are starved for the kinds of mystery and questions that can only come through art,” said Thom Mannarino, writer and English instructor at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
   
“Evangelicalism has become so systematized it has starved us and denied the deeper questions and mysteries of life,” he said. “Unfortunately, the church has taken the role of providing simplistic answers to complex lives. Art, though, is about framing really great questions.” (RNS, TAB)