By G. Tyler Fisher|Published Date: March 01, 2010
Christians and the Arts
A guide in the woods?
Selva obscura…a dark woods. So the great tale begins with a lost, middle-aged man—the poet Dante. As he is confronted by his sin, he has one thing in his favor: others are sending him help. As he languishes, he sees a ghost. This shade is poet Virgil, who symbolizes human reason and serves as Dante’s guide. Virgil also is simply what he is—a poet who calls Dante to look up—beyond his dismal circumstances. This upward glance leads Dante to see the love that “moves the Sun and the other stars.”
Today, we find ourselves in a dark woods, and we, like Dante, long for a poet to come to our aid—but now our poets offer us little help. The fine arts have lost none of their power, but too often today our poets pull people away from Christ. For millennia in the West this power was in the hands of Christian artists. Their art has been imperfect, but it consistently inspired generations to follow Christ and to love life. Today, pagan artists wield this great power. The art and music they produce drive us further into the dark woods while Christian art resides in its own ghetto.
Modern pagans long to find truth and beauty without Christ. History displays this futile attempt in all its ridiculousness and sublimity. Today, every ideology uses the arts to seduce its victims. Unbelieving artists produce songs, films, music and marketing jingles that sway our hearts and siphon off our dollars while Christians have reacted by using fight or flight techniques when confronted with the arts.
The Christian reaction
The first Christian reaction is flight—running away from the arts. Faced with debased examples of modern art our stomachs turn and we run, but we never tend to run far enough away. We somehow imagine that our children will be protected from wicked art when we engage with a culture immersed in it and produce no winsome art of our own. We fail to remember that our rejection of the arts does not diminish their power
Our fight is as wretched as our flight. When we attempt to produce art of our own, the results have often garnered laughter. Too often modern Christians use art only to convey the Gospel. Our films are shallow altar calls. Our music gets shunted into genres that begin with the adjective “Christian”. We unthinkingly adopt the forms of our popular secular counterparts, reduce the talent levels, and wonder why our children cannot taste the difference between our worldview and theirs. Both flight and fight have failed.
While classical Christian thinkers have sought to engage the culture’s arts and to retrain our tastes, the results have not been stellar. This fact resounded at the 2008 ACCS Conference in a workshop presented by Chris Schlect. The workshop unveiled survey findings garnered from people involved in classical Christian education for more than 5 years. When it came to the fine arts the results were shocking. The respondents not only did not know why they were doing what they were doing, they also did not see the arts as essential to their mission as classical Christian educators. These chilling findings make clear the need for a deeper vision for the fine arts for Christians who value both the classical and Christian traditions in the West. We need a fearless, forward looking vision committed to Christ’s supremacy over all of life.
The need for a path forward
The poet Dante traveled with Virgil through Hell and over the Mountain of Suffering before he reached the face of God. His path was long. Ours will be too if we want to make real lasting headway in the arts. We must find a path that brings all art to kneel before Christ recognizing that He is Lord over all of life. Because of Christ’s universal rule, we can create art that celebrates everything. This means that the themes of our art need not be stilted toward some false dichotomy between the sacred and the secular. Our art must celebrate all of life for all of life belongs to Christ.
Our vision must also be fearless and forward-looking. Our path forward cannot be a recapitulation or hope of return to a simpler more sentimental time. We can build on the insights of former times, but the most interesting truth is on the edge. We have to use the insights of the past and the present to build art and music that speaks to and challenges our age with timeless truths.
But how can we be fearless and forward thinking if we are lost in a dark woods?
There is a temptation when we find out that we do not know all that we should to press for the practical. We want out of the woods so we begin walking. This is a terrible and often irreparable mistake.
First, before we get practical, we need to get impractical—we need to get philosophical. We should find a time to get our best philosophical minds together—minds like Ken Myers, Gene Veith, Greg Wilbur, John Hodges, Ted Prescott, Karen Mulder, David Erb, Steve Turley. (All of these speakers will be panelists at the upcoming Veritas Academy Fine Arts Symposium in Lancaster PA on March 19th and 20th.) We need to listen to them as they wrestle toward the ideal; pointing us toward the reform of our thinking before we start laying hasty curricular tracks. In the end we must get practical, but only after our vision is pointed in the right direction.
Dante’s curriculum was a long path; he finally saw the Love that moves all things. It began with the beauty that he saw in the face of a young girl and the wonder that he experienced in the poetry of a Virgil. May God grant that as Christians explore a vision for the fine arts that we would be given light by that same Light.
What place do the arts have in your life? There’s no time like the present to begin taking up the challenge of bringing the arts to Jesus and using them for His glory.
For more information on this topic, get the book, Art for God’s Sake, by Philip Graham Ryken, at our online store. Or read the article, “A Profound Whimsy,” by T. M. Moore.
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