Synchroblog: Christianity & Creativity?

This month’s Synchroblog:

Is there a connection between art/creativity and Christianity? Is creativity spiritual in nature? Is there such a thing as “Christian Art”? Does creativity have anything to do with spiritual formation? What is needed for art to qualify as Christian? Is our theology shaped or influenced by creativity/art? Is creativity/art vital to our faith? How does creativity/art impact Christian thought and/or Christian praxis? Is there a particular form of art that has impacted your spiritual journey? Should there be a distinction between sacred and secular art? Is Christianity experiencing a “creative crisis”? Is creativity and our knowledge of God connected?

Great questions to be asking, and it’s hard for me to separate my answer from my own immediate, contemporary experience.  At present, Western Christianity continues to be the mass distributor and repository of some of the worst, tackiest, most belabored and derivative art and entertainment produced en masse.

Thomas Kinkade, the self-proclaimed “painter of light;”

Plus One, the Christian boyband knockoff of boyband knockoffs;

the Left Behind book series,glorifying hyper-American Christo-centric violence and selling millions upon millions of copies, making multi-millionaires out of bad writers (and, incidentally, bad theologians);

K-Love Christian radio mass-distributes Christian pop that makes the TV show Glee (which I incidentally do enjoy) seem like high art;

or why not just Google Image “Christian Art” and try counting how many bad paintings of lions, muscled-Jesuses (“Jesi”?), angels, or people hugging Christ you can count…

I don’t mean to sound callous, but it’s like walking through the religious greeting cards section at Walmart.  That’s not the fault of people who shop at Walmart – they’re being told what it means to be American (and, it follows, to be Christian)…

Yet going back, further, through the history of Christendom, we can find some of the most gorgeous examples in existence of artistic creativity and brilliance.  Now, it could certainly be argued that under a thousand years of absolute papal power, and hundreds of years of continuing church rule, there was little option for artists to do anything but create under the auspices of Christian Empire… and that argument would be largely correct.  Nonetheless, the church – throughout the ages – was a proponent - of artistic beauty and exercise.  It even aided in the development and protection of artists (often looking the other way, ignoring bohemian sins and excesses for the sake of the beautiful images that resulted from their eccentric creators).

I would love to answer the questions above with an emphatic, “YES!  OF COURSE Christianity, deeply connected to the Spirit of the living, creative God, instills in us a creative spirit that inspires and compels us to create beautiful things.”  And I actually believe that about God.  I believe that the God I seek after is indeed a creative being who loves beauty and is revealed to us through beauty.  But I don’t believe predominant Christian culture has any concern for making beautiful things.  We’re too preoccupied with counting how many new attendees we’ve managed to attract from Sunday to Sunday, what our visibility in the community is, and if our current marketing campaign closely aligns with contemporary pop-cultural trends.  Better that our worship services feature hits from the latest WOW Christian Hits compilation, which might sound like the latest MTV Party To Go compilation (if they were lucky)… except that they aren’t making WOW compilations anymore… or MTV Party To Go albums anymore… but none of that matters as long as the 40-somethings in our churches (those are the young and hip) think it seems “funky.”

But my short answer?  There is no separation between sacred and secular. Christianity can be a safe place for genuine art when Christianity lets go of its agendas for trying to manipulate art to meet its short term conversion, budget, advertising and attendance goals.  Art and religion can and should overlap – at times – but they should never be required to.  There is so much more to life than religion, and I’ll bet God gets damn depressed when folks never leave their churches – their cloistered communities – sterilized pews and sanctuaries – and never turn their radio stations from K-Love.  There’s so much that’s beautiful in this world to experience without a Jesus fish stamped on it!  Thanks be to God.

I’m sure it’s pretty clear from reading this blog that religion – Christianity – is one of the strongest driving forces in my life.  Even if my Christianity doesn’t look like yours.  There’s little in my life that comes close to taking the passion, the time, the thought, the care or the love that my faith does.  But it’s because Christ is so important to me that I find injecting Christ into inappropriate places, in tacky, thoughtless ways, so vulgar and inappropriate.

Ours is a creative God.  I hope we can be a more creative people…

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Here are some other participants in this month’s Synchroblog: