The Christian Imagination

I’ve been reading through Taking it to the Streets this year. It’s a great book about how to live out faith as an artist, and gives some awesome examples of artists being incarnational on the streets of their city.

One story I found very cool is that of John Bjerklie, who started attending a Bible study targeting the homeless of New York City. He was invited to lead the Bible study through art, which he had done for five years at the time the book was written.

One of the things that I always did that helped me in my growth as an artist was I would read the Bible and I’d try to draw. So with the homeless people, we read the Bible and try to draw, I mean it’s about as basic as it gets. We would say, “What’s the picture that comes to your mind?” And then we’d sit down and we’d try to draw it, and it was just mind-blowing what would come out. (Corbitt & Nix-Early, 133)

That is amazing on so many levels, and profound in its simplicity. He also put together a Christmas calendar yearly featuring drawings from the Bible study members. All profits went to meet the needs of the homless group members.

Corbitt, J. Nathan & Nix-Early, Vivian. Taking it to the Streets. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. 2003.

The following presentation was given at TED by Larry Lessig, author of Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. I am still processing what he said, but he does make some good points. The presentation is about 20 minutes, and includes the 1-minute Jesus “I Will Survive” remix, and the George Bush/Tony Blair remix, which may offend.

Amazon has the following description of the book, which has some similar themes to the presentation:

Lawrence Lessig, “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era” (The New Yorker), masterfully argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and can’t do with the culture around us. Our society defends free markets and free speech; why then does it permit such top-down control? To lose our long tradition of free culture, Lawrence Lessig shows us, is to lose our freedom to create, our freedom to build, and, ultimately, our freedom to imagine.

The Aesthetic Elevator has a post referencing this Wall Street Journal article. It’s a condensed version of a commencement speech by Dana Gioia titled The Impoverishment of American Culture: And the need for better art education. Gioia is Chairman of the NEA and an internationally known poet.

Gioia makes the case that American culture used to place more emphasis on a broad range of the arts, both in mass media and in education. Now, she contends, the emphasis is on pop culture with a strong alignment towards entertainment and money.

The quotes I like:

The loss of recognition for artists, thinkers and scientists has impoverished our culture in innumerable ways, but let me mention one. When virtually all of a culture’s celebrated figures are in sports or entertainment, how few possible role models we offer the young. There are so many other ways to lead a successful and meaningful life that are not denominated by money or fame. Adult life begins in a child’s imagination, and we’ve relinquished that imagination to the marketplace.

But we must remember that the marketplace does only one thing–it puts a price on everything. The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us.

Most American artists, intellectuals and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture.

I love the second quote above. I once heard a talk by Dr. Elaine Storkey that sounded very similar. This is from the chairperson of the NEA! As a Christian, I thoroughly agree, we need to resist our culture’s determination to put a price on everything and put everything into a nice little box where we can understand it and control it. Consumerism and Materialism are gods we like to pretend don’t exist. It becomes all the more difficult when so much of American Christianity has aligned itself so directly with Capitalism and the so-called Free Market. The problem isn’t with the systems, but rather, how much we identify with the systems. Sometimes we end up shaping our theology around our culture, rather than the other way around.

Gioia also says we need to do more to develop student imagination and creativity within our educational system. Absolutely.

Gene Veith, author of The Gift of Art and other books, just wrote a post titled, Anti-intellectual intellectuals.

What she neglects to address, though, is that when it comes to anti-intellectualism, our elites are the worst offenders! It is precisely our intellectual elites–university professors, cutting-edge artists, culturally-in-tune authors–who are denying the efficacy of reason, insisting that truth is relative, and holding onto exploded ideas (such as Marxism and neo-Marxism) against all evidence.

He also asks: “Who is denying the existence of beauty and purposefully making art that defies the canons of classical aesthetics?” In art, there is a difference between creative and/or edgy - AND - throwing out the past in pursuit of novelty.

There is anti-intellectualism to be seen in the church world too. Anabaptists and Pentecostals/Charismatics are some cultures known for a degree of anti-intellectualism. Presbyterians and Lutherans are more of the intellectual side. What confusing me is why all churches can’t simply embrace intellect AND emotion. Is it really that complicated to realize that God wants us to develop our minds AND be in touch with our emotions?

Anti-intellectualism is tragic though. Once we remove critical thinking skills, logic, and source materials from the equation, we can then more easily be swayed by emotional arguments or poorly researched information. If you do a search for logical fallacies, you’ll find a plethora of Atheist websites that explain it. Now, to make my stance clear, I do not think Christianity can be fully understood or validated by logic. There is more to our humanity and to spirituality than logic.

However, it’s embarrassing to go to an Atheist website and have them quote source materials about, for instance, American founding fathers. Well-meaning Christians (myself included in the past), have quoted our founding fathers without ANY citations. Why should an atheist have to point out what the context of the quote was? Why should they have to point out that a given person may have quotes that give the opposite impression on their spirituality? Why should they have to point out that some quotes Christians use are mis-quoted or have no source?

If we can’t do the minimal amount of research before speaking or writing to our culture, how do we ever expect to be taken seriously?