Art as Reflection: Essentials Red, Week Four

For The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Worship History Course with Dan Wilt.

I have always been an artist and a music-maker. From the time I could hold a pencil, I drew. From the time I could speak a word, I sang. When I was a child, I drew and sang freely and shamelessly. Of course I did not consider some of my art spiritual and some of my art secular. Even if I could have somehow understood such concepts, I would not have been able to categorize my creations. All were equally pure and honest, and trying to make such a distinction would have been futile.

But somewhere along the way, I started to fragment my life and my art. I started to throw certain songs, words, pictures, or ideas into the “Spiritual” bin, and the rest I discarded as “Secular.” In my mind, one set was more acceptable to God, and one set was more acceptable to my friends, and much of my creative freedom was gone.

I used this system of categorization not only with my own art, but also with the art of others. I discovered (a bit to my dismay at first) that I often preferred the “secular.”

I now realize I was looking for honesty and resonating with truth no matter where it came from, and it often came from individuals who were not followers of Christ.

I am also realizing that these categories are false. I don’t believe art is even capable of being “Christian” or “non-Christian.” As Madeline L’Engle says in Walking on Water,

Christian art? Art is art; painting is painting; music is music; a story is a story. If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject. If it’s good art—and there the questions start coming…[1]

So if art itself is not “Christian,” what is its place in the church? How does an artist fit into the body?

In Introduction to Christian Worship, James F. White describes liturgical art as that which “makes us aware of a presence, not an absence.”[2] He explains:

The prime function of liturgical art is to bring us to an awareness of the presence of the holy, to make visible that which cannot be seen by ordinary eyes. Liturgical art does not make God present, but it does bring God’s presence to our consciousness.[3]

We as artists then have a strong responsibility, but it is one that comes naturally to us, we who are created in the image of Creator God. We are like double-sided mirrors. We “reflect out and are reflected into,”[4] directly to our hearts and souls. We reflect the questions and hurts of our culture into the church, and we reflect the love of God through the church into a broken world. [5]

Our challenge as Christians who are artists is not to create “Christian art,” but to reflect with honesty, hope and faith.

1. Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: North Point Press, 1995), 14.

2. James F. White, Introduction to Christian Worship, Third Edition (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), 104.

3. White, 104.

4. Dan Wilt, Week 4: The Worship Languages of Art and Music (New Brunswick: The Institute of Contemporary & Emerging Worship Studies, 2008), Essentials Red Online Course video.

5. Wilt, Art and Music.