Recovering the Power of the Arts
To many people, putting “Christian” and “the arts” together represents a dichotomy, not a unity. Many contemporary Christians find it difficult to reconcile the two. As an artist and an Anglican priest, I am writing with one foot in both worlds, because I believe that they belong together.
The arts have the power to change lives and open people’s hearts and minds to the beauty of the gospel by connecting with the imagination. Likewise, the arts have the power to renew congregations, but their impact within the church has largely diminished in recent decades. However, it hasn’t always been this way.
Sponsored
Christianity and the Arts
The church’s rich artistic heritage is worth reclaiming. In doing so, we can rethink the vital relationship between Christianity and the arts. Throughout the ages, Christianity has had a robust relationship with the arts. Since the first century, artists, authors, poets, and countless others have used their talents to depict their faith. Consider how many of the world’s most prominent composers, artists, and writers belong to historic Christian traditions, seeking to express the beauty they found in God through their artistic and creative gifts.
We see examples of art’s power from the catacombs of the early church to today’s stained-glass windows. This also includes the architecture of church buildings. In historic churches and cathedrals, even the buildings and decorations were designed to proclaim the gospel. For centuries, Christian artists and musicians have sought to express the beauty they found in God through their artistic and creative gifts.
The history of the church’s engagement with the arts reminds us that art, faith, and the church belong together. Rather than being on the periphery of the church, the arts should find their roots in the church’s life and mission. The arts should be one of the ways that the church engages people’s hearts and minds with the power of the gospel.
A Call to Recover Art’s Power
The power of the arts can open people’s hearts and minds to the gospel by lifting our gaze to God and restoring beauty to its proper place. A painting, film, or symphony may become a means of grace that points people to God’s transcendence. Theologian James K.A. Smith says,
It’s in literature, poetry, film, and so many other art forms that we hear echoes of a biblical understanding of humanity—that we are created in God’s image, animated by hungers and hopes, made to delight and play.
James K.A. Smith in Edtorial Announcement, Image Journal
God calls Christians to the arts so that the world may come to see the beauty of Jesus Christ. Christian artists, as servants of God and his Church, should create works of beauty that reflect the glory and majesty of God. Artists are called not to merely follow the ways of the modern world but to create new works of art that embody the beautiful, the good, and the true, whatever their artistic style may be. The art doesn’t have to be overtly Christian in its subject matter. Regardless of the type of art, the goal is not only our personal satisfaction or enjoyment but ultimately to reflect the glory of God. This is the kind of art that uplifts the soul—art that is beautiful, good, and true—and it offers us a holistic way to engage with the world.
Many Christians have lost the vision for beauty that encourages us to experience the mystery and transcendence of God through the arts. Some churches tend to focus on teaching and preaching the Scriptures at the expense of the arts and other tactile expressions of the faith. What if the answer to the renewal of the church was to not lessen the importance of those good practices, but perhaps focus less on strategy, planning, and political rhetoric, and more on the beauty of the gospel? What if God were calling us to rebuild the church with beauty through the arts?
Becoming Missionaries of Beauty
I believe the arts can give us a fresh lens through which to view mission in the twenty-first century, one in which we are called to be missionaries of beauty. It is interesting that the word “commission” carries deep meaning in both Christianity and the arts. When most people think of the word, they think of someone commissioning them to do something important. However, in the art world, it refers to someone commissioning an artist to create a piece of art for a specific purpose.
What if the recovery of the power of the arts was necessary and essential for the Christian life and for our mission in the world? What if God wanted to use the arts to help us fulfill the Great Commission by engaging people’s imaginations? What if you and I had a special role to play in the new thing God is doing in and through the arts?
I believe the answer is yes. I want to finish by commissioning you to be a missionary of beauty. This will take all of us. So artists, we need you to show us the way. Pastors, we need you to lead us in the unfolding of a new renaissance of Christianity and the arts that must take place in the church by giving congregations a baptized imagination.
The recovery of beauty and the arts may well hold a key to the renewal of the Church—and to reaching a generation hungry for a faith that is beautiful, good, and true. In light of where we find ourselves in history, I believe this is the time for the church, regardless of denomination or tradition, to rethink its relationship to the arts, especially as it relates to its mission to spread the good news to the world.
Beautiful Media
Robert Barron believes that the best way to engage and evangelize the culture is by using media and technology to spread the Christian message. For Barron, this is not mere pragmatism; he is convinced that Christians should use media to point people to the beauty of the Christian story. And whether it is film, social media, or print, there is one thing you will notice about everything Barron does: it is beautiful.
Barron believes that if we are going to have an effective witness in today’s visual culture, we must begin with beauty, then move to goodness and truth. Commenting on the power of the transcendentals, he says:
The best evangelistic strategy is one that moves from the beautiful to the good and finally to the true. Especially within our cultural matrix, so dominated by relativism and the valorization of the right to create one’s own system of meaning, commencing with either moral demand or the claim to truth will likely raise insuperable blocks in the person one wishes to evangelize. But there is something unthreatening about the beautiful. Just look at the Sistine Chapel ceiling or the Parthenon or Chartres Cathedral or Picasso’s Guernica; just read The Divine Comedy or Hamlet or The Waste Land; just watch Mother Teresa’s sisters working in the slums of Kolkata. All of these work a sort of alchemy in the soul, and they awaken a desire to participate, to imitate, and finally to share.
Robert Barron, Centered: The Spirituality of Word on Fire (Park Ridge, IL: Word on Fire, 2020), 113.
I agree with Bishop Barron that the best way to reach our culture is to present a gospel that moves from the beautiful to the good and, finally, to the true. For decades, many Christians have tended to view mission in narrow terms, beginning with apologetics and propositional truths, rather than beginning with engaging people’s imagination through beauty. Beautiful art or an artful approach to your craft, for example, can be a starting point for evangelism in a highly visual world, where people look to media and technology to bring meaning to their lives.
Beauty for the Sake of Life, the Church, and the World
Beauty, goodness, and truth, presented through various forms of Christian artistic expression, can be among the most effective ways to reach this generation with the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us once again embrace beauty for the sake of the Christian life, for the sake of the church, and for the sake of the world.
We are living in a time where the recovery of beauty is essential to the church’s mission and can provide an oasis of hope for both the world and the church. The spiritual life is fed, nourished, and kept alive by beauty and is expressed outwardly through a beautiful life lived for the glory of God.
This is your invitation to play your part and join the movement for beauty to save the world. We all have a part to play in God’s beautiful redemptive plan for the world, and that beauty can renew the church and save the world. Will you join me? Let us all become missionaries of beauty.
Check out Winfield Bevin’s new book, How Beauty Will Save the World: Recovering the Power of the Arts for the Christian Life, from Oaks Press.
Image: St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, UK. Photo by Bruno Coelho, courtesy of Canva. Digitally edited by Jacob Davis.
Creativity Begins in the Sanctuary
Our very form of worship—in which we draw near to the heart of the Creator God—requires the creative engagement of each worshipper.
Book Review: The White Horse King by Benjamin Merkle
Benjamin Merkle, The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great. Thomas Nelson, 2009. 272 pp. Contrary to what the spicier corners of Roman Catholic Twitter insist, the English Church did not begin in 1534, and Anglicanism did not spring fully formed from the head of Henry VIII like some Tudor Athena. Long before…
