Evangelicalism and Art

I’ve been giving thought to why evangelicals don’t ‘get’ art since I’m giving a talk on the subject on Saturday. I’ve blogged on this subject before, so some of this is going over old ground but here are the abbreviated headlines.

The Evangelical Church is artless because the West is artless
This isn’t just a church problem. It’s a cultural problem. The western world is pretty artless. People used to spend time actually looking at art, but not so much any more. When people go to a gallery now, they spend about five seconds looking at something that took months to make or paint. We don’t want long political speeches. We want soundbytes. And the church, being full of people from this culture, has some of this culture characteristics. Read Neil Postman’s classic ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’. It’s a bit of a grumpy book, it makes a valid point.

The Evangelical Church tends towards Gnosticism
If you rip verses out of context you can find plenty of support for Evangelical Gnosticism. Eg. Romans 7 ‘Who will deliver me from this body of death?’. When Paul talks about the flesh and things carnal, it makes the human body sound intrinsically bad, which it isn’t. But this dualism is very common – fuelled by Neo-Platonism and a whole bunch of Eastern religions and philosophies.

This is not a Christian way of thinking, but evangelicals, at least our sort of evangelicals, are tough on sin and tough on the causes of sin. We’ve already mentioned the verse ‘gouge out your eye’. Take sin seriously. Cut out your eyes. This is great teaching and we would do well to heed it and take sin seriously. But if you’re not careful anything that gives you physical pleasure can become suspect. A wonderfully extravagant meal could be seen as fuelling your gluttony. A beautiful painting that you just can’t get out of your head could be encouraging idolatry. More below.

The Evangelical Church tends to prioritise Evangelism
This is a function of living in a post-Christian society and understanding the reality of Hell. The need for evangelism is immense. But if you let evangelism completely drive your theology, it will become distorted. What is the purpose of the universe? The Glory of God. Yes, God is greatly glorified when he brings people into his kingdom through Christ. But if we say the most important thing we can do is evangelise, we’re saying that the most important thing is the salvation of man. Not the glory of God. And our theology of everything will be slightly skewed.

Evangelical Preachers dislike ambiguity
Because of Evangelicals tendency towards cerebral academia and verbal evangelism, we’re often at pains to make ourselves clear and ensure people don’t go away with the wrong impression. We don’t want to be false teachers and we don’t want people to think they’re saved by their own works because that is a disaster. So we dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’. It partly explains why conservative evangelicals can preach for anything less than half an hour. There’s so much to be said and we feel we should say all of it.

As a result, of all of the above, Evangelicals will often find art, creativity and drama to be unnecessary, frivolous and vain; expensive and time-consuming; exclusive and alienating; crass and stereotypical; ambiguous; dangerous and subversive; emotionally manipulative.

Art is frequently all of those things.
Why build a cathedral? Something that keeps the rain off doesn’t have to look that nice, does it?
Why compose a sonata? There are no words! Who’s going to guess the gospel from your music?
Why write a novel? It takes ages and it’ll just be about sinner sinning.
Why make a computer look nice? A nice and an ugly one work just the same.
Why make a subversive film and offend people? We should be peacemakers. Only offend people with the gospel.
Why write an ambiguous story without a happy ending? There is hope in Christ!
Why paint a picture that gives people a warm feeling of vague appreciation? This is just self-regarding vanity!
Why create an art installation? It’s so confusing and weird it doesn’t get your anywhere.
If you’ve got something to say, why don’t you just come out and say it!

Of course, all of the above ignores the fact that God is into beauty. He made the world unnecessarily beautiful.
There are glorious species in creation that we’ve not even seen yet. Why?
There are dozens of varieties of beetle. Why?
The Old Testament is mostly story and poetry! Why?
The Psalms are gushingly emotional. Why are they so manipulative?
Why is temple worship shown to be so time-consuming? Israel could have made better use of that time in the surrounding regions trying to convert the Hittites, the Amorites, The Assyrians, The Babylonians, The Romans and, well, everyone.
Jesus told parable that even his disciples found confusing! Why?
Jesus gave speeches that were intended to offend people. Did he really mean to?
Jesus considered himself worthy of being worshipped with extraordinarily expensive perfume! Why wasn’t it sold and the money given to the poor?
Why is the New Jerusalem so eye-popping beautiful?

Is it at all possible that Evangelicals frequently get this area wrong? And even misunderstand the Bible?