Thinking Christianly About Art

(Image from banksy.co.uk)

To interest is the first duty of art; no other excellences will even begin to compensate for failure in this, and very serious faults will be covered by this, as by charity. -C. S. Lewis

True Christian imaging meets violence head-on, mine and the world's, but also God's... We must learn early to seek God within the wounds that reality inflicts. -Janine Langan

Art and prayer have never been conceived by the Church as enemies, and where the Church has been austere it has only been because she meant to insist on the essential difference between art and entertainment. -Thomas Merton

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. -James 1:17

The tragedy is that so many Christians, in their revulsion at the perverse aspects of [empty postmodern] art, shun all art, even that which may spring from a God-honoring imagination or a Christocentric consciousness. The other "Christian" alternative is a conservatism that responds only to kitsch, a sentimental art of the Hallmark greeting card variety that cheapens true sentiment, turning it into sweetness and light and mere moralistic propaganda - no teeth, no guts, no muscle, no reality. No real Christianity either, if we consider the Creator's work as our powerful, radical model.
But kitsch is easy. It is accessible as a Thomas Kinkade painting, and as stereotypical. It is manipulative and narcotic, and by contrast it makes true art seem difficult or complicated. For true art is not all sweet reasonableness. -Luci Shaw

We know in part. We see through a glass darkly. But it is worth our looking. -Elisabeth Elliot

The first demand any work of any art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. -C. S. Lewis

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. -Romans 12:2

Prisons, let it be said, have fostered far more art and mystical insight than any Arts Council, Ministry of Culture or other such effort in the way of governmental encouragement. -Malcolm Muggeridge

Art is the signature of man. -G. K. Chesterton

Protestantism - the adroit castrator
Of art; the bitter negation
Of song and dance and the heart’s innocent joy -
You have botched our flesh and left us only the soul’s
Terrible impotence in a warm world. -R. S. Thomas