Mark Ravenhill: “Children should study the great Christian art of the past”
April 14th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
The Guardian’s Mark Ravenhill feels “Christianity is a myth,” but that doesn’t stop him from wanting it around–for artistic reasons.
The former Methodist churchgoer who loved biblical stories “more than any other children’s literature,” since left the faith, but writes, “I’m sure the narrative, ritual and music of the church were an essential part of my education as a writer.”
He fears folks like Richard Dawkins might try to take this away:
Of course, we can’t help denying the beauty and resonance of the Sistine Chapel, Handel’s Messiah, Milton’s Paradise Lost or the York mystery plays. But we like to tell ourselves that their creators were covert humanists, who wanted to make art and had no choice other than to make it within the confines of a church that held all the power and money.
Yet, the “idea that all artists are essentially humanists is a comforting myth for an agnostic age. There is little evidence to support it.” This seems to me to be a very good analysis of a landscape in which the Church, albeit displaced from its monopoly of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, is still a very active player. The concluding line is the clincher: “We should celebrate the Christian legacy in western art and society - and stop the Dawkins army from denying us the possibility of drawing inspiration from faith to create the art of the future.”
Image: Dawkins meets Sistine Chapel.