For part one, see here. Rev. Gerald R. Johns Jr. is pastor of Providence Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Per his website, he received a B.A. from Southwestern College and an M.Div. from Texas Christian University. You can follow him on Twitter, where I first “met” him, @JerryJohns.
MW: It seems like some Christians point to St. Luke drawing the Virgin while guided by an angel as not only permission to create sacred art, but also an encouragement to do so, while others adopt a more let’s say minimalist approach to religious culture. Is it simply a question of a debate over whether that episode occurred?
GRJ: I don’t know that I have enough information to give an answer to this question.
MW: To what extent do some churches downplay the visual arts for political reasons (like distancing themselves from Catholic churches)?
GRJ: It’s hard for me to answer this one because of my perspective. I have been on the progressive side of the church since I was baptized. I could speculate and say that in the free church movement in the United States there is a definite Catholic “backlash.” Part of my religious heritage includes exposure to the A Capella Church of Christ. There are some, not all, in that movement who believe that the Catholic Church is a cult. I have heard that line of thinking in many places. So, I could speculate about art and say that in those traditions where Catholicism is anathema, those who are career artists would likely stay away from the sorts of sacred art which are prominent in the history of the Catholic faith. It seems to me — but again this could be because of my perspective — that religious art these days is not sacred art in the way we think about classic art. Religious art, it seems to me, is more about the person of Jesus and depictions of him that would show his power for salvation or over demonic forces.
MW: Who are your favorite Christian artists? Do you think there is a such thing as Christian art per se?
GRJ: Never thought about this before. I tend not to see the world in terms of Christian/ non-Christian. I don’t patronize businesses based on whether they display a fish or not. So, I don’t know that I have ever considered who my favorite Christian artist is. I will say that French impressionism touches me and so does the art of Native Americans.
MW: To what extent did Texas Christian University address Christian art?
GRJ: I was at Brite Divinity School which is a part of TCU. The school offered a class titled, “The Intersection of Art and Theology.” It was a truly wonderful experience to be in that class. I live in Lexington, Kentucky, now, and Lexington Theological Seminary is located here. They have intentionally filled the building with art. It may be sacred and it may not. There are quilts and prints and lithos. A wonderful idea that makes the space more interesting.
MW: Can art-making ever overlap with prayer? Could it ever be a substitution for communal prayer?
GRJ: There has been a surge in using the potter’s wheel as a prayer tool over the past generation. I have attended large assemblies where the wheel was placed in the room and a potter was making art while worship was occurring. At our regional assemblies in KY we are blessed with a couple who use art as a prayer form during worship. They progressively paint on a blank sheet that is back lit during the assemblies. It may not so much substitute for public prayer as it might enhance it. Then again, maybe the making of art can become itself a community prayer. Why not.
Part three to follow.
My review of Mark Podwal’s new book and documentary on Prague appears in The Jewish Press.
I will post more on the show, but here are a few images:
The downstairs area.
Upstairs.
Sanctuary.
My work.
Story from WorldNetDaily. Loyal readers might recall that bad things tend to happen when Obama is depicted as Jesus in art.
My article appears in The Jewish Press.
“A fireman kisses a statue of a Virgin after recuperating it from the tower of a Barroque church that was destroyed during the earthquake that hit the Italian region of Abruzzo. Photo: EFE / Ettore Ferrari.” Article here.
It’s not a painting, but this must be the painting of the week: a Jesus made of Lego pieces.
Here are the details:
Where: Sweden
How tall: 5.9 feet
What: copy of Thorvaldsen’s ‘Resurrected Christ’
How long: 1.5 years in the making
How many pieces: 30,000
Read the entire article in The Christian Post.
According to the article, Jesus looks white on the outside, but colored Lego pieces were used underneath. Reminds me of Matt. 23: 25-28:
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
and Luke 11: 39, “And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.”
Also, Lego’s motto is “Only the best is good enough,” which sounds very biblical. Or am I reading too much into it?
Holy relics have the power of “the tantalizing possibility of concrete proof of that belief, setting up a battle between reason and devotion,” argues Peter Manseau in his WSJ article “Faith, Proof and Relics,” which asks why relics, which are after all physical objects, carry “such enduring spiritual fascination.”
Manseau is on the right track to point out that some of the conspiracy theories involving the relics are “coming soon to a Dan Brown knock-off near you,” and he cites research that dates the Shroud that allegedly bears Jesus’ facial imprint twelve to thirteen hundred years too young. But then his argument gets a bit mystical when he tries to account for the objects’ endurance by separating them from their stories:
Belief — any belief, whether in God, the Resurrection, even the Force — requires a partial abandonment of the rational … there are some things that can be explained only through acknowledgment that proof is not always the highest good.
And therefore:
There is no rational need to write a poem or to paint a picture, and there is no rational need to believe, which is to search for something meaningful in the enigmatic markings that define our lives.
Manseau makes the math seem simple. Irrational (art) + irrational (belief/faith) = irrational (relics). That Jesus rose from the dead is certain, because it is impossible, Christian author Tertullian would have us believe, and Manseau cites his apologetic argument in support of the claim that “Faith fashions itself as a challenge to our assumptions, our expectations — and relics are an embodiment of that challenge.”
Image: A false relic from Indiana Jones (site).
The Shroud then is about a paradox between belief and science (”the need for proof”), and Manseau suggests this tension is what “the Shroud is really about: our divine aspirations bound up with our mortal concerns.” Therefore it shouldn’t bother us that many relics masquerade themselves as the Shroud, since they are just examples of “a religious economy” wherein relics were an easily counterfeited currency.
Manseau concludes with the broad argument that
the mystery of the man remains. Divine or not, he is drawn on our collective imagination. Whether the image was made through the first-century equivalent of photography or the 14th-century equivalent of Photoshop is of lesser importance than the fact that it is a testament to the individual struggle with death and its meaning. No matter our level of belief or unbelief, it is an image that insists we not look away.
This argument is quite right (despite some very petty comments responding to the article), but an insistence that we not look away is not enough, I think. The relics are either true or not true, they are not both true and not true. Sure some believe in them, while others do not. I think they have probably endured not because of the tension between belief and non-belief that surround them, but because many believe them to be authentic and actively keep their memory alive.
The struggle of the relics interests me far less than the face that many consider them holy items that touched the body of Jesus. That is enough for me to keep my eyes glued to them, though of course Manseau is well within his rights to be drawn to another aspect of the relics.
My review of “Benedictus” by Motti Lerner. The play is about two old friends, an Israeli weapons dealer and an Iranian politician/clergyman, who try to join forces to prevent an American attack on Iran.
I argue: “If the issues addressed in ‘Benedictus’ were not so real outside the theater, it would be enjoyable to watch the play as a part of the tradition of Theater of the Absurd.”
22 works of an unknown Jewish Art Deco artist (who fled the Nazis) are discovered in an attic. An 1851 painting titled “Christus Consolator” is discovered in a church in Minnesota.
