Art & Worldview
May. 6 2008
Faith and Aesthetics. Truth and Beauty. Christianity and the Arts.
Some people appreciate music, enjoy movies and might even like visiting an art museum, but most don’t think often think about how those things relate to Christianity. But from my perspective, it seems this generation has a broad interest in understanding the relationships between things like artistic expression, the gospel, faith in Christ and belonging to a local church. It feels like I get mailers every other day for seminars and conferences across the U.S. looking to discuss the arts—and thankfully these issues are grounds for much profitable discussion, philosophizing, debate and exploration.
In our church, we have a number of gifted artists. We have musicians and songwriters like John Reilly—who leads a band that strives for excellence in creativity and content, graphic designers like Adam Carey—who does design work for our church, David Sacks—who works a successful photographer with his own studio in New York City, and poets like Matt Downing—who uses spoken word to express and reflect on life and faith. My own sister, Alison, has her graduate degree from the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and has displayed some of her work at the Na Art Gallery. With so many artists as a part of Covenant Fellowship Church, our pastoral team also desires to do our best to serve, care for people and encourage the arts in a way that reflects biblical direction. This is why one of our pastors, Andy Farmer, spent a sabbatical studying Christianity and the arts and produced a series of papers that would look into some of these issues.
This week he has allowed Na to reproduce his section on Important Values for Christian Artists. In it you will find the thoughts of theologians and artists who have studied God’s Word, reflected deeply on these issues and developed scriptural convictions to guide them in understanding the relationship between Christianity and the Arts.
We know we can only touch the surface of the discussion in this context. The Arts, and current thoughts and opinions on the arts, always seem to be changing. But the good news is that God’s Word never changes, so we hope you find this encouraging, challenging and helpful.
Download the paper (right-click and select “save as").
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