With great understanding, Wisdom is calling out as she stands at the crossroads and on every hill.
—Prov 8:1 CEV

I have done a great deal of reflecting on the role of art and the imagination in the contemporary church. Has there ever been a time when the public has been more alienated from the art being produced in their own day and age? The reasons for the estrangement go beyond our era's love affair with pop culture and the general dumbing down of our society. There is the uneasy relationship between Christians and contemporary culture.

In is my conviction that the Christian community, despite its many laudable efforts to preserve traditional morality and the social fabric, has abdicated its stewardship of culture and, more importantly, has frequently chosen ideology rather than imagination when approaching the challenges of the present. There are signs in our society that people are hungering for a deeper spiritual life. One of the powerful ways that believers can speak to that yearning is through the arts—and through faith that is informed by the human imagination.

Culture Wars

Within the Christian community there have been many different approaches to modern culture. Some of the mainline denominations have followed a liberal ethos that welcomes new trends in secular culture. Evangelicals and fundamentalists have moved in the opposite direction, retreating into a fortress mentality—so much so that they have created an alternative subculture. The most depressing trend of all is the extent to which Christians have belittled or ignored the imagination and succumbed to politicized and ideological thinking.

I am astonished by the lack of attention most religious believers have shown to what I call the "dark side" of the culture wars. It was once a universally accepted notion that politics grows out of culture—that the profound insights of art, religion, scholarship, and local custom ultimately shape the terms of political debate. But somewhere in our history we passed a divide where politics began to be more highly valued than culture.

Coverage of the arts in conservative and Christian journals is almost nonexistent. I have seen the emphasis in these circles shift to having the correct opinions and winning political victories rather than on cultivating a reflective vision and seeking to win the "hearts and minds" of neighbors.

The changing attitudes to art provide another case study in the narrowing effects of the culture wars. It is my view that the imagination itself is the key to the cultural and spiritual renewal we so desperately need. When conservatives turn to art and literature, they generally look to the classics, which are safely tucked away in museums or behind marbleized covers. Ironically, many conservatives don't seem to have noticed that they no longer have anything to conserve—they have lost the thread of cultural continuity.

Christian Humanism

The tradition of Christian humanism always held that the secular forms and innovations of a particular time could be assimilated into the larger vision of faith. That is why T.S. Eliot could adapt Modernist poetics to his Christian convictions, or Flannery O'Connor could take the nihilistic style of Nathanael West and bring it into the service of a redemptive world view. Only a living faith that is in touch with the world around it can exercise this vital mission of cultural transformation.

Because progressives and conservatives are so thoroughly politicized, their approach to art is essentially instrumental—as a means to an end. In the context of American Christianity, the Puritan strain has shown a similar tendency toward pragmatism: art becomes useful insofar as it conveys the Christian message.

In a politicized age, few people look to art for its ability to create contemplative space in the midst of our restless lives. One would think that for Christians, the idea that contemplation and prayer ought to precede action should be second nature. But Marx's preference for revolutionary action over the classical-Christian belief in the primacy of contemplative understanding of transcendent order lies at the heart of modern ideology.

Mystery and Redemption

Art, like religious faith in general and prayer in particular, has the power to help us transcend the fragmented society we inhabit. The intuitive language of the imagination is vital. Reaching deep into our collective thoughts and memories, great art sneaks past our shallow prejudices and brittle opinions to remind us of the complexity and mystery of human existence.

The passion to find reconciliation and redemption is one of the inherently theological aspects of art. The redemptive impulse has been diffracted into dozens of smaller and more intimate stories as the renaissance of fiction and poetry with religious themes and experiences is in full swing.

For example, the three best-selling composers in classical music today, Arvo Part, John Tavener, and Henryk Gorecki, were profoundly affected by the modern musical style know as minimalism. Yet they felt minimalism lacked a spiritual dimension—a sense of longing for the divine. So they returned to the ancient traditions of Gregorian chant and developed music that combines ancient and modern techniques, bringing back to contemporary ears the spirit of humility and penitence.

Some of the artists returning to matters of faith may not be strictly orthodox on all aspects of doctrine. Many of them remain outside the institutional church. But most of these figures are faithful Christians or observant Jews, treating religion as one of the defining components of our lives. If this body of art was absorbed and pondered by the majority of Christians, the quality of Christian witness and compassion in our society would be immeasurably strengthened.

These artists and writers are neither baptizing contemporary culture nor withdrawing from it. In the tradition of religious humanism, they are reaching out to contemporary culture and using their discernment to find ways to see it in the light of the Bible. In other words, Christian artists must be confident enough in their faith to be able to explore what it means to be human.

At the heart of Christian humanism is the effort to achieve a new synthesis between the condition of the world around us and the ways in which grace can speak to that condition. That is how art created by Christians will touch the lives of people today.

The Incarnation Touchstone

Behind this vision stands the doctrine of the Incarnation: the complete union of Christ's divine and human natures. The incarnation is the touchstone against which we can test the rightness of our efforts. All great religious art is incarnational because art itself is the act of uniting form and content, drama and idea, the medium and the message. If art is dominated by a moralist desire to preach at the audience, it will become lifeless and didactic.

Art works through the indirect, "between the lines" means used by the imagination. We need look no further than the Gospels to be reminded of this fact. Christ's parables are marvels of compressed literary art: they employ irony, humor, satire, and paradox to startle us into a new understanding of our relationship to God. If we are too quick to boil these unsettling stories down to one-dimensional morals, they will no longer detonate in our hearts with the power that Jesus intended them to have.

Many believers fear the imagination because it cannot be pinned down. Imagination, because it draws on intuition, calls out to the audience, inviting the reader or viewer or listener to collaborate in the act of discovering meaning. Jesus' parables only find their fulfillment when we puzzle out their meaning, interpreting their ironies and paradoxes.

It is precisely this fear of the imagination that has led many Christians in America to create a subculture with Christian publishers, Christian record labels, and Christian art galleries. The underlying message conveyed by these products is that they are safe. But this is the devil's bargain: in exchange for safety, these products have given up their imaginative power. And this is just where the strangest irony of all emerges. This subculture has rushed to produce Christian versions of almost every secular trend.

Christian Imagination

What is an example of a contemporary work of Christian imagination that truly synthesizes the realities of culture with the timeless reality of God's grace? Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy (1991) is a haunting, enigmatic novel that is almost impossible to categorize. Set in a Benedictine convent in upstate New York around 1906, it is the story of a girl who experiences the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ, in her own flesh.

Hansen's novel makes no attempt to explain Mariette's experiences; there is no sense in which the author stands above and outside his protagonist's life. The story is open-ended, allowing the reader to interpret Mariette's experience in any number of ways. The open-endedness of the narrative is not a cop out, but a sign of Hansen's respect for mystery, that dimension of the Christian imagination championed by Flannery O'Connor who held, "Such a writer will be interested in what we don't understand rather than in what we do. ... he will be interested in characters who are forced out to meet evil and grace and who act on a trust beyond themselves."

Mariette's stigmata, like any intense and miraculous religious experience, act as a touchstone, revealing the inner lives of those around her. Hansen seems to leave the reader free to embrace almost any explanation of Mariette's stigmata. But he is doing more than that. In leaving the narrative open-ended the author is asking us to confront and question our deepest beliefs and emotions.

At the end of the novel, Mother Saint Raphael says to Mariette: "God gives us just enough to seek him, and never enough to fully find him. To do more would inhibit our freedom, and our freedom is very dear to God."

Here is a work that synthesizes elements of the culture we inhabit with the perennial wisdom of the Christian imagination. Ron Hansen is a true steward of Christian culture, as are the Christians who ponder his vision. His art is neither safe nor predictable; it requires, and rewards, a deep engagement of our imaginative faculties. Such an engagement requires us to invest our own time and passion. How committed are we as Christians to nourish our faith and renew our society by becoming stewards of culture?

Gregory Wolfe is editor and publisher of Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion.

This article was condensed from the article "Art, Faith, and the Stewardship of Culture" in Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion. Used by permission.