Art Matters for God's Sake

“Art Matters for God’s Sake,” is Adrienne Chaplin’s title for the next Gospel and Culture lecture and the impetus for this reflection. The assertion that art matters to God is interesting when our society tends to vilify the arts as something elitist, frivolous and impractical. Now, I have known for quite some time, art matters for my sake. Personally, art making has provided a much needed emotional space equivalent to the junk drawer most people possess. I take great comfort in knowing I can take time from my busy schedule and dump a whole bunch of emotionally charged things in one safe place. So, how, exactly, does art matter for God’s sake?

Yes, yes, there is all that beauty and poetry and stuff that draws me closer to God. Again, this is art for my sake; how exactly does art matter for God’s sake? Is it the liturgical art we offer to God in worship that matters? Or does art that matters for God’s sake take form as cultural goods? Why not both? I can think of one example where both are true, Camille Paglia in her lecture “Religion and the Arts In American” writes, “One of the most brilliant products of American creative imagination, hymnody has had a massive global impact through popular music.” Paglia goes further to remind us, “Where ever rock ‘n’ roll is played, a shadow of its gospel roots remain.” Paglia traces a root of urban black rhythm and blues back to the “ecstatic, prophesying, body-shaking style of congregational singing” that was characteristic of American revivals.

Okay, so a whole bunch of people who fell in love with God at the same time needed to somehow express that love together. These days it’s crazy to think how our country’s musical history was shaped by worship. But it’s not really crazy when we begin to enumerate all the great art and architecture that was made precisely to draw people together to worship God. No wonder Paglia goes as far to say the “route to a renaissance of the American fine arts lies through religion.”

I guess I could continue and come up with a hefty list of why art matters to God, I’m sure you have a few things to add, too (feel free to do so). For now consider this entry as a teaser for Adrienne Chaplin’s lecture. Please join us on February 27, 1:00pm at Hunter College, to take into our own beings—to reflect on, why art matters to God. Who knows, maybe this event will lead to that renaissance Paglia was speaking of?