Working at Worship

Writing on the original meaning and use of the word liturgy Nicholas Wolterstorff considers how “leitourgia never did mean action of the people. It meant action for the benefit of the people.” According to Wolterstorff the liturgy was actually considered “a type of public service.” (Wolterstorff, Major Themes in Reform Tradition, p. 274) Precisely because the liturgy is meant to benefit Christians Janet Walton heralds art as being one of the forms that should be utilized towards this public service. In her book Art and Worship Walton recognizes how the content of worship functions as a way of shaping God’s people. Liturgy, therefore, is not just a program to follow. Instead, Walton encourages churches to introduce “forms that will connect the revelation of God with the most poignant needs of the people who constitute the church.” (Walton, Art and Worship, p.56)

Indeed, Tim Keller relates how reason may tells us about truth, but we “really cannot grasp what it means without art.” Keller goes on to say how “the sensual expression of truth allows you to hear the truth, see the truth, to taste it, touch it, and smell it.”  (Keller, It Was Good, Making Art to the Glory of God, p.121-122) Yet the random insertion of art into worship many times reads as novelty, not revelation. Perhaps this penchant for novelty in worship can be bypassed if congregations begin to embody a theology of the arts. Part of this theology must take into consideration the corporate nature of art. Churches must ask what will inspire creative and regenerative corporate worship that will move beyond the doors of the church into the hearts of its people in order to shape their everyday lives.

By grace art bridges God to men and gathers people to one another. One must also consider the humanizing element of art which allows us to bring everyday experiences into worship. This makes worship and art more relevant, dynamic and contextual. Conversely, art in worship can certainly reverberate into our daily life. A theology of the arts recognizes the symbiotic relationship between theology and art. Thomas Franklin O’Meara speaks of the importance of this relationship when he relates how “Theology is the discernment of the presence of the ‘More’ amid sin and grace. Like art, when theology is only a symbolism, it is empty—devoid of prophetic, existential, and spontaneously transcendent dimensions, and ready to be passed over quickly.” (O’Meara, Art, Creativity and the Sacred, p. 215)

Quite frankly art is not the primary theological form we must consider when we talk about corporate worship. Consequently, we should ponder Marva Dawn’s assertion regarding art and worship by focusing on “the biblical picture of the Body of Christ [a]s the preeminent image for guiding this aspect of theological formulations. This metaphor primarily reminds us that Christ is the Head; he must remain the focus, and his self-giving presence determines everything that we do.” (Dawn, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down, p.130) Art, therefore, is the medium that springs forth from discourse regarding how the incarnation, resurrection and ascension define elements of our corporate worship.

Richard Rohr wisely reminds us how God likes us despite our rituals. “God doesn’t need them, but we need them to tenderly express our childlike devotion and desire—and to get in touch with that desire.” Ultimately, true worship is God’s gift for his people.

Let’s work at worshiping our Triune God with all of our being.

--Maria 

Up, Light/Light, Up

The idea of “Christian Art” is a subject that has been continually shrouded with a sense of discord. Few people can reach an agreement on how to define this term, or agree on what type of art this term should define. Yet, for those of us who consider ourselves Christians and who make art (or who participate in the art world in some capacity) it is a phrase we are forced to confront at some point. Given the contentious nature of this label, it is highly unlikely that a consensus will ever be reached, but just because the topic is a difficult one does not mean we receive a free pass to ignore it all together.

The exhibition Up, Light/Light, Up currently on view in Redeemer's new W83 Ministry Center strives to move beyond the stringent label and overt Christian imagery that is frequently associated with “Christian Art.” Instead, the exhibition endeavors to view art through a wider lens of both context and formal qualities. We are able to see how greatly the nature of a space affects the way in which we view objects. If the artworks had been installed in a white walled gallery few of us would perhaps have seen a connection between the collected works and Christianity. But, as the art is installed in a space dedicated to worship, the viewer automatically begins interpreting the works in a way that corresponds with its environment.

As the viewer continues to respond to the environment and the art works themselves, different formal elements in the works begin to take on new meanings. The diamond of light contemplated by a gathering of people in Joyce Lee’s Hover begins to feel like a modern day burning bush whose message the observers are struggling to comprehend. The chevron pattern in Heaven is Fey and Untitled by Wayne Adams lifts the viewer’s eyes higher and higher, seemingly to encourage the contemplation and worship of the One Most High. Or, through the house-like forms in Stephanie Imbeau’s sewn drawing, we are reminded that wherever we worship is considered the House of God, and in turn we are connect to a larger community of churches and believers, creating an expanding network of houses that belong to God. It quickly becomes apparent that in each work there is some bold light source, or upward moving line or shape that continues to encourage the viewer to contemplate ideas of faith and Christianity.

So it is through the quiet encouragement of light, movement, and context, that Up, Light/Light, Up is able to bring the viewer to a place of worship and contemplation. The success of the works in this space makes us wonder how we could ever consider these works to be anything but faith-based art. But it is also here in this same moment, if we are able to take a step back, that we realize just how much we allow our environments to affect the way we view and interact with art. This is not necessarily a bad thing: perhaps it will help us to also realize how precarious our attempts at defining “Christian Art” truly are. Maybe more important then establishing a clear definition of “Christian Art,” is establishing the ability and willingness to see God in the art and gallery spaces all around us, no matter how unlikely it may seem.

-Allison Peller

Up, Light/Light, Up exhibition will be on view this Sunday in Fellowship Hall after all services. Allison Peller is co-curator of Up, Light/Light, Up enlisting many CIVA artists.

Remember

Many view artists as misunderstood loners writing with wadded balls of paper around their feet or as painters wearing paint-smattered smocks, wild hair, frantically muttering to themselves. Nicholas Wolterstorff gives us a more inclusive view “Art—so often thought of as a way of getting out of the world—is man’s way of acting in the world. Artistically man acts.” (Wolterstorff, Art in Action, p.5)

According to Margaret Kornfeld these actions can assist in knowing God. Our “God is a God who wants to be remembered and has created our bodies—with complex neurochemical systems—so that memory is possible.”(Kornfeld, Cultivating Wholeness, p.86) Writing to pastoral caretakers Kornfeld reminds them that “Our bodies remember through our senses.” Art performed for and by a community, say like a liturgy, aids memory, gives direction, breaks down walls of hostility.

Natalie Angier on assignment for the New York Times Science section participated in a symposium on the evolutionary value of art. She notes how looking at the breadth of history the action of art has been a “profoundly communal affair of harvest dances, religious pageants, quilting bees.” Furthermore, she recalls how “passionate town rivalries… gave us the spires of Chartres, Reims and Amiens.” Moreover, it is through shared art experiences people are united together and are “persuaded to treat one another as kin.”

Angier goes on to describe how the lofty origins of art start from the “intimate interplay between mother and child.” The “visual, gestural, and vocal cues that arise spontaneously and unconsciously between mothers and infants” are aesthetic “operations of ritualizations.” (“The Dance of Evolution,” NYTimes) In other words, the human capacity to create art and liturgies are utilized by mothers everywhere, through all time. It’s interesting to note how Angier writing from an evolutionary framework establishes art as a relational operation. “Artistically man acts” because he is responding to its creator.

If the secular world can recognize the aesthetics as a fundamental catalyst for community and relationality why haven’t Protestants fully utilize this particular category of being? Shouldn’t Christians use all possible means to aid our memory of who we are in Christ? Perhaps, then, more embodied activities need to be enacted in our corporate worship. The artist Robert Adams speaks of memory from another perspective: “The thing the artist is trying to give you is a reminder of those rare times when you did see the world so that everything seemed to fit—so that things had consequence. The majority of evidence is for chaos, let’s face it. Most of the time things don’t seem consequential. But the value of art is that it helps us recall transforming times that are of such a quality that they last.”*

Worship allows us to respond to God’s work in our lives. Through a community’s set of symbols and actions they recall how life makes sense despite its perceived chaos. Good Christian liturgies happen to display theology; thus teach theology alongside the sermon, maybe even deepens it.

Artists, please help Christians remember.

--Maria

*PBS art:21 series

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?