In the first of a series of posts W. David O. Taylor sets out to give an overview of the current range of arts and faith related initiatives in the US.
There is a whole ton of stuff happening, he writes, but it is"ad hoc and isolated", "parochial, even in the best sense of the term", and with "divergent views of how we should go about promoting the arts" (leading to fierce fights). What we need, he suggests, "is something far more systemic and systematic than we've yet imagined (possible or needful)." We need "a theology capable of sustaining a long-lasting, fruit-bearing tradition of artmaking by the church, for the church, for the glory of God in the church, and the good of the world," plus "institutions, networks, philanthropic foundations, schools, churches, entrepreneurs, visionaries, regular folk and grit." We need, in short, "an ecology friendly to the arts"; "a culture in the church where when someone asks "Do the arts matter?", the answer is a puzzled "Why of course they do. They're, well, everywhere. They're just another thing that happens around here, and some of it is quite good."
This is, in some senses, an answer from the perspective of the Church to the questions posed by the current edition of frieze and the forthcoming Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art symposium, although it is doubtful whether the solutions proposed by Taylor would register one iota in the mainstream art world.
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Jan Garbarek - Psalm.
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