Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

The Divine Wedgie

Home
Catholic
The Borderlands of Art & Worship

The Borderlands of Art & Worship

Last updated on: January 10, 2017 at 6:15 am by Matthew Tan

The Borderlands of Art & Worship 2017-01-10T06:15:05+10:00 Matthew Tan

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Giovanni Baglione: The Divine Eros Defeats the Earthly Eros. Wikimedia Commons

There is a third book in the works somewhere which will, when it finally comes out, discuss our frought relationship between pop culture on the one hand, and the Christian spiritual life on the other. Many are quick to point out the harmful affects of the artifacts of the former on the latter – pointing at everything from Madonna or Lady Gaga or Calvin Klein as undeniable proof everything after 1749 (or simply everything) is profoundly base. Others still, with varying degrees of success, work towards our salvation on the assumption that pop culture can disseminate the Gospel, if only they put the right number of bible verses into that deep base.

Despite the differences in attitude to pop culture itself, both positions are strangely bound by a common assumption concerning the artistic (yes, pop culture is a form of art) and the religious. Namely, that there is a zone of overlap between our art-making and our worship which is inescapable. Such is the overlap that references to the divine can seamlessly be woven into the tunes and harmonies of electronica, or why nobody raises no cry of offence at Victoria’s Secret models dressing as angels on the catwalk, or why dinners on episodes of Come Dine with Me can taste divine with nobody batting an eyelid at the transgression between the sacred and the profane. Conversely, it is also the reason why paintings, statuary, glasswork, music and iconography adorn the walls, ceilings and floors of churches and why, conversely, many turn to Mozart, art galleries or music videos as substitute spiritual exercises for those within the Church.

That last sentence should point to something. The sense of transgression between the secular activity of art and the religious activity of worship is actually a very peculiar, and very recent, sentiment. It is not the sign of a new thing called the “postsecular”. In an chapter concerning Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, in a book entitled The Operation of Grace, Gregory Wolfe commented that anyone who does get offended at this cross border activity between art and worship, even in its most banal forms:

…is forgetting his history. Until the modern era, very few works of art in the history of man…could be cleanly divided into sacred and secular, aesthetic and liturgical. The Divine Comedy is a secular poem, but the hymn to the Virgin in the Paradiso can and has been said as a prayer. The same dynamic relationship between the aesthetic and liturgical can be said of many of the classic paintings that Gibson drew on for The Passion*, from Caravaggio’s* Deposition to the heart-wrenchingly beautiful Avignon Pieta…In the modern era the same positive tension can be found in paintings by Georges Rouault or poems by Eliot, Auden, or Levertov (72).

All art and all attempts at art, regardless of form, pines towards the liturgical because, as scripture makes clear and as the ancient Church Fathers put into philosophical form, the firmament always shows forth the work of God’s hands (Ps 19:1), the Divine Word that structures every material reality. Whether we know it or not, or like it or not, we always and in all things – and that includes the things on the clothes rack, billboard and phone screen – occupy and stumble within what Wolfe calls the “borderland”, the in-between of the aesthetic and the divine.

architecture

art

blogs

bourgeois Christianity

theological anthropology

transcendance

Previous Post

December 21, 2016

Soulless Incisions in the Frantic Pursuit of ‘Now’

Next Post

January 17, 2017 Prophecy & Architecture

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category architecture art Augustine Belloc Benedict XVI bible blogs books bourgeois Christianity Campion College Chesterton Christianisation Church and Culture Church Fathers citizen conference conservative consumer culture cybernetics Desert Fathers discipleship distributism drinking ecclesiology economics education environment Evagrius of Pontus formation Foucault George Weigel Girard Graham Ward http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post interfaith Jacques Ellul John Chrysostom Julia Kristeva Latin liturgy mall marriage monasticism Music Narrative news philosophy polis politics pop culture postmodern city postsecular prayer prostestant quote Quotes Radical Orthodoxy resources Rome Rule of St. Benedict saint Saints secular sociology theological anthropology theology transcendance Uncategorized videos William Cavanaugh

Select a Month December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 October 2009 February 2008 December 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What is the last book in the Old Testament?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Malachi Genesis Daniel Jonah