Art, Faith, and the Stewardship of Culture
Gregory Wolfe
April 1, 1996
Few people would dispute the proposition that most Americans are profoundly alienated from the art and literature of their own time. The reasons for this estrangement are complex and multifarious, and could easily fill a shelf of heavily footnoted books. What I would like to focus on in this essay, however, is the more specific issue of the uneasy relationship between Christians and contemporary culture. Having spent the better part of the last decade founding and editing a journal of religion and the arts, I have spent a great deal of time reflecting on the role of art and the imagination in the contemporary church. While there are many hopeful signs in the church and in our culture as a whole, there are also some disturbing trends. It is my conviction that the Christian community, despite its many laudable efforts to preserve traditional mores and the social fabric, has abdicated its stewardship of culture and, more importantly, has substituted ideology for imagination in its approach to the crises of our time.
There is no doubt that we live in a fragmented and secularized society—the polar opposite of the unified Christian culture that writers like Dante and Milton took for granted when they penned their religious epics. This century has witnessed "art" that has frequently mocked religious faith, indulged in nihilism and despair, and become mired in political propaganda. Many artists have created works that are so difficult to apprehend that the disjuncture between the "elitist" art world and the "populist" world of art-consumption has widened into a dark chasm. The estrangement between the creators of art and their public is one of the facts we all take for granted.
Among Christians who care about the arts, there are many ...
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