Christian Artistry: A commitment to what, exactly? (Part One)
The following was sent to us by Geoff Hall arts mentor with 'THE Group' (mentoring services for those involved in word, image or performance art) and writer and director with Handy Cloud Productions.
“To live as a human being means to live as a body in the spirit.
Flight from the body is as much flight from being human, as is flight from the spirit. The body is the form in which the spirit exists, as the spirit is the form in which the body exists. All this is said only about humankind, for only in the case of human beings do we know about body and spirit. The human body...is the form in which the spirit of God exists on earth.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer – ‘Creation & Fall’, Fortress Press, 2004. p78.
When theologians expound the experience of exile, they leap from Jewish history into the time of John and Mary, Paul and Barnabas, as if the early Christians were experiencing the same thing. This is not so much a leap of faith, but I would contend a misdirected lemming-like leap off the twin peaks of hermeneutics and history. It is quite clear from the Gospels that the common human experience at this time was one not one of exile, but of Occupation.
The tyranny of the Roman occupation was a show of Imperial Power and Military Might. Even maps were rewritten changing the indigenous place names with Roman ones. (e.g. The Sea of Tiberias instead of the Sea Of Galilee. & Caesarea Philippi was a sign of cultural, political collaboration!) Literally, the map of their own country was redrawn by the occupying forces!! How reality was navigated changed, this re-describing was completed with the symbols of alien power. Of course, we should note that the Occupation was not achieved simply through cunning cartography! The brutalities of Pontius Pilate’s stay in an otherwise obscure dustbowl - the armpit of the Mediterranean - are evident to the reader of history. After one rebellion, Pilate’s legions crucified 2000 ‘peasants’ to deter further acts of insurrection. This is not the politics of exile, but of dominion. Paul tells us of the machinations of occupation, in his letters to the Ephesians and Colossians, ‘thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities...and any name (Caesar) that is named’. Paul tells us that Christ is not only above it all, but fills it all!! What a glorious confession!! This of course was his language of resistance to the occupation; Paul showing the way, that true authority lies elsewhere. We however, have lost his spirit of resistance, as we collaborate more and more with the ‘ruling powers’.
The fact that Paul tells us we are seated with Christ in the ‘heavenlies’, has led some to believe that it is our home. Bonhoeffer (and I) see it differently. Made from clay and animated by the breath (‘ruach’) of God, our home is here. We await our redemption, along with the whole of Creation. In fact the rest of Creation is groaning, convulsing for our revelation now, not solely at the grand wrap party. We await our adoption, but are already adopted sons and daughters of God. It’s the same thing with redemption. Redemption is now, but it is to come. The Kingdom of God is now, but it is to come. Our ‘revealing’ occurs now, when we are obedient to the call of God to be good stewards of Creation, but it is to come.
Whether it is in art or politics, health-care or film-making, our collective calling is to every corner of reality and its potential. The whole of life is sacramental and whilst the church historically may have limited the sacraments to seven – baptism, confirmation, communion, confession, anointing the sick, ordination and marriage – I would argue that the institutional view of this has obscured a whole of life sacrament! Art, film-making & poetry are all sacraments, if we wish to talk in those terms! Beyond the claw of the institution, what this says about life on the outside is that the ‘get a proper job’ call to artists everywhere, is simply not part of a thoroughgoing Christian worldview! It doesn’t speak of the needs of the Kingdom of God or Creation, but of the institution. Marriage, childbirth, ordination, etc; all keep the cycle of progeny going for institutional longevity. However, God is busier outside of the institution than within!
The church is a controlled environment of mainly middle class taste in music and mood; we put God in a box and try to control the Spirit – enforcing a wider-cultural sterility. Many Churches have become the projection of the male ego, of men who try to own everything that happens under the roof, with the claim that the Kingdom of God is ‘here’, now. If it was of course, we would have to negotiate the slalom poles of equality and freedom. We don’t really believe in equality, because we don’t live it in the very place where it should be self-evident, the christian community. We don’t really believe in freedom, for the same reasons. Belief is not a tacit accent to a doctrine or a creed, whether Nicene or other forms. Belief is proven by its incarnation into everyday living: aesthetically, relationally, artistically, economically, educationally, politically etc. There are all sorts of inferences of this in scripture, about the word becoming flesh, knowing people by their fruits and so on.
The cultural sterility within, gives us problems when we wish to communicate with the world without, God’s world. Instead of the medium being the message (Marshall McLuhan) - the message has become the medium and therefore its integrity is compromised. The art we produce in this kind of controlled environment is equally passive, wouldn’t hurt a fly kind-of-stuff, where “Christian Art” is judged by its symbolic content and not its aesthetic value, or, as a social commitment to something outside the limited space created by our artistic egos. British film and I dare say in the past French as well, were slaves to social (if not socialist) realism. As if ‘reality’ was a phenomenaical observation. (The church isn’t the only place where the integrity of the medium fails, by the way.) The Genesis text also speaks of Creation as potentiality, playfulness in obedience to the Creator. When obedience was refused, the first act by Cain was a projection of ego and his unworthy sacrifice; which was then followed by an act of brutality and inhumanity. In other words anti-Creational activity brings about a damning consequence of misdirected worship and the destruction of human life. Where is the ‘Christian Art’ which speaks about this in the public spaces? Would we attempt comment by a conceptual symbolising of ‘christian’ values, or ‘truth’? It would be interesting to see a Christian who is an artist, offering a nuanced critique of the contemporary fetish of conceptual art, which reflects art as self-realisation, self-representation. “The word became concept and dwelt amongst us, full of affectation and obscurity.” Psychoanalyse that!
In the second part of this piece, I’ll look at the possibilities of a creative response which is consistent with our cultural situation, following the paths of resistance and collaboration.
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