Let's Talk About "Christian Art"
by Rex Daugherty, 2022 Artist-in-Residence
It’s laughably bad. Let’s just say that up front, okay? Nearly without exception, those who intentionally are making “Christian art” are, in fact, making terrible horrible no good very bad God-awful art (there are of course always exceptions – but they are just that – exceptions). And it’s imperative that The Church acknowledges this tragedy.
It doesn’t have to be this way! Handel’s Messiah, Stephen Colbert’s comedy, Madeleine L’Engle or JK Rowling’s novels, Kendrick Lamar’s or Sufjan Stevens music, visual artist Makoto Fujimura, and countless others who are seeking excellence in their work who just so happen to practice Christian faith – all done at an exceptionally high level of skill and accomplishment.
What’s the difference? For me, art that has any hope of being interesting must begin with a question. Art is about questioning and exploring our humanity. But most Christian art begins with an answer, which makes it fundamentally boring. And worse – it’s untrue. True art is neither Christian or secular. It’s just undeniably human. Is Michelangelo’s Pieta a work of Christian art? Or does it simply capture the devastating loss of a woman whose son has died? Michelangelo’s ability to sit inside of this grief allowed him to sculpt a masterpiece. Bruce Springsteen’s masterpiece "Born to Run" captures that overwhelming feeling of wanting to get out of a small town and the joyful freedom of exploration. Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun showcases the dignity and struggle for African Americans in a deeply segregated real estate market. These artists ask themselves what it is like to feel their undeniable humanity, and they create work that communicates that experience.
So how do artists practice this in their craft – and more universally relevant – how can we use the artistic process to practice our faith in a more honest way?
We need to sit inside emotions - uncomfortably and without answers. It’s understandable that humans tend to avoid awkward and difficult emotions, favoring whatever route gets us out of that vulnerable place as quickly as possible. Because duh - Those situations are terrible to experience! But actors are different. They live to be inside the drama. As Tom Stoppard says, “We’re actors. We’re the opposite of people.” Actors are students of these terrible experiences because we know that the power of raw emotion is something that you can’t look away from. I dare you not to cry when Tom Hanks, in the moment Forrest Gump finds out he has a son, asks, “is he smart or is he like me?” We crave this emotional intensity not only as mere spectators, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we want to experience those moments in life as participants. Despite how fast we flee from ever appearing emotionally “weak” - the thing we desire most is to be intimate and vulnerable with another human. This is the very thing artists are trained to do. As artists, we sit inside the tears and the joy. We reflect humanity.
The vast majority of Christian art, however, either represents a life that is so squeaky clean it’s unachievable or it is so overly sentimental that it refuses to engage with honest emotion. Every holiday season I nearly tear my ears off when that wretched “Sir I want to Buy these shoes” song plays on the all-holiday-music radio station. If you don’t know it, here’s the quick rundown (also Google Patton Oswalt’s comedy routine on this song for a great laugh): A poor kid wants to buy nice shoes for his DYING mother because she’s going to meet Jesus TONIGHT. Because she’s on her deathbed! And in this unrealistic piece of Christmas sentimental trash, the grade school child who is about to immediately lose his mother has no emotional response to that tragic life shaping event, but, instead, is simply excited for her to look good on her first date with Jesus. Compare that to Jesus, when faced with the death of his friend Lazarus: “Jesus wept.” THAT sounds honest, doesn’t it? Why are we settling for anything less in the industry of “Christian art?” I think it’s largely because we are compelled (as Christians) to prescribe easy answers instead of sitting inside our difficult questions. But this is the very inauthentic element that keeps us from being human.
Instead of cheap sentiment, we need a John 11:35 mentality – “Jesus wept.” The smallest verse of the Bible exposes the biggest humanity of Jesus. In his book Art + Faith: A Theology of Making, acclaimed visual artist Makoto Fujimura (exceptional Christian artists do exist!) explains that he paints with Jesus’ tears. Meaning he approaches his artistic practice with the deep love of Christ. Here’s how I’d explain that concept as a theatre maker. Jesus didn’t “play the end of the scene,” knowing Lazarus would be alive again. While directing a play, sometimes actors are tempted to show the emotion of the final moment instead of the current scene they’re in – because they know the big reveal is coming and they’re excited to live in that intense emotion (opposite of people, remember?). Directors often say, “don’t play the end of the scene” – a note of instruction to actors to be emotionally present in the moment. This keeps a performance truthful. What makes Romeo and Juliet so powerful is that the play is incredibly fun, full of passion and romance, right up until the very moment tragedy strikes. If the actors were already playing the end, we’d never get swept away in their joy – and therefore never feel the tragic loss. This rule works across all genres, in fact. Ie - Jordan Peele’s horror film Us doesn’t work if the family is totally freaked out at the beginning of the film. Staying truthful to emotions throughout an entire story is what makes good endings so satisfying. Directing an actor to be emotionally present in the moment is what makes their performance so recognizably human. Anything less is distastefully unsatisfying.
Jesus’ humanity kept him from playing the end of the scene. If he had emotionally moved ahead to the exciting plot point, predicting the feeling of joy for Lazarus’ reunion with his family, he would have never been emotionally present with his friends Mary and Martha during their immense time of grief. He would have possibly offered them any number of those thoughtless replies we often say to someone who is experiencing tragedy that we don’t have time for. As Kate Bowler shares in her book Everything Happens for a Reason, and Other Lies I’ve Loved, how many of us, during our own time of grief, have been given the cheap comfort of someone who isn’t emotionally present with us? During a breakup or end of a relationship, we are told “there are other fish in the sea” ignoring the painful truth: I DIDN’T WANT ANOTHER FISH! When we’re passed over for a new job or promotion, we’re told “God closes one door and will open a window” – I DON’T WANT TO CRAWL THROUGH THAT WINDOW! ! And even worse, the horrible cliché we’re told when a loved one dies…”Heaven needed another angel.” These thoughtless replies are from people who are afraid to dive deep into the emotion of loss. They want to move on from the bereaved. They don’t want to sit in discomfort. Can you imagine how disappointing it would have been if, in the moment Mary and Martha cried out to Jesus about the loss of their brother, he simply said, “don’t worry – you’ll see him again someday.” Nothing about that response would have been untrue – they were in fact about to see Lazarus again in just a few minutes! - and yet it would have been bitterly untrue. Because Jesus would have missed the emotional truth of the moment. For Mary and Martha, it felt like they’d never see Lazarus again. To be human with them in that moment, the appropriate response was an outburst of shared grief.
Jesus sits with us, emotionally present in the moment. “Jesus wept.” This is the artists’ practice as well. Konstantin Stanislavsky, the Russian theatre director who founded modern realism acting, encouraged his students with the concept of “the magic IF.” “What would I do IF I were in this situation?” This practice directly leads actors to empathize with their character, which is the only way to portray someone else with integrity. Anything short is an unsatisfying stereotype.
Most Christian art vastly misses the importance of emotional truth and thereby not only counterfeits humanity, but counterfeits God. The artistic discipline of sitting inside of a question is an aesthetic that is deeply needed to live out our faith with authenticity. Christian artists (anyone, really) looking for their work to connect with audiences shouldn’t confuse the hope of our faith with the experience of life’s moment to moment pace of living. Moment to moment is, in fact, the only way we can experience life. I only want to see art that is emotionally present, that doesn’t play the ending too early, and that lives inside of big questions. Which is a way of saying that I want all those things in my relationships with other people.