John Franklin is the executive director of Imago, a national initiative in support of Christians in the arts in Canada. His special interest is in theology and the arts. John has taught philosophy at Tyndale College and theology at Tyndale Seminary and Trinity College at the Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto. He serves as chair of Lausanne Movement Canada, and is coordinator of the World Evangelical Alliance—Mission Commission’s Task Force on Art in Mission. John is also a writer, and contributes papers to conversations that make space for the arts and spirituality.
In this interview, John shares some of his thoughts on, among other things, the theological and biblical grounding of the arts, the importance of cultivating the imagination, why art is an integral part of a full human life, and how we can all more fully increase our artistic palette.
To learn more about John and the work he is involved with, you can visit these sites:
https://imago-arts.org/
https://lausanne.org/
For those interested in some of John’s book suggestions (a rich resource), do check out the following page.
Radix: Thank you for sharing yourself with us. Your background with Imago, your teaching of theology and philosophy, not to mention your familiarity with the arts makes you invaluable. To start off, could you tell us a bit about yourself, and why you do what you do?
JF: I’m a Torontonian, and grew up in this city. I was always a very curious person and had a sense of wonder about the world. I grew up being interested in observing and participating in the world in ways that were interesting and enriching. I also had a genuine interest in ideas. That’s one of the things that, I think, has motivated me for a number of years, and explains why I took up philosophy. Actually, the truth of the matter is that philosophy took me up. The kinds of questions that were being asked, by the philosophers and by what I understood as philosophy, were just riveting for me, and they overlapped with my religious sensibilities.
I came to faith quite young and I was never threatened by philosophy, as many people said I should be. I’ve often said that when people go to university and “lose their faith,” more often than not it’s not their faith that they lose, but somebody else’s: their parent’s faith, their pastor’s faith, their community’s faith. They haven’t really made it their own. So, if you make it your own, I think you are more secure in the faith than if you simply adopt it from someone else. So that got me into the field of philosophy. In my earlier years, and as a career, I was teaching philosophy here in Toronto, and I ended up doing some teaching in theology as well. But when that teaching time came to an end, I had an opportunity to enter into the world of the arts.
I had for a very long time been interested in the arts. And I recognized that it’s not just ideas that are important for us, but also our environment and our sensibilities about, well, the aesthetic. So I had the opportunity to join this little organization, Imago, and have been its executive director since 1998. The link here for me, in terms of my philosophical background and my studies, was my interest in questions of epistemology, philosophy of religion, and ethics. And I have found that I got a fresh sense of the value and importance of the imagination, the process of knowing, understanding, and frankly, of the process of living life.
Radix: I love that you included wonder along with imagination. I think both have increasingly become more popular and relevant in our time.
JF: The imagination is crucial. And you’re right, it is getting a lot more attention. Previously, in Western thought, and not least the Church, it got short shrift.
Radix: Right!
JF: Some of that might have been particularly due to the King James version of Scripture giving the impression that imagination is a big problem: that it’s vain and can be destructive and evil. I think it’s being rehabilitated, maybe even “rediscovered,” in a way, now. Its value is being increasingly appreciated. And partly, that is due to people like George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and a host of others. Speaking of today, in terms of writing on theology and the arts, I think of people like Trevor Hart and others who have written on imagination. I would want to say that faith, itself, is really imagination at work. I say that because imagination draws on many things, but two especially: memory and the capacity to see possibilities, this is just what faith does.
Radix: Ah.
JF: Imagination reaches back into your past and remembers. Let’s take Jesus when he was tempted. What did Jesus do? He engaged the imagination. He said man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. That’s drawing on his memory of how he understood his position, and indeed the Jewish faith.
Then there is the possibilities part—the part where we think about what can be. And that needs imagination. If a person looks at an old house or car, some people will say, “Oh, don’t bother; it’s just junk.” Someone else, with imagination, will say, “Wow, this could be fantastic!” That’s imagination at work.
I’ll mention that something important for me is the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, because what are we asked to do in receiving it? To remember, and also to hope. Those are roles for the imagination. So, frankly, we can’t do without it. Thus, we ought not to fear it, but, rather, carefully cultivate it. And, of course, allow it to become well informed by biblical narrative.
Radix: I love the phrase “cultivating the imagination” along with biblical narrative. Can you talk a bit more about that?
JF: Okay, just as an example, let’s look at the prophets Isaiah or Jeremiah, specifically; they speak through poetry. They are trying to provide a vision for the people to get them motivated to do something. The truth is that people can have the knowledge and information, but not be motivated. And the book of James tells us that for one who knows to do good and doesn’t do it, to him it is sin. So the question is, what motivates us? What actually gets us to do the good? I think it’s vision.
Scripture gives us a model to follow, in the form of Jesus, that’s our vision. And the narratives of Scripture, not just the text, can be very powerful, whether it’s stories of Joshua or David, or Moses or Paul, or whoever it may be. When we ask, “What ought I to do?” or “What person ought I to be?” There are plenty of narratives and stories to draw from that will help inform us, and they are able to shape the response of our imaginations.
In our culture, there is lots of competition. Walter Brueggemann refers to “stories of empire.” These narratives take us down one kind of path. However, the narratives and stories that Scripture provides can take us down a very different kind of path.
Radix: This speaks very highly to the power of art in the form of story and narrative. It’s a bit of a tall task, but can you speak more to the power of art—what it touches and why it’s important to humanity?
JF: We have all shared in experiencing art, whether that is a wedding celebration, a church liturgical service, or some musical event that has touched us deeply. We, as humans, all have an aesthetic sensibility. But it can become diminished and superficial. So, in terms of cultivating the imagination, one of the things we need to do is deepen our sensibility. This nurturing of the imagination will help us draw on the riches of what’s out there. We are created in the image of God, so we have the capacity to create and make. And we do make. We cobble together institutions and academic papers, but we also craft pottery and paint pictures and put words together in the form of stories and poems. This is an incredible capacity that we have, which echoes the Creator’s capacity.
One of the problems with some Christian art is when artists attempt to make it specifically “Christian.” This can short-circuit the creative process. Such art can also become sentimental or preachy.
It seems to me that where art should begin is with our humanity. Take, for instance, three people, a Buddhist, an atheist, and a Christian, all attending a concert or standing in front of a work done by a master visual artist or listening to poetry. All three can be deeply moved for different reasons. But what’s common is their humanity? We are moved because we are human. We are drawn to beauty because we are human. And beauty is something that can bridge our differences and open the way for dialogue.
So art is tremendously important. It’s not just some add-on; it’s not the icing on the cake. It’s actually the stuff of life. But some Christians and governments see art as an extra, and not as an essential. They cut funding and drop art programs. There is a trend in education these days that emphasizes the sciences and technologies, and deemphasizes the arts. I think, to put it bluntly, that it’s dehumanizing.
Radix: I heard you mention before that the goal of an artist is not to “get it right,” but “to get it real.”
JF: Getting it right might mean something like complying with a Christian community saying that there has to be an image of Jesus in the painting, or some “Christian” element in whatever piece of art is being created; that whatever it is, it must be clearly and obviously Christian. But that can undermine the artist’s gift and experience. No, the artists need to get it real which means both darkness and light. Because artists at their best are truth-tellers.
We start running into all manner of problems when we bring instrumentalism and utilitarianism into art. Art isn’t supposed to be a tool. I remember some years ago writing a very short, one-page piece about art and then the editor sending it back to me with several instances of the word “use,” which I had deliberately avoided.
Radix: [Laughter]
JF: I had intentionally kept that word out of my little piece!
Art is deeply personal, and we respond to it in a relational way, not instrumentally. Here I will draw on the distinguished Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, who wrote a book titled I and Thou. He talks about how we can relate to something as a “thou,” or we can relate as an “it.” Well, we know right away that if you relate to another person as an “it,” that person gets very upset. We are not to treat that person as if they’re simply an object to use or to be exploited. I would say that there’s something about art, and indeed about nature, that we can engage with in an “I-thou” relationship. When I look at a Rembrandt, I’m actually respecting someone who lived in the seventeenth century and his incredible gift. I’m looking at what he has done. I’m responding to it. In a way, I respond to the artist – to Rembrandt, which of course I don’t do directly, but in terms of the painting that I’m looking at. I know that there’s something very personal going on.
So I cease to employ the word “use” when I talk about art. We are to engage with art the same way we would engage in a conversation; we engage with a “thou,” not an “it.”
The point to be made is that we engage art, we don’t use it. Now I’m not saying we never use art, but I think language is so powerful that the more we can adjust our language to fit with the reality, the better off we will be. I don’t want to overstate that case, but I do think that we’ve got to work harder at “I-thou” relationships rather than “I-it” relationships. We have to see the imprint of relationality that God has put on the world.
Radix: Imprint of relationality. Very cool. Okay, I think that you’d agree that it’s not just artists who are creative. We all are, and we are supposed to be. However, some people perceive or attend to the world in a different way. They have an increased awareness of it. So, with that in mind, what might you suggest to the everyday person who would like to increase their artistic awareness?
JF: Well, we have quite a spectrum of sensibilities around the aesthetic and around the arts. Some people say, “I just have never been artistic.” That’s fair enough, though they may be creative in other ways. The first thing is to cultivate a bit of empathy. That is to say, stand in the other person’s position; be able to receive what they have to offer. When we do, we actually discover things. So, for instance, when I put on an event with Imago, I will include a visual artist, a poet, and possibly a hip-hop artist or an opera singer. Or it could include jazz or classical music, or drama and dance. The result is that the person who came to hear the hip-hop might hear a poet and say, “boy, is that ever interesting.” The person who came to hear the classical piece or the opera selections hears the jazz and says, “you know, I’ve never really listened to jazz, but this was so compelling.”
This is the way that discoveries are made. Maybe, to put it another way, what we need is to educate our palette. And to make the effort to increase our exposure—listen to those who are artists or who appreciate the arts. We have to come with a posture of receptivity and be prepared not to judge. We are often far too quick to judge and we forfeit potentially rich human experiences.
Another thing—and this relates specifically to people in church leadership who might not particularly have a – what shall I say, “openness” to art—is to know that many people do value art. It’s the language they think in, and there are many artists who receive in that language. Therefore, even if it’s not your thing, try to nurture and encourage the artist. This might mean thinking of ways to give artists more exposure.
Something that has been becoming increasingly popular is Visio Divina—that is, the practice of looking at a piece of art and really dwelling on it, really attempting to discover something of faith in it. It could be something like Vermeer’s “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary.” Though there are others, too. Henri Nouwen spent a lot of time looking at Rembrandt’s “Return of the Prodigal Son” in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Art is able to speak to us if we are open to receiving it. Being receptive might mean asking ourselves, what do I see here? Where do I stand in this? What is it in this abstract work that stirs me? So Visio Divina is one way that can happen. But we can enter into all forms of art; we just have to work at it and cultivate that practice.
Radix: You have already made some suggestions, but what others might you suggest for churches that want to facilitate the enlarging of the artistic palette?
JF: We need to understand the theological and biblical grounds for the arts. We need a shift in our theology. That seems to me fundamental. I have written, along with many others, concerning the doctrine of creation, which underwrites our creativity. The other is the doctrine of the Incarnation, that the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. One of the arguments during the iconographic controversies in the eighth and ninth centuries was over this idea about the Incarnation. The doctrine said that since God came and met us in the flesh and took on human form, then surely an icon that depicts something of Jesus or Mary or the Saints would be valuable for our spiritual journey.
Another is that of creation. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were all involved in creation. We know that. Here is an interesting thing, though: the first person mentioned in Scripture to be filled with the divine spirit was Bezalel, who was an artist (Exodus 33 and 35). Scripture says that he was filled with divine spirit in order to exercise his skills as an artisan. So, there’s something about the Spirit and art that I think is hugely important. I would also say to those who are a little bit skeptical or uncertain to just look at the Scriptures themselves; they are loaded with art.
Poetry is all over in Scripture, not just in the Psalms but in the books of the prophets and in some places in the New Testament as well—the narrative, the storytelling, the parables, the imagery, the metaphors. And then, of course, you’ve got the book of Revelation, which, in my view, was written by an artist. It’s terribly ironic that the Christian faith community, particularly the faith community that takes the Bible so very seriously, has been so negligent when it comes to the creative and aesthetic.
Radix: Right! Are you hopeful that things are taking a turn for the better, concerning arts in the Church?
JF: I am. I think the younger generation has a better aesthetic sensibility. Just look at how many listen to music and are interested in images. Now, of course, that stuff can become distracting, and we can become obsessed with it. So there’s always a negative side to such things, but I am hopeful that there’s a greater openness to the aesthetic. And frankly, the aesthetic requires that we engage our feelings and emotions. In some of our faith communities we’ve been very cerebral and very uncomfortable with the emotional. We don’t want to cry during a service when we’re deeply moved. But there seems to be a shift taking place; there is a greater openness to the emotional, to the feelings and the affections. That’s good! Because it seems to me that we’ve been far too trapped in our heads. Thinking is important—of course!—but not at the expense of our feelings and emotions.
Radix: And I’ll just say that because you taught philosophy, you get to say that more than most.
JF: Well, we’ve also made the mistake of asserting that knowledge is a matter of intellect only. Love, for instance, is a way of knowing. Too often what we have done when we take statements like, “You’ll know the truth and the truth will set you free,” is to turn truth into propositions. And we forget the passage in John 6 when Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” So, we can see that truth is not just a set of propositions. The reality is that there are other ways to live in the truth, to experience the truth, and to discern the truth than just intellectually or as propositions. This is hugely important. We haven’t been trained properly. Also, we tend to be resistant.
I’ll say one more thing about the arts and the faith community: we live in a culture that is very interested in control and management; we want to make sure we know what’s going on and that we’ve got full control of it. But artists? These are often the kind of people who say, “wait a minute, where is this going? Because we don’t have control of everything.” But most people like to have control. And yet the spirit goes where the spirit wishes to go. We have to be open to that sort of unpredictable moving of the spirit – rather than having everything in our life as something that we can control. One of the things that makes us fearful of the arts is that we don’t have full management of it. It takes on a life of its own and it does surprising things. And some of us are pretty uncomfortable with that.
Radix: I’d like to ask you more about how art can bring people together, and you have already mentioned empathy, which I totally resonate with. Can you talk more about art’s ability to bring people together?
JF: Well, bringing in art won’t guarantee an increase in empathy, neither will it guarantee bringing people together; there is no magic bullet. What I will say though is that by engaging with stories—with novels or whatever—it’s likely that empathy will be cultivated. As for art bringing people together, I’ll just ask you, what do people do when they come together? We sing. We celebrate in song. We tell stories. That’s what we do at weddings and funerals.
Let me tell you a really good story. Edward Said, a very famous academic who taught at Columbia University, New York, once met the conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim. Said was in London giving some lectures and because he loved music, decided to go to a concert that Barenboim was conducting. It turned out that they both were staying in the same hotel. Now, Said is a Palestinian, and Barenboim is Jewish. Anyway, Said saw Barenboim in the hotel lobby. And he asked himself, should I go speak to him, or not? Well, to make a long story short, Said went over and introduced himself. Almost immediately they became soul friends. As a result, Barenboim was the first Jewish person to perform at the Palestinian quarter in Jerusalem. In addition, they launched an orchestra called the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, made up of Palestinians and Jews, with some of the musicians getting married to each other, which is quite a thing, considering cultural and religious differences. That group goes around the world playing music that transcends their ethnic, social, and political differences. That’s one example, but there are lots of others.
Another example: back in the eighties the Estonians were invaded by Russia. Instead of confronting the Russians with violence, some of them gathered together and they sang. Their enemies didn’t know quite what to do. But the film, The Singing Revolution, shows how in a nonviolent way, this community and culture took time to remember its own history through song.
Radix: This brings to mind another movie that has a similar theme: Joyeux Noel, done in 2005. The point was to demonstrate how enemies in World War I came together for a night of singing.
JF: There are all kinds of examples demonstrating the healing power of art. Just think of music therapy, visual arts therapy, and dance therapy, and how they bring healing to the human spirit. So yeah, art’s power is really quite significant. But I think that’s because it comes from a deep place within us as human beings. That’s why it has that power, which in turn, I think, is a gift from God.
Radix: How can the Church help to facilitate the arts in a meaningful way? Assuming they are interested.
JF: Well, I think what you want to do is spend your time and energy on places of hopefulness, not places of resistance and entrenchment. Some places will be much more open. For the places that are more open, there are lots of things. For starters, the Church can open its space to artists. Maybe that would be a gallery of sorts, a place where friends and community can gather together. Or a church could open up a space for a poetry reading. The other thing I’d encourage is for churches to seriously think about “art Sundays,” maybe where people share a light lunch and gather in a space that is designated for the arts. If the church has a parking lot, do an arts weekend out in the parking lot. A little drama, a little storytelling, some visual arts, dance, music, whatever. It’s all possible. And invite people from the neighborhood, not just to attend the event, but to invite artists in the neighborhood to participate. This might even make people scratch their heads a bit, but then think to themselves, hey! I’d be happy to show my art there. I mean, all this has to be done with wisdom, but it could be done.
I remember doing something at the Ontario College of Art and Design. They had a panel, some of whom were believers and some of whom were not. But part of my purpose in having that panel was to bring into reality the various experiences of the people in the room—both from the panel and in the audience—to show that with all the differences in views about the world, the language of the arts is shared; that despite our differences, the gap might not be as large as we assume.
Radix: Very cool.
JF: Bringing people into conversation in a non-threatening atmosphere, as we are instructed to do in Scripture, all while exercising hospitality, is hugely important.
Radix: Amen!
JF: Art really is a non-threatening way to exercise hospitality. When you invite the non-believer who lives three blocks from your church because they do art, and they’re in the local art shows or whatever, you say, hey we’re really interested in the arts and want to hear more about what you do and why you do it. I mean, that’s not threatening. It’s much better than if you pull out your Bible and say, “let me read you a few verses.” That makes people uncomfortable. Not that it’s a bad thing, but it makes people uncomfortable. My point is that art is common ground.
Radix: Okay, to go a slightly different direction, I wonder about the sticky issue of elitism in art. I, personally, came from a rural background that didn’t engage much in art, at least of the highbrow type. To make it worse, those I knew who liked opera and the like were snotty and condescending. So I am not saying that artists should try to dumb down their work or make it simpler, but I wonder how to overcome, in some people, the idea that art is a thing for the elites, and that it is hard to understand.
JF: It’s very hard at a very practical level to deal with that. The first thing that needs to be understood is that the people who think that art is elite have to be open and receptive to hear from people who may have a somewhat different view. People need to know that it need not be elite. I mean, if you read archaeology, they’re coming up all the time with beautifully crafted things from history, including the stuff of the home like pottery and tools. So that’s not elite. I mean, if it’s a piece of pottery or a carving of one kind or another, or a utensil to use, there isn’t an elitism in that.
The other thing that suggests it’s not elite is that we all have the capacity to do art. We all have the capacity to create. Now there’s some art, of course, a lot of art, even, that demonstrates how certain people have an extraordinary ability to execute their artistic capacity and create things that are stunningly beautiful or just attractive in one way or another, whether it’s a creation of music or visual art or poetry or whatever.
I think what we have to do instead of being critical of some art—maybe the kind that we aren’t as familiar with? —is to ask ourselves, how could I get to a place where I could appreciate this? I don’t appreciate it now. I’ve never been taught to appreciate it. I’ve never made the effort to cultivate this or nurture it in my own life. And, if they’re at all interested, might I be able to get to a place to appreciate it?
And one doesn’t expect that everybody will either want to do that or be able to do that, I suppose. But I do fear that we can become satisfied with, well, the lowest common denominator. We say, this will do, this will do. Yet when it comes to morality, we certainly don’t want to say, oh, this will do, this will do.
Radix: Right.
JF: We want to have a certain high caliber of excellence in our moral and spiritual life as we seek to be followers of Christ. I want to say we also should seek for a kind of excellence in our artistic life as well and not settle for the, well, the stuff that doesn’t have strength. We are all coming from different places, for sure, but we should be looking to move to the higher level. And I think that the Church and the faith community should do all they can to help people move to another level.
A church in Chicago just published a book of essays through Intervarsity Press called God in the Modern Wing: Viewing Art with Eyes of Faith. Anyway, the book talks about how this church, which is about a mile from the Art Institute in Chicago, opened a new wing in their church on contemporary art. They decided to bring professionals in to give lectures on well-known twentieth-century artists – whether Mark Rothko or Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol or whomever. What was interesting was the number of ways in which that church was able to connect what those artists were doing with issues around religious faith or Christian or Jewish faith. It was an effort to educate the local population. And, naturally, people who heard a lecture about some artist would be inclined to go to the art gallery and look at the artist’s work. There are all kinds of creative things that churches can do to educate the palette. Of course, though, we have to be in a posture of receptivity. If we are living with a certain prejudice or defensiveness, that will inhibit learning. But if we are open and receptive, and we can have dialogue and conversation, then I think the possibilities are tremendous for us to have an enriched life. And not just for the arts.
Radix: The phrase “artist as prophet” is gaining some traction. Can you give us your thoughts on that?
JF: The Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel wrote a book called The Prophets. In it, he has a fancy phrase in which he describes a prophet as an exegete of existence from a divine perspective So prophets unveil things; they disclose things. They disclose things that other people are not seeing or don’t want to see. So the prophet may see something and say, “look, this is a clever project. But are you aware of what it’s doing to our community? Are you aware of how oppressive it is? Are you at all sensitive to the racial undertones that it carries with it?” The prophet has ways of warning us about how our culture is, say, contributing to destructive tendencies toward an environment that we are all supposed to be good stewards of.
There is an excellent book by the South African theologian, John W. de Gruchy, titled Christianity, Art and Transformation: Theological Aesthetics in the Struggle for Justice. Because de Gruchy is a South African, he knows a little bit about the struggle for justice. But what he does in that book is point out how the arts—literature, poetry, music, visual art— all served excellently in assisting the process of dismantling apartheid in South Africa. He said they acted as voices that couldn’t be silenced when it came to the injustices that were taking place. People spoke to the injustice in their poetry in their novels, in their paintings, in their quilting, or in whatever it may have been. And I think that’s a natural work for an artist with Christian sensibilities to take up.
As I think Walter Brueggemann said, we live in an upside-down kingdom. The culture does things one way, but we as Christians want to do things a quite different way because of the Gospel and because of Jesus. And I think that we should be articulating that in a meaningful way to our culture. Whether anyone will listen to us is another question.
Another thing I want to mention is that while beauty is a tremendous gift—and we can and should be enticed by it—if we focus too much on just the beautiful we can lose focus on the very real issues and undercurrents of injustice that are happening around us. Thus the need for the prophetic voice of warnings.
Radix: Any warnings to would-be prophets?
JF: I’d want to say that we must be very careful about putting the mantle of prophet on the shoulders of any artist. The reason is that if art is pushed by an agenda, it can end up being destroyed by being preachy. That’s a real problem. That’s not to say that someone’s art can’t have a prophetic edge, say, in speaking about the destruction of the environment. That’s a good thing. Prophets disclose and unveil our failures; they can point out blindness in the culture. And we do, all of us, need to have our eyes and ears opened. The arts can do that. But art resists agenda. Artists can’t be motivated by pride or an attitude of “look at the special prophetic role I have.” However, if you are nudged by the Spirit to take up a particular theme—a justice issue, say—then follow through with it. But do it in humility. Also, know that your call might fall on deaf ears, even within your own faith community.
Radix: If all the pastors were somehow able to fit in a room, and they were all in a receptive state, what would you want to tell them?
JF: I would say that, first, the pastors really need to understand the spirituality—or the theology, if you like—that undergirds the importance of the arts. The other is that whether the pastor is a lover of art, or feels that they’re an artistic klutz and they just don’t get it—whatever the case—they should be encouraging the artist and helping to provide space for artists to participate in the community. This means giving some funding to support that work, too. Because I know in many cases church artists are happy to work free of charge – people enjoying fulfilling their calling. But actually to be able to give them a financial gift is both very encouraging and very moving.
Another thing I would say to pastors: make a space in your church for the arts. Bring art into your worship context. Bring it into homilies and sermons. Let art become a source of illustration. And, of course, remember that Jesus used it, too. I mean, that’s what the parables are. We can use parables and stories in our preaching, right? It’s one of the ways we teach things. Another thought: maybe if you’re preaching on a parable, have a drama group pull something together to do a three-minute dramatization of the parable itself. We need to keep in mind that not everybody works with ideas and words alone. Many people are much more at home with images and metaphors. So be encouragers, be facilitators, and be capacity builders for the artists in your community. Celebrate the arts as God’s wonderful gift to the whole human community, which includes the Church.
Radix: Lovely! And what might you say to artists?
JF: First words to artists in the church? Be patient.
Radix: [Laughter]
JF: And don’t expect too much. But I would also say to artists, find people in your community, as much as you are able to, who have common interests and values. Perhaps try to start a small arts group and invite the community. Get permission to do something at the church, but then get the community in on it, too. And ask yourselves, could we have some conversation together? Could we study a book together? Maybe you’ll get to the place where you can ask the leadership if a room could be used for a gallery. But, again, find others of like mind and heart. The truth is that there are many artists in the church, only they tend not to talk about their art because they are embarrassed or shy or feel that what they have to offer is not acceptable.Also, sometimes we have to consider the tendency of those on the spiritual hierarchy. I have heard all too often of a well-intentioned person telling an artist, “my dear young lady, or my dear young man, why are you wasting your time on that stuff?” This, of course, is very discouraging. And that is part of the reason why artists don’t say anything. However, if those individuals can find other people who are open, with whom they can share conversation, maybe in a study group or a collective of sorts, then they are more likely to bring their ideas and work to the Church community. Then they might even be more willing to go to the pastor and say, “hey, we have been studying a particular book and we’d like to take a few minutes on a Sunday to tell the congregation about how meaningful it is.” And then offer to volunteer to do an arts Sunday or whatever. There are all kinds of things. But be patient. And recognize that some communities will be more open than others.