There have been multiple times throughout history art centered around faith has risen to the forefront of the cultural landscape. We had one of those moments not long ago. Unfortunately it didn’t last long. Why did it happen? Why did it stop? More importantly, will it happen again?
Once upon a time, Christian art was on the forefront of some of culture’s best. It was interesting, experimental, deep, connective, and beautiful. And I’m not talking about the classic religious art of yesteryear from Michaelangelo, Motzart, or Milton, locked in ancient history and displayed only on museum walls and dusty library shelves. No, I’m talking about a time much more recently when the books, music, and movies coming from the Christian community were not only pushing the bounds of creativity but actually produced compelling art that was relevant to a modern culture and reached beyond the insulated walls of the church.
I grew up in the 90’s and early 00’s, which means I fall squarely in what the experts have defined as the infamous “millennial” generation. Like many of my generation, I grew up in a Christian household– my father was a pastor at numerous non-denominational churches and my mother was a bestselling Christian author and speaker. Unlike many in my generation, I’ve kept and continued to practice my faith, even while studies show the majority of us walking away from the church. As I investigate why I didn’t end up in the “walking away” statistic, I’ve identified a few factors to my continued faithfulness, one of which was the good Christian art I was exposed to that seems to have all but vanished from both secular and Christian culture.
A Recent Renaissance
Looking back to those not so distant decades of the 90’s and early 00’s, there lived and breathed a thriving Christian art movement that was producing high-quality and connective books, music, and film. Pieces that transcended the insular Christian subculture and as a result actually broke into and affected mainstream culture; books like The Ragamuffin Gospel (1990) by Brennan Manning or Blue Like Jazz (2003) by Donald Miller, both of which were probingly deep memoirs of honest thoughts and reflections on faith that went on to become critically acclaimed bestsellers. Then there was music like D.C. Talk’s Jesus Freak (1995) which was an experimental combination of multiple genres and dealt with real world issues like racism, addiction, and suicide from a lens of faith which led to albums like Switchfoot’s The Beautiful Letdown (2003) that rocked its poetic lyrics about faith surrounded by soaring guitars and banging drums right onto secular radio stations. And lastly, even in a less developed faith based film-making industry, Christian filmmakers produced high-quality movies and shows such as the beloved series Christy, that crafted a compelling narrative with honest depictions of real world struggles, and movies like The Thin Red Line by Terrence Malick, a beautiful and heartbreaking war epic about humanity and faith that featured Hollywood legends and went on to be nominated for multiple Oscars.
And these are just a few examples of a larger landscape that was filled with highly creative, quality, and connective work that came out of that time. These books, albums, and movies were the art by which we understood our faith, they were the pieces that gave shape to our beliefs and defined our religion in the context of beautiful creativity, honest words, and compelling stories. In large part this artistic movement is what informed the idea of faith that I still hold to today and has kept me from walking away from it. But unfortunately this moment of artistic revival in the church didn’t last.
Where Did It Go?
This religious artistic renaissance was a bright light after numerous dark decades of great Christian art being suppressed beneath a fundamentalist church that saw culture and free artistic expression as something of a gateway drug to the corrupt secular culture that would lure believers away from Christ. But as the larger modern church tore itself away from the outdated constraints of anti-intellectualism, separatism, and fear-based theology, it formed a new (actually ancient) philosophy, based in scripture, that sought to engage with culture’s fears, hopes, desires, and dreams, rather than run from them. With that new way of thinking, there came a freedom for artists of faith to begin creating with more truthful honesty, artistic abandon, and intellectual depth. The result of this was an outpouring of high-quality and mold-breaking Christian artwork that both connected deeply with its generation and found a high amount of commercial success and cultural relevance.
But this renaissance didn’t last long. In the past fifteen years, we’ve watched as little by little Christian art has been on a steady downturn both in quality, originality, and its ability to connect with the culture it purports to want to reach. We’ve watched faith-based art go from fearless to formulaic, creative to constrained, probing to propagandistic. So what happened? With any commercial success, like the kind many of the Christian books, albums, and movies of the 90’s/00’s experienced, there comes from publishers, record labels, film studios an impetus to repeat that success. Early on these institutions were open to trying to new things, allowing artists to experiment with genre, style, and content, but as more success and money came in from those original products, so did the desire/need to replicate past results which meant the more creative and bound breaking ideas began to be pushed to side in favor of the mold these institutions found to be most lucrative. As these copy-paste practices were implemented industry wide, the creativity of this renaissance of religious art began to dim to the point where Christian radio ended up playing the same ten artists whose songs sounded almost exactly alike. Christian books were all inspirational self-help. And Christian films became corny, ham-fisted, Hallmark quality movies.
But the real problem is, it worked. Well at least monetarily. This philosophy of the formulaic actually made these institutions money, and a lot of it. But it came with a cost. As the Christian art world learned the mold that made money for its now defined and reachable market, it began to push any art that fell outside of those boundaries to the shadows of obscurity– the very art that often was able to cross cultural boundaries and reach those beyond the walls of the church. The art Christians produced no longer needed to be high-quality, deep, honest, or original to compete with the larger artistic landscape, it needed only to repeat certain tropes and that had been shown to turn a profit. And with this, unfortunately, the modern renaissance of Christian art vanished. And while Christian art continued to be produced and make money, it was no longer able to connect with the culture it was being created in. It no longer felt authentic, interesting, or engaging to many of the current generation, so a sever was made between good art and Christian art.
What Do We Do Now?
The bad news is for good Christian artists to create and produce their work they rely on the backing and support of institutions who can come alongside and finance and market their work. But the good news is, these publishers, record labels, and film studios who serve as the artistic gatekeepers, are amoral (yes even the Christian ones), they are for-profit businesses whose main interest is in turning a prophet. Why is this good news you might ask? Because it means they can be changed to produce good art as long as they see the monetary value of it. Ultimately this means the power is actually in our hands, not theirs. They will support and finance any art they see as having the ability to be financially viable. Which means we as an audience, if we desire to see higher-quality, deeper thinking art, we have to start supporting and demanding it with our dollars.
There is some responsibility to be taken by the institutions, especially those who claim Christian values, to fund, produce, and promote excellent art that reflects an excellent God and not just chase the largest dollar. But if we, the audience, desire to see another renaissance of Christian art take place, we have to reject the temptation towards consuming only the comfortable and instead surround and support truly good artists and their work. There are still artists of faith creating truly beautiful and meaningful work, but unfortunately right now they’re relegated to the shadows of general obscurity on the outskirts of Christian subculture, but the upside to all of this is we have the power to bring them and their work into the spotlight and usher in the next Christian artistic renaissance.
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