What Flannery O’Connor Might Say to Christian Moviemakers, Musicians, and Artists

But staring (as artist and as consumer of art) will mean seeing a world full of beauty as well as brokenness. It will mean seeing the hope of redemption but also the reality of degradation and the chilling nature of evil. It will mean seeing the dilemma of humanity in all its squalor, disappointment, and ensnarement. It will mean creating and appreciating art that is not preachy but which makes us, by nature, uncomfortable.

Why Christian Media Often Fails at the Task of Art

Media and art forms labeled “Christian” are big business. In an article for Thrillist, Alissa Wilkinson (now a staff writer for Vox, formerly Chief Film Critic for Christianity Today) writes,

in the last three years, low-budget Christian-themed films have earned over $445 million at the US box office. A lot of these are basically well-intentioned kitsch, innocuous in the manner of a lousy conventional rom-com or inept indie drama. But they can be worse than that. I can excuse (or ignore) a poorly made movie. But some of the most popular faith-based movies today aren’t just sub-par entertainment — they’re anti-Christian.

Such is the state of affairs. If you cut out sex scenes, bad language, and lifestyles the faithful disagree with, you have a moneymaker in the Christian market, but what you don’t necessarily have is truth. Barely Christian thought, even that which dips its toe affirmatively in heretical thinking or just plain lazy Christianity is fine, as long as it’s “clean.” Media that sells is characterized by being “safe,” neutered of the confrontation of uncomfortable truth that O’Connor advocates, writing, famously, “to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures” (“The Fiction Writer & His Country,” Mystery and Manners, 34). You can’t do that if you are held captive to the sales figures of the Christian bookstore, with its desire for safety and comfort at all cost.

But the way the Christian market constrains the Christian artist to stay within a safe zone is not the only problem. The other problem is the way Protestant evangelical theology, with its emphasis on results, insists that the Christian artist also constrain their art to the measurably good. This is why our worship services end with altar calls, our pastors are evaluated by numbers of backsides in the pews, our missionaries write their newsletters trying to codify some sense of objective results for their supporters. O’Connor writes of this problem in American society (which of course is largely formed by a Protestant theology), “We are not content to stay within our limitations and make something that is simply a good in and by itself. Now we want to make something that will have some utilitarian value. Yet what is good in itself glorifies God because it reflects God. The artist has his hands full and does his duty if he attends to his art. He can safely leave evangelizing to the evangelists” (“Catholic Novelists,” 171).

In the previously mentioned Thrillist article, Alissa Wilkinson agrees, writing, “Christian theology is rich and creative and full of imagination, that’s broad enough to take up residence among all kinds of human cultures. It contains within itself the idea that art exists as a good unto itself, not just a utilitarian vehicle for messages. (In the Greek, the Bible calls humans ‘poems’ — I love that.) There is no reason Christian movies [and I would add every other form of art created by Christians] can’t take the time to become good art. Each one that fails leaves me furious.”

Some might say, oh, but the Left Behind series or the latest Christian movie led people to faith in Christ! As always, O’Connor has just the word: “An individual may be highly edified by a sorry novel because he doesn’t know any better. We have plenty of examples in this world of poor things being used for good purposes. God can make any indifferent thing, as well as evil itself, an instrument for good; but I submit that to do this is the business of God and not of any human being.” (“Catholic Novelists,” 174). Just because God can use something substandard for his purposes, to bring about good, doesn’t take away our responsibility to pursue excellence, working “at it with all [our] heart, as working for the Lord” (Colossians 3:23 NIV).