Episode 38 - Religious Art

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so today's show is about religious art it's a great show we have some amazing guests film star ewan mcgregor director rodrigo garcia we hear from some artists such as julian baker john mark mcmillan audrey assad the list goes on it's a good show worth listening to but before we even start perhaps a little clarifying of terms because we're talking about religious art and what does that even mean science mike what is religion that is impossibly meta welcome to the libgis podcast what is religion like on a basic level uh i don't know is it like religion would be a system of faith beliefs and worship practices that'd be the closest way i could try to define a religion that i can't immediately discredit yeah okay so how then do would you define faith and beliefs and worship like what are those what do those things mean okay then i would define um faith beliefs as uh ideas related to the origin and nature of reality especially in relation to a supreme being or ultimate reality which would make it distinct from non-religious world views that answer the same questions what was the next one well but okay but so buddhist worship worship would be the intentional reverence and elevation of said ideas or entities okay but before we get before we get to worship buddhism doesn't have necessarily a supreme being which is why i said or ultimate reality or ultimate reality but doesn't physics has an ultimate reality dawkins has an ultimate reality it's material the material universe totally but they wouldn't denote any uh non-material or supernatural aspects to ultimate reality so is non-material a requirement for the word religious what about a non-theistic christian yeah you start who celebrates the eucharist and goes to church five times a week and says prayers 10 times a day are they not religious because they don't believe in a non-material reality well you know for me in particular i suppose i'm more agnostic about immaterial reality than actively reject belief in it but i could certainly imagine a person you can have what we would call a religious zeal about materialism or even a religious reverence for material reality i would say those would be far less common usages of those words that for most for the way those terms are used most often saying a supreme being or ultimate reality is a safe assumption in religion but increasingly we're going to need a you know a 4b definition for the word religion and 4b will probably be 3c in 10 years and and 2a and and 25. but the whole thing with me in language is like definitions are contextual and evolving and even if you define a word precisely you're defining it with a set of assumptions that aren't stable or long-lasting i just think when you get down to it and you deconstruct it how is singing about one thing any more religious than think singing about anything else oh i agree i understand how it's how it is commonly used obviously but when you dig into the bones and the and the guts of the language and you what are you really getting at here and you talk to the person who's you know painting a a picture of a cross on a hill and then you talk to a person who is painting an upside down cross on a on an orgy or something um coloring book chance the rapper is that a religious record yeah even more obliquely like it contains overt religious spiritual themes it may be in my opinion like the best religious record of the year but go farther why yes yes he's singing about god he sings he covers a chris tomlin song for crying out loud but why is that considered more spiritual than kendrick lamar's last record or drake record do you know what i mean like how is anything in life disconnected from your beliefs about the deepest reality and deepest truths of life how is singing about god more spiritual or more religious than singing about shorties in the backseat of your new car yeah but i so then your particular understanding of the nature of religion and spirituality will then become the arbiter for you of what is and is not religious art so for someone from a very particular specific christian doctrinal background religious art is exclusively art which glorifies that understanding of god and god's role in humanity whereas for someone whom all their theological boxes has falled down fallen down but they aren't an atheist they're effectively a spiritualist they will see religious themes and all art because they see all things pointing back to that sense of reverence well the the person that the evangelical christian let's say that you said their views of their own beliefs would dictate what they put into religious categories they would still have to certainly any evangelical christian wouldn't say that a painting of hanuman serving rama in the hindu tradition in imagery and metaphors is not a piece of religious art well yeah they would have distinct categories for christian art and religious art and christian art would be a subset of religious art religious art would be a subset of the container art so the boundary between religious art and just art is something we project onto the work which is actually really appropriate for art because in terms of human creation art is uniquely a collaboration between artists and the one viewing or appreciating or hearing that art because it's meant to employ deeply subjective themes when compared to say a paper on physics it's much more difficult it still happens mind you but you project less of your own subjective experience into a paper on the statistical significance of different noise events at the large hadron collider than you do coloring book the relationship between art and worship goes far back in history almost the beginning of the church itself only a few centuries after the early church began art became one of the most prominent yet controversial contributions to the liturgy by the 6th century a.d paintings mosaics and icons of saints adorned places of worship creating a visually immersive experience for prayer and meditation these sacred images were venerated and adored as they served as holy gateways to a greater reality in a way visuals were the main creative vehicle for leading worship but the church would see violence and bloodshed erupt over the use of these sacred images one of the first major divisions in the church was over the use of art and worship many considered visual depictions of christ his mother and the saints to be a form of heresy it would take years for violent debating and fighting to come to an end which resulted in the overall approval and acceptance of visual art and worship at the same time the eastern european church was tearing itself apart a new form of religious art was being birthed in the west on the island of ireland a handful of young creative monks began adorning gospel books with intricate designs and symbols known as illuminations these illuminations weren't mere illustrations of the text their goal was not to literally depict actions or characters but rather these detailed images would contain deep yet hidden meaning that would shed light on the sacred text unlike anything else but it required patience training and stillness for one to hear what the images were speaking fast forward a few centuries and the main expression for religious art was in the building of massive cathedrals though many were built in order for tyrannical kings to intimidate their enemies with fear and religion these super-sized sacred spaces became home to some of the world's greatest art and architecture ian kron describes this in his book chasing francis medievals built huge ornate churches so that people walking into them would feel like they've left one world and entered another reality the kingdom of god think of what happens to your senses when you walk in those doors stained glass windows frescoes and paintings dimmed lights flickering candles the smell of incense vaults and arches pulling your spirit upward angels soaring on the ceilings god sneaks up on you through the architecture augustine said the human mind was particularly delighted when truth was presented to it indirectly like in symbols in sacred space but many in the church would not continue this creative tradition during the protestant reformation well-meaning reformers like luther and calvin took on a less than positive view of visual art rendering it useless in the liturgy and shoved to the margins of society then came along a reformer named zwingli who marched soldiers into the cathedrals and ordered that all the art be torn down and destroyed stained glass windows that once contained the story of god were shattered sculptures of saints were smashed into pieces paintings and icons were ripped down off the walls and burned in the courtyard some puritan pastors would even board up their now stainless windows to keep worshipers from being distracted from what they said was the main thing the word of god i find it interesting that at the same time an interesting shift in sacramental theology took place the eucharist was downgraded to merely a symbol rather than it being the transformed body and presence of christ it seems that for the most part mystery was excommunicated from the church and that's when western christianity made the shift away from art it went from being a poetic image-rich experience that was designed to delight the imagination and it turned into a white-washed purely didactic religion that fed black and white information to the mind and the protestant half of the church would remain that way for centuries but with the advent of modern technology came new possibilities and with the popularity of modern church music came a desire to make worship services more exciting creative and attractive using concert production methods intelligent lighting and broadway worthy stage design began to adorn modern day altars and tools like environmental projection allows churches to wrap the entire sanctuary in augmented imagery transforming their blank and bearing spaces into digital cathedrals but in all of this technological advancement there is still something missing from this equation as ian kron continues to say in chasing francis we want our architects to load us up with all the technological goodies that you'd find in a world-class performing arts center but what we've ended up asking for is lights camera action rather than father son and holy ghost and that's where many churches find themselves today but there are a few who are exploring how we can use all this modern technology to create liturgical art once again many artists are seeking to illuminate rather than entertain to write icons that guide our prayers rather than magnify the image of celebrities on screens i don't think we need to get rid of all the production i just think we need to learn how to use it better and to deepen our reasons for why we're using technology in the first place i think some of those answers may lie in the past thanks to steven proctor for that piece you can find more of steven's work at illuminate dot us science mike and i are not quite finished with our meta conversation yet but before we get back to that we'd like to give you a chance to hear from some brilliant artists and creators who have thought a lot about this subject of religious art usually no matter how out there a subject or a theme seems that usually sort of fans the flames i think for an actor for a director you you you want to sort of go against the grain if if you have to that's director and screenwriter rodrigo garcia we recently sat down with him and film star ewan mcgregor to talk about their recent movie last days in the desert um it i would have taken me a little i would have given me a little more pause if i was writing this in the midst of this whole wave of religious movies but by the time we were shooting you know it was it all coincided so it's fine i mean i think you know movies sometimes a movie comes to you and you feel like there's no way you're not going to make it yeah i i i was not um concerned with any of that there weren't like a spate of religious films coming out at the time and i also never considered that we were making a religious movie we're not the story is not um found in the bible it's um i never i didn't ever feel that we were setting out to make a gospel movie or or a religious movie i mean we were making a movie um about uh jesus and as rodriguez i've heard say many times if you put jesus in your movie you're moving about jesus so for those of you who haven't seen the movie last days in the desert check it out but it's a movie where ewan mcgregor plays jesus and lucifer and it's not a biblical story per se but it's a fascinating take on a jesus story and of course anybody making a jesus movie is wading into some heated waters one way or another i don't think it's very healthy to think about that anyway for any of the movies or any any art that you do to worry about people's reactions to if it's something that you want to do and something you believe in making then that's them that's the important voice that you should be listening to not the worry about how people might take it so what drew you to this story the script is very beautifully written and un unusual in the pace of the storytelling in the script was very gentle and i just was there was so much to play within it with few words and um and nowadays it's um quite hard to find that it's it's um scripts tend to be overwritten every character is over explaining themselves in an unnatural way and nothing really is left up to the audience's imagination or intelligence in fact to piece together a story and i felt that this script was not guilty of that and uh and allowed us as actors great scope to play moments with our eyes and with our bodies and not necessarily with words and um that's that's thrilling and i was attracted to the character who at first i didn't recognize that because he's not named at the beginning of the script and the beginning of the film is very silent there's eight eight minutes i think of um shots of a man in the desert and we don't know who he is and we don't know where it is and we don't know when it is i certainly didn't when i was reading the script and rodrigo had neglected to tell me that this is a film with jesus as its central character so i didn't know it was jesus i was just reading these beautiful poetic visual scenes about a man in the desert and um when uh when he has his first interaction with another person it's a person in the same form as him and the name above the first line of dialogue was lucifer and i thought ah okay now i know who we're talking about but i was in by that point i was absolutely in i've spent a lot of time around people who make and sell religious art and one of my biggest complaints about that whole world is how it often treats the art as secondary to some other ulterior motive whether it be proselytizing sucking up to big donors or just you know plain old capitalism of course ulterior motives are not unique to the religious art world but it certainly was a breath of fresh air to be speaking to people who are as prominent and successful as ewan mcgregor and rodrigo garcia who seem to put the art and story at the forefront of their motivations for their work here's ewan talking about how he prepared for the role i i freaked out about it and um panicked a lot about it and uh and then just felt like i should do lots of um intellectual research which is something i don't often do and i started reading books that have been written maybe more recently about jesus uh and um i immediately found them unhelpful a lot of these books have been written to sort of disprove the fact that he was the son of god and they're written in an angle of who he really was or who he might have been as a man and they were not helping me because i wanted to be playing jesus who is the son of god and and so i just put them all aside and i started thinking more in human terms about a man a young man who was trying to look for answers or some form of deep communication with his dad and was unable to get it that's that's where he's at the beginning of the film he's in the desert and he's questioning his path i think of or what what he understands his path to be he's looking for explanations and guidance from his father and he's frustratedly not we see him praying and not being able to sort of reach at that point i suppose and i understood so i related to that more i started thinking it much more in terms of a man with his father but always when i was playing the scenes as father as god that was a very important part of it do you think your own personal journey or faith or life was a factor in how you wanted to see that role played i think you base everything on your imaginings of somebody and my imaginings of jesus come from my experience of religion as a child and um my thoughts about him i suppose from films i've seen or things i've read or people people other people's faith you know you you have an absolute picture in your mind about who he was and um who he is in the movie how i play him is who i that's how i imagine him to be so i'm i'm happy with it i hope other people too i mean i think to that point you know one of the uh to you asking if people are happy with it i think you know with the many um it's hard to say christian audiences because they're as many christians as there are audiences but um generally with the groups of christian audiences that have seen it so far the main hook for them the most the thing they've liked the most is that the jesus feels like a real person like a real guy it's not starry-eyed jesus which seems to be walking on air from the beginning it feels like a guy that you could have met um so i think that's satisfying you know the christian audiences connect to that well thank you guys both so much for being on the show with us i have one more question for you some people think of jesus as the son of god others think of him as a delusional rabbi do you think this story this film makes room for both faith and doubt you know i i i hope so i mean we did not you know we did not revisit stuff that's in the um in the gospel these are three days that you know are hopefully not accounted for obviously that you know with jesus you always have to you know take into account the origins of the story and his destiny so that you know you can't really go off the rails too much um i hope it can you know you want your movie always to have as many possible interpretations you know as there are viewers i mean that's that of course is always uh the dream i mean like i said you know jesus exists in a religious plane in a historical plane and also purely in a storytelling plane he is also the character in these stories that were tell that were told um in the gospels so yeah i i think i think hopefully it can be seen in very many different ways and i was going to say not offend i'm not worrying about offending you know i think if you're an actor or a writer or director you want to offend sometimes meaning you want to do whatever it takes to do your thing but i think there's room here for interpretation it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something's stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourself or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions better help has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com liturgists i think sacred music historically speaking you know my definition of that my working definition of that comes from a long tradition of religious art that is specifically meant for the kind of edification and worship of the body i started out at a record label at sparrow records making basically christian pop music uh and i kind of just did that by default because that was where my relationships led me and by the time i had finished my second record there i was on the verge of an emotional breakdown miserable just stifled and suffocated and felt that it was not something i respected so by that point i thought okay i just really i love making music for the church i also love making music that isn't really sacred in that sense but i don't want to do them at the same time it doesn't mean that my pop music you know isn't spiritual but it's not meant for church on sunday and then the other music i'm making under my sort of audrey assad name is meant for either church on sunday or you know personal prayer that's so i say what i do is i make soundtracks for prayer so does religious art as a concept have any value and if so what i suppose i can mostly only speak from experience in the sense that i place value on it because of my experience with it in certain forms so for example when i go to the cleveland art museum which is an incredible museum and i look at caravaggio in person it connects me to what i can only really call like the numinous the transcendent that kind of current of energy um that a lot of us put language around to call god or christ or the holy spirit or you know all these different kind of terms that we have to talk about the life force of the universe um who we believe is a person and it is knowable so i think that when religious art is made with blood sweat and tears and honesty and vulnerability i think it can be incredibly valuable to connect you to that i do think all kinds of art do that but there are kind of certain ways you can engage with god through art that basically serves to help you meditate on the mystery when you look out at the landscape of religious art that's currently being made what do you see and what would you like to see more of i honestly i think i would love to see more things in the contemplative tradition whether that be writing or you know writing books or painting or music uh and i guess in the mystical tradition kind of a little bit less uh doctrinal and preachy and a little more physical like a lot of the spiritual writing that i really connect with and stay plugged into is you know are these writings of mystics who for whom god was not simply i think like peter rollins talks about a super being like us but just bigger better stronger they had a much more integrated um ground of being type approach to you know god and prayer and praise and worship i feel like a lot of modern western quote-unquote christian art is like just speaking doctrine rather than being a sort of dive into the new menace thanks so much to audrey assad for speaking to us you can find more of her work at audreyassaad.com everything to me is prayer and i i'm a painter i'm an artist a follower of christ jesus is so important to me that i don't want to make his name an adjective this is makoto fujimura a respected visual artist who combines contemporary and ancient japanese painting styles the word christian um you know you can slap it on as a label christian plumber christian music it doesn't seem to do anything for me other than to create a market system so you can market safe for the whole family kind of a thing but you know art express is the deepest human realities and and it's it's very honest it's very vulnerable it needs to be freed from these categorical labels uh as it relates to fullness of life uh the it captures something that is not marketable necessarily but but most essential for humans boy that's well said so in our culture is there any room or value in art that is specifically labeled religious sure um you know absolutely there's there's art that is dedicated to for worship uh that is contemplative practice there's certainly value in even creating those i'm not sure about marketing them but you know certainly there should be people assigned to those things as it was in the mosaic days there's nothing wrong with that it's just that when we begin to identify you know categorically one aspect of expression that you know may may be more driven by uh a need to have certainty you know and this a way of a consumer mindset of how we tend to make people fit into that rather than the unique expressive qualities that we all have but we need to understand that contemporary culture is very pluralistic and very complex so these terms don't really help they tend to become very divisive very quickly i had a conversation with a gallery director who is not a religious person at all and he said to me that you know all great art is religious and spiritual and i think he's right you know right now in in the context of contemporary society we have made religion into such a subtext of culture you know i i think our inclinations are religious inclinations are essential for a healthy democracy healthy society and so you know these are issues that i think about when i think about art because art is connected to society's well-being i believe and and the health of for thriving for everyone so so these these are terms that are you know can be redefined or defined in different ways and we we have different conversations i think kind of going back to something you said marco yes um there's this reflection you know art doesn't come from a void art is a uh both a reflection on the culture it originates from and shapes that culture it's kind of this feedback loop you know when we talk about the history of religious art and you alluding to that idea of patronage i think part of the reason today we have such a market-driven kind of homogenized spiritual art is because that's coming out of a homogenized market-driven capitalistic culture yes and the patronage exists in the form of you know itunes sales and um you know amazon sales and this you know hyper competitive capitalist marketplace so is it any wonder yeah that when we think of spiritual art today we think of christian becoming a marketing label yes when art today so tends to be market driven that's right and it's it's uh very much uh you know not only the problem for the arts but it's a problem for the economy right because because we were saying that only homogeneous products can sell well which is i don't think it's true you know and and i've i've been thinking about this as well is is that like so why did we have you know this successful christian music scene why do we have now very successful actually christian film industry which produces some horrible films but they do well you know and is that an indication you know it's certainly a problem right for if you if you're concerned about film as an art form like you know because these films keeps being made and you know and they make a lot of money you know so you can't really blame them for you know making these things because people go to them so so it kind of is a mirror that reflects on both sides um and an artist as we are called to play some prophetic functions in society right maybe this is an area where we can be very thoughtful about you know even even how we go about our businesses and how we market uh uh our works to you know what kind of economic philosophy should we have you know if i for one don't say that you know i'm not an anti-capitalist you know i i believe that free market works and when it works well that there is there is merit if as we noted that consumer-driven art is very much tainted you know by reductionism then we we have to come up with another model when you work with younger people who are learning to create who have all this ambition and idealism about what they believe and what they're trying to do with their art in the world yeah what advice do you give them um when i speak to young people and when i meant to them i want them to first of all find their voice um that only they can do certain things and do something that that gifting will allow them to express something very uniquely but more than that they we need to really um help create an ecosystem that these each one of us with different gifts can come together and and thriving and that's that's really uh uh a challenge you know but but it's it's something that that a church community can help greatly and and i believe it goes to the heart of worship is you know because because we are celebrating a eucharist of a broken body you know scattered throughout the earth and the assumption there is that we are to bring those scattered pieces back together you know in one body you know and uh artists can play a great role in doing that i love that ecosystem idea and that's actually one of the reasons that the liturgists exist we we begin this in hopes of creating work and art that is spiritually or even religiously meaningful for people and curating that sort of work and cooperating with people that are making that sort of work um more aimed at a at a more spiritually frustrated or homeless kind of crowd but one of the ways that i feel like we have a lot of room to grow is in the visual art side that's been kind of a blind spot for us how do you see the visual arts and their place within these artistic ecosystems that you're talking about well um thanks for asking that question because um the uh it is a blind spot in in western cultural lodge and church part of wonderful staff and faculty at brent center at fuller seminary directing well i all i'm asked to do is be an artist there which is a radical thought for seminary but the reason why i think president mark laberton wanted this was because he believes that visual expression is uh so important in theology and we have not found a way to address that you know as you as you're noting but as we were discussing this you know somebody asked me so so what do you think about this divide between images and and the word you know and especially when it comes to worship and i said well when i read the bible in japanese actually there's no separation because i'm reading these pictographs or kanjis right which are visual symbols symbols that have both the word of god you know express footy but it's a visual expression and so to me there's no dichotomy everything words sound um i don't know if you can hear the sound of rain coming down right now but when i experience sound that is immediately goes into my visual cortex or something like that i i don't have you know i experience the world visually and so it would be really impossible for me to separate the two and i think you know western philosophy since the enlightenment has has caused this assumed dichotomy which that in in a lot of ways that does not exist you know we we all paint with something you know whether i paint with japanese ancient japanese materials like minerals and gold and you know ink but people paint with words people paint with music you know notes these differences are something to celebrate and and uh to learn from um it should come naturally as the communal way that we can grow together um as as as believers and as as human beings for me personally outside the podcast the timing on this conversation is good for me as i'm finding myself kind of waking up to visual arts more than i ever have i've made intentional steps to be more appreciative of more visually oriented styles and now i'm now even thinking about the ways that i'm thinking post enlightenment here in categorizing it that way but it's because that you know that if we're talking about spirituality and art and religion and art uh i grew up in such a protestant context that was very iconoclastic yeah and i grew up in worship spaces that were intentionally spartan and free of visual clutter very modernist very square spaces very plain white unadorned walls if there was any point of visual reference in a worship space it was an unadorned wooden cross and um i think for some people uh there might be a gap in their ability to appreciate not just visual art but any type of sophisticated art if they grow up in such um an artistically spartan context you know what's interesting about that is that there is a movement in contemporary article minimalism right and that is a highly visual movement and so even though it might be spotted it might be minimal it doesn't mean that it's not visual and and the problem and the problem there is a lot of times we have very minimal buildings but we treat visual products like you know bulletin which is often badly designed you know so when we introduce some design elements uh we don't stay consistent without minimalism if we do we'll probably get something very profound like the bauhaus you know german you know design and art integration school that really brings this kind of modernistic minimalism at the highest point and that i can see that being very worshipful you know contemplative worshipful experience i think it's a fascinating thing that the spartan walls and the unadorned cross that you're talking about mike that it's still an expression a visual expression of what's happening what the beliefs of the room are i mean when you talk about the southern baptist theology what else really do you need but an adorned cross right i mean that's sort of the whole thing absolutely but i think there's there's another idea here of um i don't know i think i appreciate minimalism and minimalism and art but i think in that context you're making intentional aesthetic choices uh yes and i think in my upbringing uh you are operating under assumptions not making choices it's just well we just put drywall up and painted an undistracting color it takes on whatever the the the mold of normal or bland or unremarkable is for that moment i remember the church i went to as a kid had this like brady bunch carpet right so it wasn't like a true minimal look it was just what was like the least thoughtful element we could put in the space and just put that in this i think that's because the space that you're in in that context is secondary to the purpose of why you're there that's right like if your belief was that you were there to make the world a more beautiful place and that was the ultimate mission of the place probably would look different but if you're just there to hear the word of god proclaimed in the most practical ways possible and efficient ways possible that's what you get oh totally i'm just saying it was painted as the only choice well and the and it's the most cheapest choice i think there's something really interesting about this conversation not just in thinking of terms of churches but just in the aesthetics of your own life yes whether it be your business your home your art or whatever and how those aesthetics are a reflection of your assumptions about what those spaces are and what your life is yeah you know when you think about like the aesthetics of a restaurant and there are certain restaurants that don't seem to put much care into making it a great vibe or whatever they're just a little hole in the wall and sometimes i really love those restaurants and sometimes the vibe can tell you this is just about the food here and that's okay sometimes those are my favorite um but if you're gonna make like a five-star you know lovely experience for people you need more attention in the aesthetics and i think when you even think about that church the person that picked out that paint and decorated it i think if they were the person that was in charge if their assumption was they were supposed to decorate the five-star restaurant i think they would have made different aesthetic decisions because their assumptions were different about what they were trying to do with the place i think that's an interesting thing to look at with your own life as i look around at the aesthetics of my spaces in my life what does that say about my basic assumptions do i value hospitality do i value um yeah quiet do i you know what what does my aesthetics of my life say about my heart and my deepest assumptions and beliefs and it goes into what you wear right yeah fashion it comes from the place of actually being able to receive from the world you know when jesus talks about do not be anxious about this or that or what you wear or what you eat you know consider the little ease of the field right and and to me considering the little ease and and nature is is is a long process you know it's it's it's part of paying attention being aware using all the senses including touch to understand that you know god's love extends into all the areas of our experience and you know we need to cultivate those things we need to cultivate the ladies of the world in in the gaps of you know our lives that you know we don't spend enough time doing that the mystics the christian mystics and the tradition have always talked about the long loving look at the real and so what uh what a religious or christian artist does is try to take that long loving look at the reel and write something or paint something or make a movie that speaks to this wonderful awful terrible beautiful place that we live in and recently i've been reading a lot of this this poet naomi shihab nai and she has this like wonderful phrase that she says to to her students she says your life is the poem that literally the the life you are stitching and weaving together for others is the poem you're offering the world so this gets us a far away from these um small circles of sort of branding but to this way of like you embody within your very being uh a culture making that makes the world a better place but that's sort of how i approach it how i think about it this this joy this lightness this playfulness but also this utter seriousness that what you are doing is making a world for others so that's kind of how i think about it i never categorized myself as a religious artist i am a poet who is also christian so to me even when i write something that may not explicitly be about god god is still present in that writing but when we say religious art what does that mean is that getting into the sacred versus the secular and all those things but if we were to take a lot of those labels away and admit that there are a lot of holy things in what don't seem to be holy places or holy topics then i think religious art would be a bigger category but currently that theme is very narrow which leaves a lot of us as artists to sort of define that for ourselves and maybe that's the best thing to define what that means to you and to be who it is that god created you to be through the lens that god gave you you know the c.s lewis principle that uh i know my faith not because i can see it and measure it and quantify it in a tangible way but you see everything else by it your life is illuminated by your belief system and so it is less subject matter and more of a filter that affects the subject matter that i choose so in writing about relationships with you know platonic relationships romantic relationships filial relationships those the way i approach them is informed by what i believe about my faith but i hope that it's limited to my own personal experience and never seems like i am administering vice from a standpoint of elevated knowledge because i would never claim to have any more idea what's going on than the listener you know i was recently reading uh that j.i packer book where he talks about not represent like not trying to represent god because inevit in art because inevitably we'll do it inaccurately like we because um a single work of art a piece of music cannot fully communicate god's nature god's brilliance god's total definition then it's in a way like futile to try to do so and all we can do is make responsive art instead of definite art my current theory about art in general is that art is all about connection is people trying to either explore this idea or um prove to themselves that they're not alone in the universe it's so so like for instance if i write a song about something what i'm really hoping deep down is that whether i ever meet this person or not that somebody else hears it and it means something to them and they feel the way i felt when i wrote it and that we have this sort of experience together even though we never meet you know like i'm hoping that someone out there feels the way i do about something and then that means i'm not alone and feeling that way you know whether you're the listener or the writer you know if you're in the car and you know you're driving late at night and you hear that song about a breakup that makes you kind of sad you know and you're like wow i feel this way because i'm not like in a breakup but it's sort of you know what it's like to feel marginalized and to feel rejected and you know all those feelings you have that kind of weird connection to that person and either you know then there's even redemption in a sad song because that sad song sort of makes you feel or at least know that you're not alone in the universe and i kind of feel like all art is really trying to do that you know i think even the worst kinds of art you know like propaganda or you know commercials or whatever it's like they're still trying to do that we just don't like it because they're doing it for this super selfish reasons you know but sort of still even the worst art i think trying to um create some sort of connection i know c.s lewis talks about because you know he was a atheist before he became a believer and so he walked into christianity with a lot of questions his first experiences with things and he talks about reading the psalms where god sort of demands to be praised and that really put him off at first as a culture we dislike those types of people those people who require massive amounts of affirmation it's like we don't like those people we make fun of those people and it really bothered him that god would be like one of those people who just required that you you know constantly affirm him or or i guess he calls it yeah he's got a self-esteem problem or something totally yeah he said like this perpetual eulogy is what he called it it just really bummed him out but he said at a point he realized that uh it wasn't like that at all but he said that god demanded praise the same way uh the sunset or the mountains demand that you take notice of them people don't fully enjoy something until they share it with somebody else you know he talks about like a joke isn't um funny until you tell it it's funnier when you tell it to someone you don't laugh as hard on your own as you do when you're with other people things mean more when you share them with other people you know and to me that's what art is especially religious art is that it's this um opportunity to connect with other people and share the things that weigh heavy on your heart you know maybe this sounds cheesy but you don't fully enjoy god until you share god i guess not in the evangelistic sense you know or maybe in the true evangelistic sense i don't know but more so in the sense that you have to it's something that like breathing or eating or or any of those things it's like we have to share our lives with people you know it's like when god created the world the first thing that he said wasn't good was it's not good for people to be alone you know and i think that's true i think we it that's always been true because we've got to have this connection with other people and so the deepest connection we have to god also seems to be a connection with other people at the same time even like when people want to argue about theology and worship music or religious art like i've sort of realized why that's bothered me you know i think it's because i don't think it's as important that the theology be right as much as it's important that people just sing together you know because i think that it's funny people will argue theology to the point that they won't sing together they won't sit at the table together you know and i really think at the end it's not really about how right you order but i think what's more important is that people get together and sing you know i i guess it's kind of like thanksgiving dinner it's like we can argue about the food but really it's just important that you sit down across from one another you know but it does bum me out when people argue so much about theology i agree that they never they never make that connection with one another in fact i actually think it's a bit it can be a bit of a smoke screen you know uh people argue about the finer points in theology because they're um because it's a lot harder to learn how to love your enemies you know yeah it's like it's a lot harder to do the very clear things in scripture loving your neighbor loving your enemies forgiveness that's really hard yeah and more challenging than having an opinion about the the end of the world yeah totally yep you just heard from pastor poet dale fredrickson poet amina brown singer-songwriter julian baker and john mark mcmillan in the last segment thanks so much to each of them for speaking with us i guess the one thing that i'm still caught up on though is this how is religious art unique as compared to other art is there any delineation that is worth making there if you used a word like spiritual to talk more about that sort of deeper existential approach to ultimate reality and everything is spiritual trademark rebel then a word like religious to me is is more of a method or system like you said to get to the spirit to get to that existential place but arguably still everything is that in life so maybe it's specifically about these big religions that have been established as constructs already christianity judaism hinduism buddhism islam taoism all those big ones have common metaphors that no matter whether you're a you know a mormon or a southern baptist there's a ton of tradition and metaphor and language that you share together because you're both under this christian umbrella so to me i wonder if it's almost like when you start systematizing things like you could talk about baroque music or something you have to find similarities you have to find enough similarities to be able to term something baroque music that it kind of falls within that system or even any any other genre imaginary construct country music there's something similar enough to all the other country music that's out there that makes people think this fits within that construct so i wonder if religious art could be thought of as the art that plays with those shared metaphors and shared languages that have been passed down through those major systems so that's why a song that sings about jesus within the tradition of christianity as the son of god maybe is a little more religious feeling than a song that uses jesus christ as a cuss word it's like part of a tradition it's part of a system and group of people that have used that language for the sake of engaging in worship and in faith and belief i actually think it's interesting to think about that especially in the context of taoism because it almost really illustrates the point well um because i i could be mistaken i'm no expert but i i don't think taoism incorporates a god construct at all that taoism is very much like a why faith not a who or what yeah um and so i wonder if in that culture uh you know there's nothing no under the sun i wonder if that kind of distinction between religious art and non-religious art would be equally or more nonsensical than it seems to us in our post theistic framework because and otherwise yeah i totally see like it's it's the relation to the system but the system of taoism is almost even more uh radically transcendent and inclusive of all than even the the brahmana of hinduism or buddhism i haven't studied much taoism i've studied a little not a ton i'm i'm going really deep into the archives i'm really concerned i'm going to get a bunch of emails being like well you murdered that but i i think you know it's it's definitely the reason i remember is when i was studying non-theism and taoism is an excellent illustration to use if you're talking about non-theism it's even it's even better maybe than buddhism as a non-theistic faith uh well there's atheistic churches that get together and do whatever they do have you ever you never went to an atheistic church did you i want to there's actually one in la that i've really wanted to check out really yeah so is that practicing a religion i don't know the the i think the test it's definitely a system so it on the system ground yes the question is is it spiritual and spiritual would be of or relating to uh the human spirit and other things transcendent man but i bet that's in the neighborhood of where a dictionary would go if you consider a human spirit some immaterial essence of a person that is transcends beyond or is independent of that person's physicality then no they're not it's not spiritual but if you're talking about the essence of a person then i would be tempted to call the atheist church's religious even though they themselves would probably issue that label pretty uh intensely i mean i think if if it lasted long enough if enough people became part of it and if there became an actual formalized liturgy and they started using their own metaphors and their own language that were recognizably atheist you know if they what's what's that what do they call the spaghetti monster the flying spaghetti monster flying spaghetti monster if the flying spaghetti monster became a real part of their liturgy that they used to mock religion or whatever you know then that would be and then people started singing there was like an atheist songwriter it's like he was singing a lot about the flying spaghetti monster i would consider that a religious song and they they do vaguely have a liturgy it's not about the flying spaghetti monster but it is about uh shared communal experiences it turns out it is relatively fun to sing with other people right yeah it turns out it it now that what's funny is how sort of protestant and even evangelical the liturgy of atheist churches tend to be yeah but you tend to have like a really inspiring speaker you tend to like make a a collection for some worthy cause uh you sing some songs together typically like journey or other universally held exciting music in our culture and uh and you get together on a sunday sunday meeting that's because the deeper religion of both the protestants and the atheist churches is consumerism and capitalism that's a fair critique i think i said that a little tongue-in-cheek but i just was throwing it to you to see what you'd say no i think it's totally fair um atheist atheism and skepticism are uniquely memetically adapted to wealthy capitalist societies independent of their truth claims that's not like like i'm not saying atheism is wrong because of that or immoral or amoral i am simply saying there's a strong correlation today atheists tend to be people of means that makes me think of spiral dynamics which by the way listener if you don't know what that is is a theory about how human consciousness tends to evolve you can check it out in episode 5 of liturgist to learn more but mike i'm sure you remember that girl at the london belong event that we did who gave us the pushback about the the whole structure of the spiral dynamics being extremely western-centric yeah absolutely i agree with her i thought she had really great thoughts about how um spiral dynamics does tend to centralize western culture in its system i think i do think though that there is also something about western civilization about the luxury and even privilege that that happens within it that allows space with all the riches and luxuries and technology and medicine space for more thought more navel gazing over time more new ideas and ultimately levels of consciousness you know it's sort of unfortunate that it's how it works but but that is one of the positive side effects of some corrupt systems and when in thinking of that in terms of religious art the water that we're talking about here still is muddy to me because all these aspects of reality consumerism our practices our religious language our levels of consciousness it all gets blended together it's just our experience it's just the human experience and there aren't any clean lines between all this stuff so you know it's no wonder that a well thought out system like spiral dynamics can inadvertently be biased towards the people inventing the construct well i also think part of her critique that i've learned more about and learned to appreciate and this totally relates i think to the art conversation there's this book called the spell of the sensuous which is about a westerner who spent some time in indonesia and not as a tourist i believe as an anthropologist and was studying shamans and their relationship to the natural environment and as he immersed himself in that culture and those practices the way he saw the world fundamentally changed he felt a kinship with life in a visceral way not a cerebral way and you know he tells a little anecdotes about that he basically came back and right when he right when he got back he sit in a park and a squirrel like came up and sat next to him just kind of hung there and he just had this affinity with natural things that faded the long he was back in the west and this is a person who was very much a heady thinker felt like he had experienced a very transcendent reality and became aware that actually even at his most enlightened he had still been relatively blind so that's when he said that there's some some ideas that these you know ever greater levels of intellectual processing that then create new insights that then move back to a visceral state uh you know what i mean it's like trying to ride a bicycle with stilts that's my analogy not his but it's actually less efficient than these people have simply lived to be present in the world and instead of domineering or mastering nature they partner with it and so when the shamans come and came and spoke of spirits when they came and spoke of energies when they looked very carefully at where the light fell in a home and at piles of things in the corner that seemed arbitrary and superstitious they were actually making a connection to real things so in one case there was some illness in someone's home and so he told them to offer these rice offerings to the local spirits and they started to and sure enough the illness stopped and it turned out what it was was like an ant infestation and it says springs pesticides they put these you know i don't know how many paces it was but off the four quarters of homes and sure enough the ants came and took the rice and were too busy eating the rice to infest the home um and the people just saw empty trays and spirits taking it and then he was like well that of cour that is spirits taking it that's not just a metaphor um and he he literally he saw the world differently and as he came back to the west it faded and so i think that critique of spiral dynamics yeah you know this is my nine thing both both have a lot of truth to them one that there is this privilege that creates this freedom to think but on the other hand that can give us a sense of i don't want to say superiority because it's not i don't think anyone feels superior to an indigenous culture but they can almost feel like there's a nuance in their perspective when in fact there's also this incredible so it in many ways like cave paintings are their own sistine chapel um and and in many ways for all we've gained there are some things we've we've lost too and spiral dynamics denotes this the biggest valid critique for meospro dynamics is that it includes an inherent progression if it was simply a a chronology of changes i you know which is how i tend to think of it which is why i like it great but i think i think true enlightenment can exist at quote unquote purple yeah yeah yeah i mean at at an enlightened purple where i think you and i have recently kind of toured like forget uh religious versus non-art you know that tree is art yeah exactly all every expression contains unspeakable beauty i wonder how much though just one more little devil's advocate because i don't disagree with what i actually love what that all that um but i wonder how much of the pushback against wanting it to be a progression still is somehow rooted in western bias i suppose like because the development of these they do become more complex right i mean moving from painting a cave to painting the sistine chapel is more complex to say is is our desire to not say um that it's more complex or that it that it's further down that whatever trail it things go down to become more and more complex um is that rooted in some sort of western bias as well that we don't want to say that because we want to be fair to the cave painting and whatever when if you go back to forget purple enlightenment i think you what if what if the tree is awareness itself that is enlightenment you know i mean like all of our concepts of enlightened and consciousness becoming more complex our association with that being better is a bias in itself on some level as it gets more complex maybe that spiral leads back to itself to just to just be just as that tree is just as that cave painting is just as that sistine chapel is you wind around in circles and circles and circles just to realize that you've always been in the same place the whole time i feel like all of our conversations happen on a spiral and it's a downward spiral and at the bottom of the spiral is existentialism every show it's gonna get there somehow because i was just about to say well it's not better or worse it's just like there are advantages or disadvantages to any idea any system any perspective grid and even good or bad exists coming down to your reference frame yeah totally it's just it's just our gravitational pull just down to that down to the nothingness well thanks so much again to all the guests who are part of this show thanks to greg nordine and cory pig for all their work for making this episode happen we want to thank all our patrons on patreon who financially make the show possible i'm science mike i'm michael gunger thanks for listening everybody which is i am