By Jerry Eisley and Andrew Briggs

The Monumental Fool, Seismic Shifts & the Sawdust Trail

With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable to him. (Romans 12:1, J. B. Phillips translation)

For a long time faith and art have seemed unrelated. In fact, what significance does art have to our Christian faith? Is it important? If you ask artists, often they will say we seek spirituality, not religion. If you ask many Christians, some would say art is a luxury, an unnecessary indulgence only for those who can afford it. Others will say, “We are more interested in spreading the Gospel. There is too much need in the world to focus on such luxury.”

What does art have to do with the real world? In many views artistry is synonymous with irresponsibility. This is because, for many, beauty has very little to do with “the important things in life.” Being moral and truthful are more important. Often artists are seen as mere propagandists promoting radical ideas. In truth, beauty and artistry are essential components to our humanity.

Stratford Caldecott masterfully portrays the way in which our humanity must be connected with beauty.

If the world is an ordered whole and whose center is a transcendent principle to which all human hearts are drawn, then that has implications for everyone, not just the pious. Basically, it turns us from two-dimensional beings into three-dimensional ones. We are no longer flatlanders; we inhabit a universe that has depth and shape . . . True beauty is not the idea of the beautiful, an ecstatic archetype in the mind of God, but is an infinite music, drama, art completed in, but never bounded by, the termless dynamism of the Trinity’s life. God is boundless, so is never a boundary. (“Liturgy, Trinity, and Time,” Washington Arts Group Convocation, Washington, D.C. lecture, 18 May 2007)

Faith, creativity, and responsibility are the essence of human uniqueness and dignity. This understanding comes from the creation. After God called forth creation and enlivened Adam from the dust, He declared that creation was good. This creation, recorded in Genesis 2, is active as God’s children, the apple of His eye, must honor their Maker with responsible creation, co-creation, and pro-creation. God the Supreme Artist entrusts His image and His Creation to His children and charges them to be fruitful, multiply, and to be good stewards of that which is good. When we miss the innate goodness of the act of creation and the way in which God values His children’s creativity, we devalue our own humanity. God entrusts this defining creative power to Adam as he names and calls forth the life and identity of animals in Genesis 2:19. This gift of creative authority with responsibility distinguishes humans from other created beings.

God’s revelation in creation cannot be underestimated. In The Creators, Daniel Boorstin states that the greatest gift to the arts in the West is the Bible’s Creation narrative. It is to and from this narrative that the power of Western art flows. Boorstin rightly connects artistic creativity and Judeo-Christian worship. Karen Swenholt masterfully depicts this relationship with the quintessential irony of her sculpture The Monumental Fool (see image below).

For several centuries, however, the arts and the Church have been silent and estranged. If not divorced, they were at least separate, dwelling in splendid isolation. Both vied for being the source of spirituality in a culture increasingly awash in material success and social turmoil. The amounting competition furthered disunity and pushed the Church-arts split further apart. In the same way the atheist’s attempts to divorce himself from the Creator are self-defeating, so also are the Church’s attempts to divorce herself from the arts (and vice versa).

Swenholt eloquently presented The Monumental Fool and the accompanying poem at Russia’s Vladimir Romanov Palace during St. Petersburg’s 300th-anniversary ceremony as a part of the 2003 Washington Arts Group (WAG) exhibition. This palatial home was an established club for Scientist Kings of the Atheist Communist Revolution in the early 1920s. More recently, at the WAG Convocation, “Jumping Out of the Self-Referential Box,” Swenholt’s sculpture and accompanying poem were the visual centerpiece alongside a 23-foot crucified Christ by Ed C. Knippers.

“The Dawn of Reason”
By Karen Swenholt

One morning in the garden of reason
The monumental fool divorced his God and died.
He didn’t know there was food in that root
That seemed to tie him like Gulliver
Bound by snappable cord.
The dry crack of the great divorce still echoes
In the unsteady gait of the proud footless one.
Tying on philosophies and bravado like
Shoeboxes roped onto stumps
He stalks through his world, conqueror
King of fools
Death’s prey.

The Split

The neglect of the fine arts in many branches of the Christian Church can be traced back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Sawdust Trail (the center aisle in the tents of the great revivals) of the American frontier changed the face of the new nation for good. Repentant laborers found their energy and renewal in the power of God. They expressed their newfound faith and community by singing hymns. The cultural legacy of that working-class practical spirit was preserved through music. Hymns were the creative outflow of America. Beginning in the nineteenth century, every U.S. parlor proudly displayed a piano. This community-arts sanctuary was the center of the family. The old hymns distilled the hope of freedom, redemption, and a secure refuge in the times of trouble.

There is double indemnity in Karen Swenholt’s sculpture The Monumental Fool and words, “The Dawn of Reason.” We find that the man of mere reason in the arts is predisposed to cut off his spiritual roots.

American culture has been largely shaped by a Protestant, Word-oriented, practical faith. The revival’s lasting cultural legacy was American hymnody and a logos-centric worldview. While an emphasis on personal conversion and God’s Word was central, a connection to the intellectual world was at best ignored. To quote Billy Sunday, “When the Word of God says one thing and scholarship another, scholarship can go to hell” (“Discipleship of the Mind,” InterVarsity, March 3, 2003).

The artistic outpouring of American hymnody was not a mere outlet of sentimentality but an inspirational social force. While it was essential and influenced mainstream society, there arose within the revival movement an anti-intellectual spirit. Religious zealots polarized a sacred-secular split. Artistic expression was narrowly defined. Because of this limitation, the Church became more self-referential and isolated. It can be argued, therefore, that the outstanding virtues and moral accomplishments of the revivals were sometimes compromised by fear of the unknown. That fear expressed as anti-intellectual bias often forfeited a theology of courage based on Christ as Truth while simultaneously eroding the foundation of Christ in the arts.

With the pinnacle of the industrial revolution came the benefits of leisure time for creation. The Church, however, offered little theology to accommodate the seismic changes in the ordinary lives of the common man. This time of change was also one in which secular circles further enthroned reason and intellectualism. Exemplifying this were the churning communist momentums of the East. When the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, however, some believed it was the inauguration of a new time in which reason would be met with spiritual revival. While that was somewhat true, for most, reason without three-dimensionality took on a new form, a new aesthetic call diversity. This logical move to a time of greater relational communication, efficiency to diversity, was a step in the right direction. But how, in our increasingly diverse, globalized, and relative world, is the Church to respond?

Here the Christian artistic voice has been rendered mute in its articulation of a limited and three-dimensional Gospel and the Church’s lone appeal to solo soterio. With little theology of and much retreat from the arts, the life-blood of restoring the practical engagement of a theology of creation, many Christian artists could no longer “Walk the Line,” straddling legalism while pursuing legitimate faith and creative liberty. Many, as Johnny Cash did, grew weary, felt ostracized, and left the Church. Further, a faith-arts connection has been increasingly shunned as both continue to be extracted from American education. Scriptural thinking and the arts has taken a back seat to vocational training.

A Thirsty Generation

After many years of exposure to encroaching commodification of consumerism, we have hit a wall. A pent-up longing for more than consumer identities and marginalization has burst. The combustive expression of unlikely terrorists (Columbine, picket-fence-hidden parents gone mad, and Virginia Tech) in the world’s richest nation has indicted America’s inner man. Lonely, lacking genuine relationships, and on sensory overload, this generation now gravitates toward the Source. Theirs is a longing to quench a deep inner thirst to be affirmed as beautiful and wonderfully made. Bearing the image and creative authority of God, consumer captives long to be set free.

This is the beginning of a time of revitalization through which God’s people have begun to articulate the manner in which human dignity is inextricably linked with creative beauty. A lack of creative affirmation inclines them toward beauty and a faith-art connection wherein life becomes three-dimensional. Beauty is the lens through which they find Truth. Story and cinema, as well as visual images, have readily overshadowed logic and proposition as an entrance into truth. The pendulum has begun to swing from a mechanical, scientific, Brave New World thinking back toward a classical connection between beauty and truth.

As cultural and social variables will continue to change, we must look to the constancy of our Triune God. We must look, however, with an appreciation of history to the innate elements of our humanity. History, according to my friend Steve Turner, “always repeats itself, has to because no one listens.” What timeless elements of our humanity, we must ask, are found in the Three-in-One in God’s person? There is a unified outpouring of three-in-one virtues that flow from the Godhead. As Greg Wolfe puts it:

Goodness, beauty, and truth are considered by classical philosophy and Christianity as the Transcendentals . . . the three qualities that God has in abundance. Beauty without truth is abstraction—legalism . . . Beauty can clothe truth with concrete, believable human connections. Goodness without Beauty is moralism. Beauty gives goodness mercy. It enables us to see through the eyes of the other. Art takes us out of the self to see with the eyes of the other. It is the closest definition of the compassion that Jesus taught. Beauty without Truth is a lie . . . a mask with no relationship to the face behind it. (“Goodness, Truth, and Beauty,” Washington Arts Group Convocation, Washington, D.C. lecture, 18 May 2007)

The separation of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty have brought about our demise. Reason has failed and fallen in the streets. Beauty in its divorce has become Pornography. We must return to the Source and grasp the role of beauty in the theology of Creation. As human vessels carry the fingerprints of God, creativity and humanity are inseparable. To minimize this connection devalues our humanity.

Looking Behind to See Ahead

Where, then, is the future hope of cultural redemption? The answer lies in the past. The ancient wisdom of the early Church redeems our hearts and imaginations. As Frederica Mathewes-Green stated so eloquently in her WAG Convocation lecture—titled “Trinity and Transformation”—“God will save the world through Beauty . . . You are that Beauty.” If we are to heed Christ’s call as agents of restoration in a realm of commodification, we must be His beauty, uncompromising in our declaration that humans are beautifully and wonderfully made.

The power of the Triune God in the Incarnation is not a cold proposition. The God of the universe came to dwell in man. He came as a three-dimensional being, the full manifestation of God’s glory. After His resurrection, the universe changed. That change awaits the full redemption at His second coming. That is the power of the three-in-one who permeates the very ground of our being. The sawdust trail of personal conversion must be snatched away from its self-referential nature. A personal relationship with Jesus must transform the total man, mind, body, and senses. The persons of the Holy Trinity provide the way out.

The failed idolatry of diversity is transformed in the loving communication of the Godhead: always separate but one. The self-aggrandizement of autonomy is dissolved in loving obedience as the three-in-one, perfect love dwell in harmony. The separation of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth find their harmony in the reality of God. The false worship of each is dissolved in the power of the cross. The window into eternity becomes the fulfillment of time. Matter and our bodies are once again valued through the wounded hands and side in Heaven, ascended to and reigning with the Father at His side.

The longing of the arts, as well as the Church, is not found in something new, but something old. The wisdom of the ancient Church offers us a way out. Truth is relational: that is, the source of the universe. That is what galvanized the ancient Church and gives hope to us today. In that view our bodies are the tabernacle upon which the holy fire of God burns. That fire enlivens the universe and opens us to mysteries and comforts beyond belief. The fire of God forged in humility and the life of the Son is the secret of the universe. In it the work of our hands, the value of our bodies, and the thoughts of our mind become whole.

“Ancient Words”
By Lynn DeShazo

Holy words long preserved for our walk in this world;
They resound with God’s own heart, let the ancient words impart;
Words of life, words of hope, give us strength, help us cope,
In this world where’er we roam, ancient words will guide us home.
Holy words of our faith handed down to this age, came to us through sacrifice,
O heed the faithful words of Christ,
Holy words long preserved for our walk in this world,
They resound with God’s own heart, let the ancient words impart.

Chorus:
Ancient words, ever true, changing me and changing you,
We have come with open hearts, O let the ancient words impart.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jerry Eisley is owner and director of Foxhall Gallery, established in 1976 as a commercial gallery in the heart of the nation’s capital representing more than 60 established national and international artists. He founded the Washington Arts Group in 1978 to encourage spirituality in the arts and to help artists discover the relationship between professionalism and discipleship. He writes and lectures widely on the arts and their connection to society.

Andrew Briggs is an artist (photographer, painter, writer) from northern Virginia with a background in theological studies. Andrew recently founded an arts-advocacy project aimed at educating the international community while empowering former child soldiers in northern Uganda. This effort, now titled “Freedom in Creation,” is a collaborative endeavor supported by the Washington Arts Group.

This article exemplifies an ongoing collaboration and intent to articulate the way in which man needs artistry and beauty. Currently, Briggs and Eisley are extending these thoughts in a writing project exploring art and beauty in the role of postmodern men.

From BreakPoint, October 30, 2007,  reprinted with permission of Prison Fellowship, www.breakpoint.org.