Sawai Chinnawong (Thai, 1959–), Holy Spirit, 2003. Ink drawing, 14 × 17 in. Artist’s statement: “God’s all-seeing eye takes in the whole of creation, here represented by slivers of his cosmos. A great mother bird feeds us, her spiritual young. The metamorphosis of all life, part flower, part animal, takes place in my Christian view of Yin and Yang.”
Romans 8:6:
“To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”(RSV)
“Obsession with self . . . is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life.” (The Message)
This post belongs to the weekly series Artful Devotion. If you can’t view the music player in your email or RSS reader, try opening the post in your browser.
To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for Proper 10, cycle A, click here.
Image and song have long been used in Christian worship—the latter since the formation of the first church community, and the former since at least as far back as 200 AD. Supporting the liturgy, supporting personal spiritual growth, art (from all disciplines) has a way of helping us enter deeper into God’s truth. “Artists are the midrashic thinkers of our day,” says Nate Risdon, program director of the Brehm Center, referring to art’s ability to interpret the scriptures. By illuminating the word, art illuminates the Word.
I’m starting a new ongoing series of Tuesday blog posts, each of which will draw an art image and a piece of music into conversation with a short scripture text. I am not going to write any commentary, as I want to let the word and works speak for themselves and you to be free to make your own connections. (Not to mention that just curating, not researching and writing, will enable me to maintain a consistent weekly frequency.) In addition to the scripture–visual art–music triad, I may also occasionally provide a poem, recorded dance performance, film clip, or some other type of art to further illuminate the selected scripture passage.
Now, when I say illuminate, I do not mean illustrate. I mean, as per Merriam-Webster, enlighten, brighten with light; bring to the fore; make illustrious or resplendent; beautify. In some cases there will be a direct correspondence among the selected pieces, while at other times that correspondence will be more slant.
So this will be an online art devotional of sorts. My entire blog has a devotional focus (which I hope comes across); although some posts are more information-heavy than others, I always have the edification of believers in mind with everything I publish. But this new, concise format—which will be supplementing, not replacing, my usual medium- and longer-form posts—will hopefully be more accessible and is meant to be attended with quiet, focused contemplation.
I’m calling the series “Artful Devotion.” I realize that “art” and “devotion” in the same sentence is an uncomfortable pairing for some Protestants, but by devotion I simply mean cultivating a deeper love for Christ by meditating on his word, an act that I think can be enriched by the “commentary” of artists, be they songwriters, painters, or whatever. “Doing my devotions” is a common phrase in Protestant parlance, which refers to prayerfully reading the Bible. Many Protestants already incorporate singing or listening to music into this practice. I’m going one further and adding visual art—because we are a visual people, and what we see shapes our desires.
How will I choose the scripture passages? My intention, for now, is to follow the Revised Common Lectionary, a three-year cycle of weekly scripture readings built around the church year. Every Sunday the RCL assigns four passages—one each from the Hebrew Bible, the Psalms, the Epistles, and the Gospels—so I will select an excerpt from one of these to anchor the Artful Devotion on the Tuesday prior. We’ll see how it goes.
I hope you enjoy this new offering. As always, feedback is welcome, via either the blog’s public comment fields or a private e-mail to victoria.emily.jones@gmail.com.
The first entry in the series will be published tomorrow.
Psallos: The Hebrews Album (Kickstarter): You have the opportunity to help finance a musical adaptation of the book of Hebrews for folk rock band and chamber orchestra. Cody Curtis, the composer behind Psallos, has already written the music; now he needs your help to pay for the recording and production. Curtis has already proven his skill at capturing the varied tones and trajectory of an epistle with his setting of Romans, released in 2012 (read my review here), and Thomas Griffith and Kelsie Edgren are returning to lend their beautiful vocal interpretations. I have full confidence that Psallos’s second epistle-based album will be nothing short of amazing! Besides a copy of the CD when it’s released, tiered reward options include the chance to sing on the CD as a choir member, the choice of any passage of scripture for Curtis to set to music, and a Psallos concert at your church. Also, the team is looking for a videographer and donated instruments, so get in touch with them if you’re able to help out in either of those areas.
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Should Patriotism Have a Place in Church?I really appreciate John Piper’s response to this question in last week’s Ask Pastor John podcast episodes. (Listen to part 2 here.) “I have been in several churches,” he says, “where on the Fourth of July the focus”—on each of the military branches and patriotic songs and flags and marches and decorations in red, white, and blue—“seemed to me uninformed, unshaped by the radical nature of the gospel, and out of proportion to the relationship between America and the kingdom of Christ.” He advises that American flags not be displayed in the sanctuary, and pledges of allegiance to the USA not be recited in a worship service, because church is where we acknowledge the absolute authority of Christ and no other.
As Christians, Piper says, we have “no unqualified allegiance to any political party, any nationality, any ethnicity, any tribal identity, or any branch of the armed service. It is all qualified. It is all secondary. It is all relative to the will of Christ. We should not say anything or do anything that looks as if that were not true. . . . The recitation of a pledge to a human authority”—and/or the display of a symbol of national identity—“in the setting of the worship of divine authority does not provide for the kind of Christian qualifications and nuances that are so necessary precisely in our day.”
The seed, Lord, falls on stony ground
Which sun and rain can never bless—
Until the soil is broken found—
With harvest fruitfulness.
John Constable (British, 1776–1837), Spring Ploughing, 1821. Oil on panel, 19 × 36.2 cm.
Run by Rick Wilcox, “Literary Life is a celebration of the Word. Leading with a discussion of modern and classic literature, we seek to tease out eternal truths which may be illumined by fiction, poetry, art and music.” The blog recently finished walking through Karen Swallow Prior’s memoir Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me; before that, it was Malcolm Guite’s The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter. Each post is a treat!
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Mary of Guelders prayer book now online: In the early fifteenth century, while the Limbourg Brothers were hard at work on the Très Riches Heures de Duc de Berry, Duchess Mary of Guelders (John of Berry’s niece) commissioned an extraordinary 900-plus-page book that would become the high point of the late medieval book industry in the Northern Low Countries. Due to its condition, it has been stored away for the last few decades at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, inaccessible even to most scholars. But a crowdfunded project led by Johan Oosterman is bringing the hidden treasure to light, allowing for extensive research, restoration, and (next October) public exhibition.
To keep the public informed of progress, a new website has been launched, with blog posts, videos, and tabs on “Mary’s World,” “The Prayers,” “The Decoration,” and more. And best of all, just last month a full digitization of the book was added to the site so that anyone with an Internet connection can browse through its hundreds of prayers and 106 miniatures. The miniature that stood out most to me is the one on verso page 132, illustrating the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. It shows Dives on his golden throne being swallowed by a hell-mouth, while from heaven Abraham denies his request for a drink of water.
“Lazarus and the rich man from the mouth of hell,” from the prayer book of Mary of Guelders, ca. 1415. Fol. 132v. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
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New arrangement of “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” and “Come, Thou Almighty King”: The music at last month’s General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, convened in Greensboro, North Carolina, was fantastic. With permission, I’m posting a video excerpt from the evening worship service held on June 14, 2017. The first hymn, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee,” was written by Henry Van Dyke in 1907 to a tune from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; this version was arranged by Joel Littlepage (the musical director and keyboardist with the bowtie; assistant pastor of worship at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Winston Salem) and Michael Anderson (the pianist; composer-in-residence at Redeemer) and was orchestrated by Joel Littlepage. The first verse is sung very traditionally—in strict time to a chorded piano accompaniment—but then at 1:05, it gets real lively! The orchestra kicks into full gear, expressing the brightness of the hymn text.
Then just when you think it couldn’t get any more joyful, the praise team launches into a second hymn at 3:36 to ululation (celebratory cheer sounds), this one Caribbean-flavored. Composed by Felice de Giardini in the eighteenth century, “Come, Thou Almighty King” is a Trinitarian invocation: “Come, Thou Almighty King” (verse 1), “Come, Thou Incarnate Word” (verse 2), “Come, Holy Comforter” (verse 3). This particular arrangement is by Joel Littlepage, with orchestration by Michael Anderson. The musicians are as follows.
Vocal section (left to right): Kyle Dickerson; David Gill; Mary Higgins; Melissa Littlepage; Nikki Ellis, choir director Rhythm section: Joel Littlepage, keyboard; Michael Anderson, piano; Daniel Faust, drums; Larry Carman, hand percussion; Kevin Beck, electric guitar Horn section: Christian Orr, trumpet; Tim Plemmons, saxophone; Ben Nelson, trombone String section: Heather Conine, violin; Violet Huang, viola; Adi Muralidharan, cello; Julie Money, harp Wind section: Suzanne Kline and Lydia Wu, flute
“Mark Dean Projects Stations of the Cross Videos on Henry Moore Altar,” exhibition review and artist interview by Jonathan Evens: On April 15–16 St. Stephen Walbrook in London hosted an all-night Easter Eve vigil that featured a fourteen-video installation by artist-priest Mark Dean. Inspired by the Stations of the Cross, these videos were projected, in sequence and interspersed with readings and periods of silence, onto the church’s round stone altar by the famous modern artist Henry Moore (Dean wanted his work to be presented as an offering). The vigil culminated with a dance performance by Lizzi Kew Ross & Co and a dawn Eucharist. Evens writes,
Mark Dean’s videos are not literal depictions of the Stations of the Cross, the journey Jesus walked on the day of his crucifixion. Instead, Dean appropriated a few frames of iconic film footage together with extracts of popular music and then slowed down, reversed, looped or otherwise altered these so that the images he selected were amplified through their repetition. As an example, in the first Stations of the Cross video, a clip of Julie Andrews as the novice Maria from the opening scenes of The Sound of Music was layered over an extract, from the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho, of a car arriving at Bates Motel where Marion Crane would be murdered by Norman Bates. The blue of the sky and the innocence suggested by Maria’s religious vocation was in contrast with the footage from Psycho, which was indicative of the violent death to which Jesus was condemned. [Read more of the review, plus an interview with the artist, here.]
Mark Dean, “I. The Royal Road,” from Stations of the Cross cycle. Video projected on Henry Moore altar at St. Stephen Walbrook, London, April 15–16, 2017. Photo: Jonathan EvensMark Dean, “VIII. Daughters of Jerusalem,” from Stations of the Cross cycle. Video projected on Henry Moore altar at St. Stephen Walbrook, London, April 15–16, 2017. Photo: Jonathan EvensMark Dean, “IX. In Freundschaft,” from Stations of the Cross cycle. Video projected on Henry Moore altar at St. Stephen Walbrook, London, April 15–16, 2017. Photo: Jonathan Evens
Sounds like an exemplary integration of art and liturgy! You can read the catalog essay and watch the videos on Dean’s website, tailbiter.com. See also the interview with curator Lucy Newman Cleeve published in Elephant magazine.
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“Featured Artist: Nicholas Mynheer” by Victoria Emily Jones: This month I wrote a profile on British artist Nicholas Mynheer for Transpositions, the official blog of the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. (There’s a glitch with their publishing tool that is preventing all the artworks from displaying, but all the ones I discuss in the article can be found at www.mynheer-art.co.uk.) A painter, sculptor, and glass designer, Nick works almost exclusively on religious subjects, in a style that blends influences from medieval, primitive, and expressionist art. I met him in 2013 and got to see his studio and his work in situ in various Oxford churches. His love of God and place was obvious from my spending just one afternoon with him. Other articles I’ve written are on Nick’s Wilcote Altarpiece, Islip Screen, and 1991 Crucifixion painting (which I own).
Nicholas Mynheer (British, 1958–), Harvest, 2010. Oil on canvas, 70 × 70 cm.Nicholas Mynheer (British, 1958–), Michaelmas Term Window, 2012. Fused glass. Abingdon School Chapel, Oxfordshire, England.Nicholas Mynheer (British, 1958–), Corpus of Christ, 2010. English limestone, 85 cm tall.
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Season 14 of So You Think You Can Dancepremiered last Monday (the only TV show I never miss!). Watching dancers draws me into a deeper awe of God, as I see all the creative potentialities of the human body he designed. Here are my two favorite auditions from episode 1. The first is husband-wife duo Kristina Androsenko and Vasily Anokhin performing ballroom. The second is a modern dance number performed by Russian twins Anastasiia and Viktoriia; they gave no comment on the dance’s motivation or meaning, but it’s clear that it represents trauma of some kind.
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“Why we need Mary Oliver’s poems” by Debra Dean Murphy: “Oliver is a mystic of the natural world, not a theologian of the church. . . . Her theological orientation is not that of orthodox Christianity. Nevertheless, Christians have much to gain from reading Oliver . . .” Her poems are “occasions for transfiguring the imagination and a summons to wonder and delight”; they remind us “of what it means to attend to what is before us in any given moment,” teach us to adopt “a posture of receptivity that Christians sometimes speak of as part of our vocation—the calling to live more fully into our humanity as persons bearing the imago dei, to mirror the divine dance of mutual presence, mutual receptivity, mutual love.” Some of my favorite Oliver poems are “Praying,”“I Wake Close to Morning,”“Messenger,”“The Summer Day,” and “How the Grass and the Flowers Came to Exist, a God-Tale.”
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NEW SONG: “Weep with Me” by Rend Collective: Written last month in response to the Manchester Arena bombing, “Weep with Me” is a contemporary lament psalm in which the speaker asks God to do what the title says: weep with him. To feel his pain and respond. It’s introduced and performed acoustically by band member Chris Llewellyn in the video below.
Can worship and suffering co-exist? Can pain and praise inhabit the same space? Can we sing that God is good when life is not? When there are more questions than answers? The Bible says a resounding yes: these songs are called laments and they make up a massive portion of the Psalms.
We felt it was fitting to let you hear this lament we’ve written today as we prepare to play tonight in Manchester. We can’t make the pain go away. We refuse to provide cheap, shallow answers. But hopefully this song can give us some vocabulary to bring our raw, open wounds before the wounded healer, who weeps with us in our distress. We pray that we can begin to raise a costly, honest and broken hallelujah. That is what it means to worship in Spirit and in Truth.
Blogger’s Note: One of the first three departments created in 1789 in the new executive branch of the United States government was the War Department—now called the Department of Defense. Having witnessed the evils of war firsthand while serving as surgeon general of the Middle Department of the Continental Army, founding father Benjamin Rush published an essay in Banneker’s Almanac in 1793 advocating for the formation of a cabinet-level Department of Peace to promote a counterethic. Among other things, his proposed Secretary of Peace would be responsible for abolishing capital punishment; dissolving state militias, including getting rid of military uniforms and titles; and providing every family with a Bible by which to become educated in Christ’s law.
His plan even provides for the interior decoration of the Peace Office—which must include lamb, dove, and olive branch imagery; biblical inscriptions; and a collection of plowshares and pruning hooks forged from the melted-down metals of swords and spears—as well as its sonic environment: the daily singing of peace hymns. The War Office, by contrast, should display images of death and destruction and bear cautionary inscriptions.
Literary satire, maybe. Then again, maybe not. Rush was an uncompromising champion of many causes throughout his lifetime, including, besides nonviolence, public education, prison and mental health reform, the abolition of slavery, mass distribution of Bibles, and temperance. While his proposal for a U.S. Department of Peace may sound airy-fairy and ridiculous, he very much believed in its practicality, and his confidence has been matched by twentieth- and twenty-first-century politicians: since the publication of Rush’s “Plan of a Peace-Office,” almost a hundred bills have been introduced in Congress proposing the creation of such a department, most recentlyin 2015.
Among the defects which have been pointed out in the Federal Constitution by its antifederal enemies, it is much to be lamented that no person has taken notice of its total silence upon the subject of an office of the utmost importance to the welfare of the United States, that is, an office for promoting and preserving perpetual peace in our country.
It is to be hoped that no objection will be made to the establishment of such an office, while we are engaged in a war with the Indians, for as the War-Office of the United States was established in time of peace, it is equally reasonable that a Peace-Office should be established in the time of war.
The plan of this office is as follows:
I. Let a Secretary of the Peace be appointed to preside in this office, who shall be perfectly free from all the present absurd and vulgar European prejudices upon the subject of government. Let him be a genuine republican and a sincere Christian, for the principles of republicanism and Christianity are no less friendly to universal and perpetual peace than they are to universal and equal liberty. Continue reading “ESSAY: “A Plan of a Peace-Office for the United States” by Benjamin Rush”→
William Congdon (American, 1912–1998), Pentecost 2, ca. 1962. Oil on tile, 4 × 4 cm. The Province of Milan Art Collection.
“Pentecostal Hour” by Mark DeBolt
No zephyr soft
but cyclone strong
bore thoughts aloft
in windy song.
No flicker mild
but flames of red
danced hot and wild
upon each head.
And so fierce was
our thundering word
in languages
of all who heard,
all knew it meant
the Spirit’s power.
This was our Pent-
ecostal hour.
“Pentecost Villanellette” by Mark DeBolt
Not as a dove the Holy Spirit came
to the disciples gathered in a room,
but as a violent wind and tongues of flame.
A cyclone roared the ineffable name
as fire on each blushing brow did bloom.
Not as a dove the Holy Spirit came
to give sight to the blind and heal the lame
and raise the dead and dispel error’s gloom,
but as a violent wind and tongues of flame.
The Breath of God is anything but tame.
Who dally with it dally with their doom.
Not as a dove the Holy Spirit came,
but as a violent wind and tongues of flame.
This Sunday Christians will celebrate Pentecost, the historic giving of the Holy Spirit to all believers in Jesus Christ and thus the birthday of the church.
Before it was the name of a Christian holiday, Pentecost (Heb. Shavuot) was celebrated annually by the Jewish people in honor of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Jews still celebrate it today, fifty days after Passover—hence the name Pentecost (“pente” = five). (Appropriately, Christian Pentecost occurs fifty days after Easter.) Because of the importance of the feast, ancient Jews traveled from all over the known world to their religious capital, Jerusalem, for the occasion, and that’s what we see in Acts 2—a multiregional, multilinguistic gathering. Continue reading ““Not as a dove…”: Two Pentecost poems by Mark DeBolt”→
I’ve seen two movies from 2016 that center on a nun, or nuns. The first is Little Sister, a dramedy directed by Zach Clark. It’s about twenty-something Colleen Lunsford, a novice (prospective nun) who’s temporarily called away from the convent when her brother returns from the Iraq War, suffering from depression after a bomb left his face disfigured. In the town she grew up in Colleen is known as the Goth girl, so former high school friends are shocked to learn about her new religious vocation.
I wish the faith dimension was explored a bit more—the only insight we get into Colleen’s decision to become a Christian and pursue the monastic life is a line she mutters about structure and stability. (Was that her only motivation?) The film is more about reconnecting with family and recognizing that even though you grow up and your interests and bearing and goals may change, your past self, or selves, always remain a little bit a part of you. It’s empathetic and dark but also funny, and it shows how there’s no one mold that makes a nun; nuns come from different places in life, and oftentimes sustain (complicated) relationships outside the cloister. (Watch on Netflix)
The second one I’ve seen and commend is The Innocents, directed by Anne Fontaine. Set in a convent in late-1945 Poland and based on a true story, it documents the crisis of faith the nuns of that community are forced to undergo when many of them are raped by invading Russian troops and some pregnancies result. The nuns respond in diverse ways to the horror, struggling to regain their spiritual equilibrium. In desperation, they employ an atheistic French female doctor from the Red Cross, stationed nearby, to help them deliver their babies and to bear their secret. (Watch on Amazon Video)
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“If I Believe You: Agnostic Songs to Jesus” by Joy Clarkson: This article analyzes the song “If I Believe You” by the 1975—which opens with “I’ve got a God-shaped hole that’s infected . . .”—in light of the wider trend of self-proclaimed unreligious artists writing songs addressed to Jesus. Clarkson observes that (1) even within the profoundly secular industry of popular music, there is an openness to spirituality, religion, and Jesus; (2) songs written not only about Jesus, but to Him, create a unique discursive space; and (3) an invocation of negative transcendence may create an openness to a true spiritual experience. I’m intrigued by the titles of the books she references, including The Bible in/and Popular Culture: A Creative Encounter (2010); Mashup Religion: Pop Music and Theological Invention (2011); and Personal Jesus: How Popular Music Shapes Our Souls (2013).
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Knits by Petros Vrellis: Designed using an algorithm, Vrellis’s re-creations of figures from famous El Greco paintings are formed by knitting a single thread across anchor pegs on a circumference loom. Watch a time-lapse video of Vrellis putting together a knit based on El Greco’s Christ Blessing, below, and read more about his process here. (Another Jesus portrait Vrellis has done is based on El Greco’s Christ in Prayer, visible at 2:27 at the bottom right.) Vrellis has a master’s degree in art sciences; he enjoys exploring the potential of new media through digital art and interactive installations and considers himself more of a “toy inventor” than an artist. Thank you to Tobias M. from Vienna for informing me of this impressive work.
Knit by Petros Vrellis (Greek, 1974–), based on the painting Christ Blessing by El Greco.
Some of Vrellis’s knits are for sale via Saatchi Art.
Henry Ossawa Tanner (American, 1859–1937), Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures, ca. 1909. Oil on canvas, 48.8 × 40 in. Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas.
“The Son of Man” by Charles L. O’Donnell
He lit the lily’s lamp of snow
And fired the rose’s sunset heart,
He timed the light’s long ebb and flow
And drove the coursing winds apart.
He gathered armfuls of the dew
And shook it over earth again,
He spread the heaven’s cloth of blue
And topped the fields with plenteous grain.
He tuned the stars to minstrelsy
As twilight soft, as bird song wild,
Who learned beside His Mother’s knee
His prayers like any other child.
This poem was originally published in The Dead Musician, and Other Poemsby Charles L. O’Donnell (New York: Laurence J. Gomme, 1916) and is now in the public domain.
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Mary gave her son everything she had—body, mind, and soul. These three served as the seedbed of his maturation. She surrendered her womb, where Jesus progressed through the various stages of embryonic and fetal development as he took in the nutrients supplied by her blood. Once born, she gave him her body’s milk, and often forwent sleep to attend to his cries, a deprivation all mothers have known. But her provision was more than physical. She also nurtured, with the help of Joseph, his intellectual, emotional, and spiritual growth, fulfilling as best she could her parental calling.
O’Donnell’s poem juxtaposes the deity of Christ—in particular, his role as Creator and Sustainer of the universe—with his humanity, highlighting how he is one who both shapes and was shaped. He chose the color of each and every flower, he programmed the angular speed of Earth’s rotation and its atmospheric circulation patterns, he wrote the laws of thermodynamics, he makes energy-rich grain to grow under his vast expanse of sky, and he conducts the choir of Nature: makes the stars to sing in soft duet with the twilight, then cues in the wild avian melodies of the morning. Monumental feats—all these. Testaments to his mastery and might.
And yet as the incarnate boychild Jesus of Nazareth, he sat at his mother’s knee, learning from her the sacred stories of his people, and how to address the Father they had in common (albeit in different senses).
We know from her Magnificat that Mary was a woman of deep passion and yearning, gratitude and praise, and from the Annunciation account, we get a sense of her courageous trust. Luke 2:19 points to her contemplative nature, and the Passion narratives attest to her faithfulness. These qualities characterized the way she lived and infused the spiritual instruction she gave her son. Continue reading “Mother Mary teaches her son Jesus”→
In addition to those I posted in March, here are a few more conferences of note. (Update, 5/4: I’ve added two more entries since the original publication of this post. Thanks, Chloë Reddaway and Talita Peters, for the tips!)
UPCOMING CONFERENCES
Title:“The Place of Sacred Art: Exploring the Interpretation of Sacred Art in Secular and Faith Contexts” Date: May 9, 2017 Location: AV Room, Gas Hall, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, England Organizer:Canon Dr. Andrew Smith, director of interfaith relations for the bishop of Birmingham Cost: £20 Speakers: David Cheetham, Catherine Ogle, Orit Azaz, Rebecca Bridgman, Peter Bradley Description: This symposium will consider the ways in which people reinterpret sacred art when it is displayed in new contexts or alongside art from different faith traditions, and how displaying different types of art in sacred spaces transforms our understanding of the sacred and the artistic. Presentations address how cathedrals have negotiated being open to artists of different religious backgrounds and exhibiting work that challenges and questions, and how contemporary art can offer unexpected encounters with the sacred. Registration also includes a tour through the award-winning Faith in Birmingham Gallery by curator Rebecca Bridgman.
Title: “‘any-angled light’: Poetry and the Mission of Your Church” Date: May 16–18, 2017 Location: Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut Organizer:Yale Institute of Sacred Music Cost: $65 (registration ends May 8, noon ET!) Keynote speakers:Mary Karr and Christian Wiman Description: How does poetry equip the church to fulfill its mission of inviting others into God’s future? Drawing on spiritual verse spanning all eras from the biblical to the contemporary, this conference for church leaders and laypeople will (1) inspire the integration of poetry into a church’s congregational life and its public outreach and activism; (2) model the introduction of poetry and poetic sensibilities into worship; and (3) expose participants to diverse poetry and poetic forms. Besides plenary sessions with two of America’s finest poets, the conference includes workshops, musical worship, and a poetry slam.
Title: “Catholicism, Literature and the Arts: 1850–Present” Date: July 5–7, 2017 Location: Durham University, Durham, England Organizers:Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University and Ushaw College Cost: £70 (discount rates for students, low-income, paper presenters) Speakers:Eamon Duffy, Terry Eagleton, Paul Lakeland, Anna Lawson, Melanie McDonagh, HE Daniel Mulhall, Paul Anthony Murray Description: The conference “will bring together leading scholars to address key questions in the study of Catholic art and writing, including the question of whether there is a distinctive tradition of ‘Catholic literature’. Among the main topics and themes of the conference are Catholic memoir and autobiography; Catholic fiction and poetry; Catholic readership; journalism; publishers and archives; and the visual arts. The conference will include film, music, and the visual arts, as well as literature,” and will consist of lectures, discussion groups, and workshops.
Title:“Canvas: A Conference on Theology and Creativity—Inscape, God, Art, and the Inner Life” Date: August 11–12, 2017 Location:Imago Dei Community, Portland, Oregon Organizers:Humble Beast and Western Seminary Cost: $100 Speakers: TBA Description: “The Canvas Conference humbly exists to inform all acts of human creativity and beauty with biblical, gospel-centered theology for the worship of the triune God. . . . We want to help build strong theological foundations for the artist and, likewise, to push Christians to pursue creative orthodoxy in their theological craft. We have found that without theology, creativity wanders from its original significance and purpose; while without creativity, theology often becomes cold, distant, and futile. In response, The Canvas Conference seeks to build bridges between the artist and the theologian by inviting God to take center stage in every human endeavor.”
Title:“Arts + Spirituality”(11th annual Verge Conference) Date: September 28–29, 2017 Location: Trinity Western University, Langley, British Columbia Organizer:School of the Arts, Media, and Culture, TWU Cost: $199 (discount rates for presenters, students, seniors, and single-day attendees) Keynote speaker:Cam Anderson, executive director, Christians in the Visual Arts Description: Throughout human history and across cultures, the arts have been closely associated with spirituality and religious practice. This conference seeks to explore that connection. Paper submissions are welcome on any topic relating to the arts and spirituality, as are proposals for presentations in the form of performances. The deadline for submissions is May 31.
PAST CONFERENCE
There have been so many events organized around the topic of art and religion in the past year that it’s hard to keep up. Below is a “Study Day” that slipped by before I had the chance to promote it; I’m posting the info here so that you can see the kinds of conversations that are going on among religious studies scholars and museum professionals and can look for future opportunities to join in. (If you’re not in either field but are a museumgoer—and if you’re reading this blog, I imagine you are—a great way to get involved would be to give feedback to the museums you visit. Did their presentation of religion through art and artifact, and wall text, help you connect in a deeper way to your own faith tradition, or see others in a new light? Or did you feel it was offensive, unfair, or in some way else deficient, and if so, why?)
Title:“Encountering the Sacred in Museums” Date: March 15, 2017 Cost: £35 Location: Stevenson Lecture Theatre, British Museum, London Organizer:British Museum Description: This day of discussions on the role museums play in caring for and presenting religious art and artifacts included the lectures “What Is Sacred?” by religious historian Karen Armstrong and “Beyond Belief: The Role of Museums in Interpreting Religion” by Rickie Burman, development manager of London’s National Gallery. In other sessions, visitor experiences at diverse venues were discussed: the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Cornwall, the Creation Museum in Kentucky, and the British Museum during its “Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe,” an exhibition shaped by consultation with community groups.
Centuries of preaching and art have led us to assume without a thought that the two disciples who traveled from Jerusalem to Emmaus the Sunday after the Crucifixion, and dined there with the resurrected Christ, were men. Surely one of them was: the Bible tells us his name was Cleopas (Luke 24:18). But it leaves his companion unnamed.
Some Bible scholars have suggested that Cleopas’s fellow traveler was his wife, Mary. (N. T. Wright, James MontgomeryBoice, and Jim Cole-Rous, to name just three, believe this to be the most reasonable interpretation, and many others, such as Wayne Grudem, consider it a possibility.)
Rowan LeCompte (American, 1925–2014) and Irene Matz LeCompte (American, 1926–1970), Third Station of the Resurrection: The Walk to Emmaus (detail), 1970. Mosaic, Resurrection Chapel, National Cathedral, Washington, DC. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones
Their case is built by conflating the identities of “Mary, mother of James” (Matt. 27:56; Mark 15:40, 16:1; Luke 24:10), present at the Crucifixion and a witness of the empty tomb, and “Mary, wife of Clopas” (John 19:25), also present at the Crucifixion, and then recognizing “Clopas” as a variant spelling of “Cleopas.” Alphaeus—identified in Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:15, and Acts 1:13 as the father of James—is thought to be the Aramaic form of the name. These connections are well supported by church tradition, dating as far back as the second century.
If Cleopas’s wife, Mary, was in Jerusalem for Passover, it makes sense that she would have traveled back home to Emmaus (or stopped overnight in Emmaus en route to home) with her husband afterward. It wouldn’t have been unusual for a married couple, in this relatively private context, to converse with each other along the way about what they had experienced—the rabbi they had been following, dead, and rumored to have risen—and what it might mean.
Mary had seen the empty tomb with her own eyes and even encountered an angel who affirmed, “Christ is not here! He is risen!” But when she told the other disciples, they dismissed her account as too fantastic, perhaps instilling in her a new skepticism; she hadn’t, after all, seen the body. Or maybe her faith remained fortified, and her trip home was spent trying to convince her husband that Jesus was indeed alive.
Whatever the precise content of their discussion, a “stranger” sidled up alongside them, giving his own interpretation of the weekend’s events. They did not notice it was Jesus because “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” It wasn’t until they arrived home with their newly invited guest in tow, put dinner on the table, and saw him bless the meal that “their eyes were opened.”
Art & Theology 