I Made An Icon! (Or: Recapturing Beauty In The Church)

(See below for larger images).  Yes, that’s right, I’m quickly spiraling down the path of idolatry.  Actually, this is my final project for my “Art and the Bible” class.  (I included the second picture for those of you who are particularly offended by images of Jesus).  Seriously, though, I’m with Sproul on this one.  There is nothing inherently evil about this sort of religious imagery (although I do think there are superior forms of art).  And as long as I’m not worsh…er…venerating it, or thinking that whatever honor I bestow upon this piece of painted canvas I’m actually bestowing upon Christ, I see no harm in it.  You can be Reformed without being an iconoclast.  And Sproul actually contends that even Calvin thought of many of his iconoclastic policies as being merely provisional, until people got over their Roman tendencies to turn the art into idols.

More than that, though, Protestantism has done itself a great disservice by marginalizing art.  We can’t have anything too beautiful in the sanctuary because it would be distracting from worship.  Aside from the obvious reality that people will space out during the sermon no matter how ugly the room is, I wonder why we don’t go all the way and start learning mediation techniques to clear our minds of all possible thoughts and images that could distract us.   This seems more consistent.  Instead, we have artistic people in the church who can’t find any way to put their God-given gifts to use in an explicitly religious way that is beneficial to the church community.  We either force them to suppress their talents, channel them into something more practical like architecture (but don’t get any ideas about making our church building look too fancy!), or they just end up producing the kind of schmaltzy  paintings that you see on Christian greeting cards.  Or worse, we chase them off and they end up converting to Roman Catholicism where their talents are appreciated.  Don’t get me wrong, that’s a bad reason to become a Catholic, but we shouldn’t be forcing our Protestant artists into that position in the first place.

I just think it’s time we stopped being afraid of a robust religious art and started being as concerned with beauty in the church as we are with truth.  

(Oh, by the way, I’m not an artist or the son of an artist, so I’m aware that my painting is pretty lame.  Please don’t feel the need to point that out to me )