Jack White is a performer – no ifs, ands, or buts about it – and yet he has the audacity to expect a relationship of mutuality from his audiences. If you’ve ever preached, given a speech, or performed on stage in any capacity then you know exactly what he’s talking about here. There is a kind of reciprocal relationship that can exist between artist and audience, giver and receiver, wherein the gift is nurtured and grown between them.
The problem, according to Jack, is that American audiences are increasingly “spoiled,” by which he seems to mean lazy or entitled. Referring to the rock concert, Jack says, “It’s supposed to be a sharing experience.” Is it just me, or is he describing something we see happening in churches too?
For my part, I would say that Americans have increasingly lost the imaginative realm of the gift as the locus of relationships. Hence, we’re less able to conceptualize our relationships as anything but marketplace exchange; a tragic loss that has crippled institutions of art and spirit as sacred spaces of human formation - largely because we’ve thoroughly saturated those realms with the metrics of the marketplace. Consequently, I tend to think that by purging gift-space of marketplace dynamics we might be able to re-appropriate the role of artists and priests as performers in an appropriate sense.
After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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Elisa Berry: “Beauty and the Practice of the Kingdom of God”
Abstract
The Protestant tradition has as its heritage an iconoclasm that rejects the idolatry of religious images and symbols in favor of seeking God in God’s Word and in direct experiences of God. This reaction to imagery, instigated by real problem facing the church of the 16th century, fails to address the issues facing the church today. As we recontextualize the message of Christ for this time and place, our churches are much more likely to face the pitfalls of the unreflective adoption of the values of consumerism, or, conversely, the use of tradition for tradition’s sake. In this paper I explore how the theological reflections of Saint Bonaventure, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards can help us avoid these pitfalls without ignoring God’s Trinitarian communication of Godself through beauty, creation and the senses. My discussion of the thought of these theologians is framed by Jean-Luc Marion’s distinction between the idol and the icon. Marion describes the idol as a mirror that can only reflect back the scope and power of the gaze that looks upon it. While an idol fails to point the gaze beyond itself, an icon is a mirror consumed by divine glory, through which the gaze transpierces the visible to behold the invisible. This metaphor of the mirror is also used by John Calvin an St Bonaventure to describe the God’s self-revelation through the beauty of creation. Creation is a mirror of God’s generative wisdom. The world is made through Christ, the Wisdom of God emanating from the Father. For Jonathan Edwards creation happens as the result of an overflowing of Trinitarian love that God desires to communicate to creatures. God draws us as creatures to Godself through ravishing beauty, not allowing us to rest in the senses, but ultimately drawing us to the crucified and incarnate Christ. As we wait for the ultimate fulfillment of God’s kingdom, we encounter God’s love in the senses through the body of Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. For all of these theologians, God promises to be most fully present to our senses in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper through which as a community we encounter the fullness of God’s presence.
Interview With Elisa
Q: How did you become interested in your topic?
A: As both an artist and a Christian, the question of the role of beauty and the senses in our relating to God has been present in my mind for quite awhile. It was one of the questions that led me to divinity school, where I explored the intersection of theology and art and encountered the theologians that appear in my paper. It was during divinity school that I first became involved in a Vineyard church plant and was designated the “aesthete” in our planning meetings.
Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?
A: In my anecdotal experience in the Vineyard, there is an apathy toward visual beauty and the role it plays in our relating to God. I think that we live in a society that is hungry for lasting beauty, and also attuned to respond to beauty. We are constantly visually stimulated, and the church must search for responses and alternatives to the inundation of visual stimuli. I also think that as Christians we will remain impoverished if we fail to be formed by the resources of the historical theological tradition. Theologically, beauty is important because through beauty and creation God is present to us, drawing us, and communicating to us.
Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?
A: The Vineyard churches in which I have participated transform preexisting structures into their worship spaces and during the rest of the week powerfully encounter God in the intimate settings of people’s homes. I think that that is a beautiful picture of the way in which God’s kingdom breaks into the most unlikely places and redeems all the parts of our world. Visual and sensorial beauty are important ways that God draws us to Godself, and so as followers of Christ we might attend to God’s communication to us through beauty and the senses in our worship, in our spaces, and in one another, just as we value creativity and skill in music and preaching (as well as hospitality, compassion, prayer etc). I also hope that in the Vineyard the celebration of communion, in a way that acknowledges what Christ has done for us, will be central to our communities as we gather to worship and encounter God.
Elisa will be available for further questions and dialogue in the comments
Elisa Berry (www.elisakariberry.com) lives in St Paul, MN and is in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Minnesota with a concentration in sculpture. Her art most often focuses on found objects, collage, light, spaces, and experiences of nature. She also obtained a Masters of Religion and Art from Yale Divinity School in an attempt to grasp the relationship between theology and aesthetics. She attends Mercy Vineyard Church in Minneapolis and prior to this was part of the Elm City Vineyard Church in New Haven, CT.
Mark Driscoll recently ranted about the movie Avatar, calling it the most “Satanic” movie he’s ever seen, and doesn’t understand how any Christian could watch it and not absolutely condemn it. Well…I’m a Christian and I liked the movie (I know it’s fashionable to hate on Avatar these days, but I was thoroughly entertained. No, it wasn’t fine cinema, but is that really what you expected from James Cameron?). It also contains some fascinating commentary on our culture and the deep spiritual longings of humanity, all of which are relevant to Christianity and not all of which are opposed to Christianity.
This reminded me of an old post I wrote last year (on an old blog) while I was at The Sundance Film Festival. So, first Mark’s 3-minute rant (if you care to watch it), then my old post below:
Sundance/Windrider Day 3: Lost in Translation (January 22, 2009)
I’m three days into my time here at The Sundance Film Festival and it’s been amazing. I’ve seen 10 movies so far – 4 shorts and 6 features, plus Q&A sessions with directors and cast members after every film – and I’ve noticed a few surprising things about the culture of film on display here.
There are some amazing artists who are asking important questions about life, and telling incredibly compelling stories of suffering, loss, hardship, redemption, love, joy, and spirituality. Again and again, the common ground that exists between the filmmaker’s values and the values of the biblical narrative have taken me by surprise. There is very little ambiguity in the depictions I’ve seen of yearning for love and security, or the necessity of risking one’s life in order to find it, or the desperate need for justice in situations of appalling human suffering and depravity.
Through cinema, the world is shouting for the things of God. Sadly, as far as the church is concerned, they’re using the wrong language.
Most of these directors and producers are completely secular. I don’t necessarily mean they’re ireligious – many aren’t – but their worldview, and the vernacular utilized to convey their art is utterly unfamiliar to the Christian subculture. I think this makes for a distance between these two groups that is more perceived than actual.
Tonight after the screening of Sin Nombre (an intensely powerful and disturbing film about illegal immigration) an audience member from our group asked the director whether he’d intended to depict contrasting images of “conditional vs. unconditional love” in his portrayal of two specific relationships, one involving mercy, the other betrayal.
It was a good question. The story delved deeply into the complexities of acceptance, rejection, trust, loyalty, and faithfulness between the characters.
Still, the director balked. In a very polite way he basically said he didn’t know what to do with the phrase “unconditional love,” and preferred to think of those character dynamics in terms of “families in flux,” forming on the one hand, and dissolving on the other.
In other words, his answer was “yes.” He absolutely intended (among other things) to depict broken covenant loyalties on the one hand, and faithful covenant loyalties on the other.
The problem, I think, is language itself. “Unconditional love” is conservative evangelical church vernacular for the kind of love that is most valuable or virtuous (and only comes from God). It’s a staple teaching point in most evangelical youth groups. But in my experience secular people rarely ever use that phrase, even if they might be talking about the same spirit.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen or heard this sort of thing in the last few days, either in the films themselves or the Q&A sessions. God is profoundly at work through many of these films, but he’s usually disguised in a culture and a language that is entirely foreign (and often frightening) to prevailing Christianity.
If we want to be conversant with the culture we find ourselves in we’re going to have to go out of our way to learn the language by listening deeply, patiently, and charitably. Once we do, we may indeed find that these powerful cultural prophets only want the things of God, but not God himself. However, we may discover that, at least for some, they were never rejecting God, only what we said and what they heard.
I often say that ecclesiology is what keeps me up at night.
I’ve spent the majority of my life in churches that assumed we can and should shape the church to suit our tastes and conveniences: We create the kind of youth ministry that keeps our teens docile, we build facilities that cater to every self-serving multi-purpose imaginable, and we change the time and place of gatherings to accommodate our devotion to other cultural phenomena (like football and Friends). If the congregation is largely white and middle-class then the church ends up looking like a discreet warehouse in the suburbs because that reflects the ideals of middle-class American industrial success. Similarly, the worship looks like a Fleetwood Mac or Coldplay concert (depending on the church’s age) because that reflects white, middle-class ideals for a tastefully edgy kind of musical experience.
To a certain extent this is good because the church must be contextualized into a given culture. That is, after all, the task of the missionary (1 Cor 9:20). But at some point this becomes a problem. If your church looks like a Wal Mart, walks like a Wal Mart, and quacks like a Wal Mart…isn’t it really just a Wal Mart? Is it still a church? Is it a place where God is re-making you into His image, or have you merely re-made Him in your own image of cozy American consumer success (can I supersize that for you)? This is how we shape the church to suit our needs and tastes.
As I mentioned last week, my resurrected posts about the Sundance Film Festival have been in anticipation of an exciting announcement. Because I believe art in general, and film in particular, are an unheeded prophetic voice in our culture I wanted to find some way to missionally engage with that vital expression.
Hence, for the past several weeks our little community of faith has been working diligently on a project we’re very excited about: The Micah Film Festival.
This is the last in a series of older posts from an older blog that came out of my trip last January to the Sundance Film Festival. This series is in anticipation of a new gathering our community is hosting later this summer around the medium of film (details coming soon).
I’ve had a blast at Sundance with the Fuller folks, but I’m glad to be heading home to all my girls. I’ve been blogging about “suffering” as a theme in many of the films here, and this will be my last post on the subject.
When it came to depicting the complex nature of suffering through dramatic film this year, none was better than Cary Fukunaga, the writer and director of Sin Nombre. The journey of determined immigrants from Guatemala to the United States, becomes the vehicle for Fukunaga to explore the depths of human determination as he chronicles the explosive collision between a family seeking solace in the U.S. and a Mexican gang in violent transition.
The following is an older post from an older blog that came out of my trip last January to the Sundance Film Festival. I’m posting this series in anticipation of a new gathering our community is hosting later this summer around the medium of film (details coming soon).
Yesterday I suggested that one theme at the Sundance Film Festival this year has been the depiction of suffering as a virtue. Perhaps some emerging films are expressing the mood of our times, or perhaps they’re like a cultural weathervane, pointing us toward the coming clouds.
But how can suffering be good?
In Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, Writer/Director John Krasinski (yes, from The Office) suggests that men are the new powerless minority, not because of traditionally conceived weakness, but because of their brute force. The screenplay is an adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s short story collection of the same name.
The following is an older post from an older blog that came out of my trip last January to the Sundance Film Festival. I’m posting this series in anticipation of a new gathering our community is hosting later this summer around the medium of film (details coming soon).
If filmmakers are the prophetic poets of our culture, then our culture is tired of the shallow pursuit of happiness and hungry for steadier sustenance. The last time our country faced serious economic hardship we found our prophet in a three foot tall muppet named Yoda, who rasped in Buddhist fashion that the source of all evil was “suffering.” The nation – still reeling from Vietnam and the shattered idealism of the 60’s, followed by the Iranian hostage crisis and record unemployment – dove headlong into the waters of unchecked economic growth, personal prosperity, and individualized fulfillment through consumer gluttony.
What followed was a quarter-century of debauchery, in which everyone could be a .com millionaire, a real estate tycoon, or a reality show celebrity. Combined with a simultaneous explosion in pharmaceuticals, we embraced a new American dream: the elimination of suffering. It turns out we weren’t cured, merely inebriated.
I’m three days into my time here at The Sundance Film Festival and it’s been amazing. I’ve seen 10 movies so far – 4 shorts and 6 features, plus Q&A sessions with directors and cast members after every film – and I’ve noticed a few surprising things about the culture of film on display here.
There are some amazing artists who are asking important questions about life, and telling incredibly compelling stories of suffering, loss, hardship, redemption, love, joy, and spirituality. Again and again, the common ground that exists between the filmmaker’s values and the values of the biblical narrative have taken me by surprise. There is very little ambiguity in the depictions I’ve seen of yearning for love and security, or the necessity of risking one’s life in order to find it, or the desperate need for justice in situations of appalling human suffering and depravity.
Through cinema, the world is shouting for the things of God. Sadly, as far as the church is concerned, they’re using the wrong language.
Most of these directors and producers are completely secular. I don’t necessarily mean they’re ireligious – many aren’t – but their worldview, and the vernacular utilized to convey their art is utterly unfamiliar to the Christian subculture. I think this makes for a distance between these two groups that is more perceived than actual.
Tonight after the screening of Sin Nombre (an intensely powerful and disturbing film about illegal immigration) an audience member from our group asked the director whether he’d intended to depict contrasting images of “conditional vs. unconditional love” in his portrayal of two specific relationships, one involving mercy, the other betrayal.
It was a good question. The story delved deeply into the complexities of acceptance, rejection, trust, loyalty, and faithfulness between the characters.
Still, the director balked. In a very polite way he basically said he didn’t know what to do with the phrase “unconditional love,” and preferred to think of those character dynamics in terms of “families in flux,” forming on the one hand, and dissolving on the other.
In other words, his answer was “yes.” He absolutely intended (among other things) to depict broken covenant loyalties on the one hand, and faithful covenant loyalties on the other.
The problem, I think, is language itself. “Unconditional love” is conservative evangelical church-speak for the kind of love that is most valuable or virtuous (and only comes from God). It’s a staple teaching point in most evangelical youth groups. But in my experience secular people rarely ever use that phrase, even if they might be talking about the same spirit.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen or heard this sort of thing in the last few days, either in the films themselves or the Q&A sessions. God is profoundly at work through many of these films, but he’s usually disguised in a culture and a language that is entirely foreign (and often frightening) to prevailing Christianity.
If we want to be conversant with the culture we find ourselves in we’re going to have to go out of our way to learn the language by listening deeply, patiently, and charitably. Once we do, we may indeed find that these powerful cultural prophets only want the things of God, but not God himself. However, we may discover that, at least for some, they were never rejecting God, only what we said and what they heard.
The following is an older post from an older blog that came out of my trip last January to the Sundance Film Festival. I’m posting this series in anticipation of a new gathering our community is hosting later this summer around the medium of film (details coming soon).
Being missional can seem so complicated at times. Don’t evangelize – embody. Don’t attract – incarnate. Don’t preach – narrate. Don’t segregate – integrate, and while you’re at it, feel free to congregate, as long as you don’t spectate. Whatever you do, don’t isolate yourself from culture, but while you’re busy engaging be sure not to capitulate. Don’t pursue your Christology at the expense of your Pneumatology or your theology won’t be Trinitarian enough for your ecclesiology. In which case, everything is just plain buggered.
Fortunately, we have friends to help us keep it all straight: Newbigin and Shenk, Roxbourgh and Gibbs, Allen and Wright (not that Wright, the other Wright), Bosch and Moltmann and Yoder and Volf and VanEngen. Missiology can’t seem to restrict itself to just one discipline, so, fortunately for us, nearly every theologian has something to say about it.
Most of these directors and producers are completely secular. I don’t necessarily mean they’re ireligious – many aren’t – but their worldview, and the vernacular utilized to convey their art is utterly unfamiliar to the Christian subculture. I think this makes for a distance between these two groups that is more perceived than actual.
